in the same category.

"But suppose," she objected, "one doesn't want to triumph at it? Suppose
one wants to be a--person, rather than just a woman?"

"There are other careers indeed," Madame Greville admitted, "and one can
follow them in the same spirit, make the sacrifices--pay the price they
demand. _Mon dieu!_ How I have preached. Now you shall talk to me. It
was for that I took you captive and ran away with you."

For the next half-hour, until the car stopped in front of her house,
Rose acted on this request; told about her life before and since her
marriage to Rodney, about her friends, her amusements--anything that
came into her mind. But she lingered before getting out of the car, to
say:

"I hope I haven't forgotten a single word of your--preaching. You said
so many things I want to think about."

"Don't trouble your soul with that, child," said the actress. "All the
sermon you need can be boiled down into a sentence, and until you have
found it out for yourself, you won't believe it."

"Try me," said Rose.

"Then attend.--How shall I say it?--Nothing worth having comes as a
gift, nor even can be bought--cheap. Everything of value in your life
will cost you dear; and some time or other you'll have to pay the price
of it."

It was with a very thoughtful, perplexed face that Rose watched the car
drive away, and then walked slowly into her house--the ideal house that
had cost Florence McCrea and Bertie Willis so many hours and so many
hair-line decisions--and allowed herself to be relieved of her wraps by
the perfect maid, who had all but been put in the lease.

The actress had said many strange and puzzling things during their ride;
things to be accepted only cautiously, after a careful thinking out. But
strangest of all was this last observation of hers; that there was
nothing of worth in your life that you hadn't to pay a heavy price for.

Certainly it contradicted violently everything in Rose's experience, for
everything she valued had come to her precisely as a gift. Her mother's
and Portia's love of her, the life that had surrounded her in school and
at the university, the friends; and then, with her marriage, the sudden
change in her estate, the thrills, the excitement, the comparative
luxuries of the new life. Why,--even Rodney himself, about whom
everything else swung in an orbit! What price had she paid for him, or
for any of the rest of it? It was all as free as the air she breathed.
It had