e nothing of it,
pushed it to one side.

"I suppose you cannot see the foolishness of your pity," she said. "Oh,
Miss Howe, I am happier than you are--much happier." Her bare feet, as
she spoke, nestled into the coarse Mirzapore rug on the floor, and her
eye lingered approvingly upon an Owari vase three foot high, and thick
with the gilded landscape of Japan which stood near it, in the cheap
magnificence of the squalid room.

Hilda smiled. Her smile acquiesced in the world she had found,
acquiesced with the gladness of an explorer in Laura Filbert as a
feature of it.

"Don't be too sure," she cried; "I am very happy. It is such a pleasure
to see you."

Her gaze embraced Miss Filbert as a person and Miss Filbert as a
pictorial fact; but that was because she could not help it. Her eyes
were really engaged only with the latter Miss Filbert.

"Much happier than you are," Laura repeated, slowly moving her head from
side to side, as if to negative contradiction in advance. She smiled
too; it was as if she had remembered a former habit, from politeness.

"Of course you are--of course!" Miss Howe acknowledged. The words were
mellow and vibrant; her voice seemed to dwell upon them with a kind of
rich affection. Her face covered itself with serious sweetness. "I can
imagine the beatitudes you feel--by your clothes."

The girl drew her feet under her, and her hand went up to the only
semi-conventional item of her attire. It was a brooch that exclaimed in
silver letters, "Glory to His Name!" "It is the dress of the Army in
this country," she said; "I would not change it for the wardrobe of any
queen."

"That's just what I mean." Miss Howe leaned back in her chair with her
head among its cushions, and sent her words fluently across the room,
straight and level with the glance from between her half-closed eyelids.
A fine sensuous appreciation of the indolence it was possible to enjoy
in the East clung about her. "To live on a plane that lifts you up like
that--so that you can defy all criticism and all convention, and go
about the streets like a mark of exclamation at the selfishness of the
world--there must be something very consummate in it or you couldn't go
on. At least I couldn't."

"I suppose I do look odd to you." Her voice took a curious soft,
uplifted note. "I wear three garments only--the garments of my sisters
who plant the young shoots in the rice-fields, and carry bricks for the
building of rich men's houses,