"I've pulled myself together." Fleda paused; then she added: "And I've seen Mr. Owen." "No, Fleda, I don't understand you," said Mrs. Gereth, finally facing her again. "I don't understand you at all, and it's as if you and Owen were of quite another race and another flesh. You make me feel very old-fashioned and simple and bad. But you must take me as I am, since you take so much else with me!" She spoke now with the drop of her resentment, with a dry and weary calm. "It would have been better for me if I had never known you," she pursued, "and certainly better if I hadn't taken such an extraordinary fancy to you. But that too was inevitable: everything, I suppose, is inevitable. It was all my own doing—you didn't run after me: I pounced on you and caught you up. You're a stiff little beggar, in spite of your pretty manners: yes, you're hideously misleading. I hope you feel how handsome it is of me to recognize the independence of your character. It was your clever sympathy that did it—your extraordinary feeling for those accursed vanities. You were sharper about them than any one I had ever known, and that was a thing I simply couldn't resist. Well," the poor lady concluded after a pause, "you see where it has landed us!"!

Fleda, with a bright face, hesitated a moment. "As if I were one of those bad women in a play?" "Oh, that's what I should call it!" Fleda laughed, to her own surprise.

At this, opening her eyes, Mrs. Gereth sprang straight up. "Get him away from her!" "I like that!" he laughed. "How came you not to let me know that you were there?" "I've seen him but twice," said Fleda.