The room which Mrs. Sylvestre occupied in her friend\'s house was a very pretty one. It had been one of Mrs. Amory\'s caprices at the time she had fitted it up, and she had amused herself with it for two or three months, arranging it at her leisure, reflecting upon it, and making additions to its charms every day as soon as they suggested themselves to her.

"It is to be a purely feminine apartment," she had said to Richard and Arbuthnot. "And I have a sentiment about it. When it is complete you shall go and stand outside the door and look in, but nothing would induce me to allow you to cross the threshold."

When this moment had arrived, and they had been admitted to the private view from the corridor, they had evidently been somewhat impressed.

"It is very pretty," Mr. Arbuthnot had remarked, with amiable tolerance; "but I don\'t approve of it. Its object is plainly to pamper and foster those tendencies of the feminine temperament which are most prominent and least desirable. Nothing could be more apparent than its intention to pander to a taste for luxury and self-indulgence, combined in the most shameless manner with vanity and lightness of mind. It will be becoming to the frivolous creatures, and will exalt and inflate them to that extent that they will spend the greater portion of their time in it, utterly ignoring the superior opportunities for cultivating and improving their minds they might enjoy downstairs on occasions when Richard remains at home, and my own multifarious duties permit me to drop in. It strikes me as offering a premium to feminine depravity and crime."

"That expresses it exactly," agreed Richard.

Arbuthnot turned him round.

[Pg 253]

"Will you," he said, "kindly give your attention to the length and position of that mirror, and the peculiar advantages to be derived from the fact that the light falls upon it from that particular point, and that its effects are softened by the lace draperies and suggestions of pink and blue? The pink and blue idea is merely of a piece with all the rest, and is prompted by the artfulness of the serpent. If it had been all pink the blondes would have suffered, and if it had been all blue the brunettes would have felt that they were not at their best; this ineffably wily combination, however, truckles to either, and intimates that each combines the attractions of both. Take me away, Richard; it is not for the ingenuous and serious mind to view such spectacles as these. Take me away,—first, however, making a mental inventory of the entirely debasing sofas and chairs and the flagrant and openly sentimental nature of the pictures, all depicting or insinuating the drivelling imbecility and slavery of man,—\'The Huguenot Lovers,\' you observe, \'The Black Brunswicker,\' and others of like nature."

Mrs. Sylvestre had thought the room very pretty indeed when she had first taken possession of it, and its prettiness and comfort impressed her anew when, the excitement of the New Year\'s day at last at an end, she retired to it for the night.

When she found herself within the closed doors she did not go to bed at once. Too many impressions had been crowded into the last ten hours to have left her in an entirely reposeful condition of mind and body, and, though of too calm a temperament for actual excitement, she was still not inclined to sleep.

So, having partly undressed and thrown on a loose wrap, she turned down the light and went to the fire. It was an open wood-fire, and burned cheerily behind a brass fender; a large rug of white fur was spread upon the hearth before it; a low, broad sofa, luxurious with cushions, was drawn up at one side of it, and upon the[Pg 254] rug, at the other, stood a deep easy-chair. It was this chair she took, and, having taken it, she glanced up at an oval mirror which was among the ornaments on the opposite wall. In it she saw reflected that portion of the room which seemed to have arranged itself about her own graceful figure,—the faint pinks and blues, the flowered drapery, the puffed and padded furniture, and the hundred and one entirely feminine devices of ornamentation; and she was faintly aware that an expression less thoughtful than the one she wore would have been more in keeping with her surroundings.

"I look too serious to harmonize," she said. "If Bertha were here she would detect the incongruity and deplore it."

But she was in a thoughtful mood, which was not an uncommon experience with her, and the faint smile the words gave rise to died away as she turned to the fire again. What she thought of as she sat and looked into it, it would have been difficult to tell; but there was evidence that she was mentally well occupied in the fact that she sat entirely still and gazed at its flickering flame for nearly half an hour. She would not have moved then, perhaps, if she had not been roused from her reverie by a sound at the door,—a low knock, and a voice speaking to her.

"Agnes!" it said. "Agnes!"

She knew it at once as Bertha\'s, and rose to reply to the summons almost as if she had expected or even waited for it. When she unlocked the door, and opened it, Bertha was standing on the threshold. She had partly undressed, too. She had laid aside the red dress, and put on a long white negligée, bordered with white fur; there was no color about her, and it made her look cold. Perhaps she was cold, for Agnes thought she seemed to shiver a little.

"May I come in?" she asked. "I know it is very inconsiderate, but I had a sort of conviction that you would not be asleep."

[Pg 255]

"I was not thinking of going to sleep yet," said Agnes. "I am glad you have come."

Bertha entered, and, the door being closed, crossed the room to the fire. She did not take a chair, but sat down upon the hearth-rug.

"This is very feminine," she said, "and we ought to be in bed; but the day would not be complete without it."

Then she turned toward Agnes.

"You must have a great deal to think of to-night," she said.

Agnes Sylvestre looked at the fire.

"Yes," she answered, "I have a great deal to think of."

"Are they things you like to think of?"

"Some of them—not all."

"It must be a curious experience," said Bertha, "to find yourself here again after so many years—with all your life changed for you."

Mrs. Sylvestre did not reply.

"You have not been here," Bertha continued, "since you went away on your wedding journey. You were nineteen or twenty then,—only a girl."

"I was young," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "but I was rather mature for my years. I did not feel as if I was exactly a girl."

Then she added, in a lower voice:

"I had experienced something which had ripened me."

"You mean," said Bertha, "that you knew what love was."

She had not intended to say the words, and their abrupt directness grated upon her as she spoke; but she could not have avoided uttering them.

Mrs. Sylvestre paused a moment.

"The experience I passed through," she said, "did not belong to my age. It was not a girl\'s feelings. I think it came too soon."

[Pg 256]

"You had two alternatives to choose from," said Bertha,—"that it should come too soon or too late."

Mrs. Sylvestre paused again.

"You do not think," she said, "that it ever comes to any one at the right time?"

Bertha had been sitting with her hands folded about her knee. She unclasped and clasped them with a sharply vehement movement.

"It is a false thing from beginning to end," she said. "I do not believe in it."

"Ah," said Mrs. Sylvestre, softly, "I believe it. I wish I did not."

"What is there to be gained by it?" said Bertha; "a feeling that is not to be reasoned about or controlled; a miserable, feverish emotion you cannot understand, and can only resent and struggle against blindly. When you let it conquer you, how can you respect yourself or the object of it? What do women love men for? Who knows? It is like madness! All you can say is, \'I love him. He is life or death to me.\' It is so unreasoning—so unreasoning."

She stopped suddenly, as if all at once she became conscious that her companion was looking at herself instead of at the fire.

"You love a man generally," said Mrs. Sylvestre, in her tenderly modulated voice,—"at least I have thought so,—because he is the one human creature who is capable of causing you the greatest amount of suffering. I don\'t know of any other reason, and I have thought of it a great deal."

"It is a good reason," said Bertha,—"a good reason."

Then she laughed.

"This is just a little tragic, isn\'t it?" she said. "What a delightfully emotional condition we must be in to have reached tragedy in less than five minutes, and entirely without intention! I did not come to be tragic; I came to be analytical. I want you to tell me carefully how we strike you."

[Pg 257]

"We?" said Mrs. Sylvestre.

Bertha touched herself on the breast.

"We," she said,—"I, Richard, Laurence Arbuthnot, Colonel Tredennis, Senator Planefield, the two hundred men callers,—Washington, in short. How does Washington strike you, now that you have come to it again?"

"Won\'t you give me two weeks to reflect upon it?" said Agnes.

"No. I want impressions, not reflections. Is it all very much changed?"

"I am very much changed," was the reply.

"And we?" said Bertha. "Suppose—suppose you begin with Laurence Arbuthnot."

"I do not think I could. He is not one of the persons I have remembered."

"Agnes," said Bertha, "only wait with patience for one of those occasions when you feel it necessary to efface him, and then tell him that, in exactly that tone of voice, and he will in that instant secretly atone for the crimes of a lifetime. He won\'t wince, and he will probably reply in the most brilliant and impersonal manner; but, figuratively speaking, you will have reduced him to powder and cast him to the breeze."

"We shall not be sufficiently intimate to render such a thing possible," said Mrs. Sylvestre. "One must be intimate with a man to be angry enough with him to wish to avenge one\'s self."

Bertha smiled.

"You don\'t like him," she said. "Poor Larry!"

"On the contrary," was her friend\'s reply. "But it would not occur to me to \'begin with him,\' as you suggested just now."

"With whom, then," said Bertha, "would you begin."

Her guest gave a moment to reflection, during which Bertha regarded her intently.

"If I were going to begin at all," she said, rather slowly, "I think it would be with Colonel Tredennis."

[Pg 258]

There was a moment of silence, and then Bertha spoke, in a somewhat cold and rigid voice,

"What do you like about him?" she asked.

"I think I like everything."

"If you were any one else," said Bertha, "I should say that you simply like his size. I think that is generally it. Women invariably fall victims to men who are big and a little lumbering. They like to persuade themselves that they are overawed and subjected. I never understood it myself. Big men never pleased me very much—they are so apt to tread on you."

"I like his eyes," said Agnes, apparently reflecting aloud; "they are very kind. And I like his voice"—

"It is rather too deep," remarked Bertha, "and sometimes I am a little afraid it will degenerate into a growl, though I have never heard it do so yet."

Mrs. Sylvestre went on:

"When he bends his head a little and looks down at you as you talk," she said, "he is very nice. He is really thinking of you and regarding you seriously. I do not think he is given to trifling."

"No," returned Bertha; "I do not think he is given to anything special but being massive. That is what you are thinking,—that he is massive."

"There is no denying," said her friend, "that that is one of the things I like."

"Ah!" said Bertha, "you find the rest of us very flippant and trivial. That is how we strike you!"

A fatigued little sigh escaped her lips.

"After all," she said, "it is true. And we have obliged ourselves to be trivial for so long that we are incapable of seriousness. Sometimes—generally toward Lent, after I have been out a great deal—I wonder if the other would not be interesting for a change; but, at the same time, I know I could not be serious if I tried."

"Your seriousness will be deeper," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "when you accomplish it without trying."

[Pg 259]

She was serious herself as she spoke, but her seriousness was extremely gentle. She looked at Bertha even tenderly, and her clear eyes were very expressive.

"We are both changed since we met here last," she said, with simple directness, "and it is only natural that what we have lived through should have affected us differently. We are of very different temperaments. You were always more vivid and intense than I, and suffering—if you had suffered"—

Her soft voice faltered a little, and she paused. Bertha turned and looked her unflinchingly in the face.

"I—have not suffered," she said.

Agnes spoke as simply as before.

"I have," she said.

Bertha turned sharply away.

"I was afraid so," was her response.

"If we are to be as near to each other as I hope," Agnes continued, "it would be useless for me to try to conceal from you the one thing which has made me what I am. The effort to hide it would always stand between us and our confidence in each other. It is much simpler to let you know the truth."

She put her hands up to her face an instant, and Bertha broke the silence with a curiously incisive question.

"Was he very cruel to you?"

Agnes withdrew her hands, and if her shadow of a smile had not been so infinitely sad, it would have been bitter.

"He could not help it," she said; "and when I was calm enough to reason I knew he was not to blame for my imagination. It was all over in a few months, and he would have been quite content to bear what followed philosophically. When the worst came to the worst, he told me that he had known it could not last, because such things never did; but that he had also known that, even after the inevitable termination, I should always please him and display good taste. He had lived[Pg 260] through so much, and I had known so little. I only spoke openly to him once,—one awful day, and after that I scarcely know what happened to me for months. I asked him to let me go away alone, and I went to the sea-side. Since then the sound of the sea has been a terror to me, and yet there are times when I long to hear it. I used to tell myself that, on one of those days when I sat on the sand and looked at the sea, I died, and that I have never really lived since. Something happened to me—I don\'t know what. It was one brilliant morning, when the sun beat on the blue water and the white sand, and everything was a dazzling glare. I sat on the beach for hours without moving, and when I got up and walked away I remember hearing myself saying, \'I have left you behind,—I have left you behind,—I shall never see you again.\' I was ill for several days afterward, and when I recovered I seemed to have become a new creature. When my husband came I was able to meet him so calmly that I think it was even a kind of shock to him."

"And that was the end?" said Bertha.

"Yes, that was the end—for me."

"And for him?"

"Once or twice afterward it interested him to try experiments with me, and when they failed he was not pleased."

"Were you never afraid," said Bertha, "that they would not fail?"

"No. There is nothing so final as the ending of such a feeling. There is nothing to come after it, because it has taken everything with it,—passion, bitterness, sorrow,—even regret. I never wished that it might return after the day I spoke of. I have thought if, by stretching forth my hand, I could have brought it all back just as it was at first, I should not have wished to do it. It had been too much."

"It is a false thing," said Bertha,—"a false thing, and there must always be some such end to it."

[Pg 261]

Agnes Sylvestre was silent again, and because of her silence Bertha repeated her words with feverish eagerness.

"It must always end so," she said.

"You know that—you must know it."

"I am only one person," was the characteristic answer. "And I do not know. I do not want to know. I only want quiet now. I have learned enough."

"Agnes," said Bertha, "that is very pathetic."

"Yes," Agnes answered. "I know it is pathetic, when I allow myself to think of it." And for the first time her voice broke a little, and was all the sweeter for the break in it. But it was over in a moment, and she spoke as she had spoken before.

"But I did not mean to be pathetic," she said. "I only wanted to tell you the entire truth, so that there should be nothing between us, and nothing to avoid. There can be nothing now. You know of me all that is past, and you can guess what is to come."

"No, I cannot do that," said Bertha.

Agnes smiled.

"It is very easy," she responded. "I shall have a pretty house, and I shall amuse myself by buying new or old things for it, and by moving the furniture. I shall give so much thought to it that after a while it will be quite celebrated, in a small way, and Miss Jessup will refer to it as \'unique.\' Mrs. Merriam will be with me, and I shall have my reception day, and perhaps my \'evening,\' and I shall see as many of the charming people who come to Washington as is possible. You will be very good to me, and come to see me often, and—so I hope will Mr. Arbuthnot, and Colonel Tredennis"—

"Agnes," interposed Bertha, with an oddly hard manner, "if they do, one or both of them will fall in love with you."

"If it is either," responded Mrs. Sylvestre, serenely, "I hope it will be Mr. Arbuthnot, as he would have less difficulty in recovering."

[Pg 262]

"You think," said Bertha, "that nothing could ever touch you again,—nothing?"

"Think!" was the response; "my safety lies in the fact that I do not think of it at all. If I were twenty I might do so, and everything would be different. Life is very short. It is not long enough to run risks in. I shall not trifle with what is left to me."

"Oh," cried Bertha, "how calm you are—how calm you are!"

"Yes," she answered, "I am calm now."

But she put her hands up to her face again for an instant, and her eyelashes were wet when she withdrew them.

"It was a horribly dangerous thing," she said, brokenly. "There were so many temptations; the temptation to find excitement in avenging myself on others was strongest of all. I suppose it is the natural savage impulse. There were times when I longed to be cruel. And then I began to think—and there seemed so much suffering in life—and everything seemed so pitiful. And I could not bear the thought of it." And she ended with the sob of a child.

"It is very womanish to cry," she whispered, "and I did not mean to do it, but—you look at me so." And she laid her cheek against the cushioned back of her chair, and, for a little while, was more pathetic in her silence than she could have been in any words she might have uttered. It was true that Bertha had looked at her. There were no tears in her own eyes. Her feeling was one of obstinate resistance to all emotion in herself; but she did not resent her friend\'s; on the contrary, she felt a strange enjoyment of it.

"Don\'t stop crying because I am here," she said. "I like to see you do it."

Mrs. Sylvestre recovered herself at once. She sat up, smiling a little. There were no disfiguring traces of her emotion on her fair face.

"Thank you," she answered; "but I do not like it[Pg 263] myself so much, and I have not done it before for a long time."

It was, perhaps, because Mr. Arbuthnot presented himself as an entirely safe topic, with no tendency whatever to develop the sensibilities, that she chose him as the subject of her next remarks.

"I do not see much change in your friend," she observed.

"If you mean Laurence," Bertha replied, "I dare say not. He does not allow things to happen to him. He knows better."

"And he has done nothing whatever during the last seven years?"

"He has been to a great many parties," said Bertha, "and he has read a book or so, and sung several songs."

"I hope he has sung them well," was her friend\'s comment.

"It always depends upon his mood," Bertha returned; "but there have been times when he has sung them very well indeed."

"It can scarcely have been a great tax to have done it occasionally," said Mrs. Sylvestre; "but I should always be rather inclined to think it was the result of chance, and not effort. Still"—with a sudden conscientious scruple brought about by her recollection of the fact that these marks of disapproval had not expressed themselves in her manner earlier in the day—"still he is very agreeable, one cannot deny that."

"It is always safe not to attempt to deny it, even if you feel inclined," was Bertha\'s comment, "because, if you do, he will inevitably prove to you that you were in the wrong before he has done with you."

"He did one thing I rather liked," her companion proceeded. "He was very nice—in that peculiar, impartial way of his—to a boy"—

"The boy who came with the Bartletts?" Bertha interposed. "I saw him, and was positively unhappy[Pg 264] about him, because I could not attend to him. Did he take him in hand?" she asked, brightening visibly. "I knew he would, if he noticed him particularly. It was just like him to do it."

"I saw him first," Mrs. Sylvestre explained; "but I am afraid I should not have been equal to the occasion if Mr. Arbuthnot had not assisted me. It certainly surprised me that he should do it. He knew the Bartletts, and had met the boy\'s sister, and in the most wonderful, yet the most uneffusive and natural, way he utilized his material until the boy felt himself quite at home, and not out of place at all. One of the nicest things was the way in which he talked about Whippleville,—the boy came from Whippleville. He seemed to give it a kind of interest and importance, and even picturesqueness. He did not pretend to have been there; but he knew something of the country, which is pretty, and he was very clever in saying neither too much nor too little. Of course that was nice."

"Colonel Tredennis could not have done it," said Bertha.

Agnes paused. She felt there was something of truth in the statement, but she was reluctant to admit it.

"Why not?" she inquired.

"By reason of the very thing which is his attraction for you,—because he is too massive to be adroit."

Agnes was silent.

"Was it not Colonel Tredennis who went to Virginia when your little girl was ill?" she asked, in a few moments.

"Yes," was Bertha\'s response. "He came because Richard was away and papa was ill."

"It was Janey who told me of it," said Agnes, quietly. "And she made a very pretty story of it, in her childish way. She said that he carried her up and down the room when she was tired, and that when her head ached he helped her not to cry. He must be very gentle. I like to think of it. It is very picturesque;[Pg 265] the idea of that great soldierly fellow nursing a frail little creature, and making her pain easier to bear. Do you know, I find myself imagining that I know how he looked."

Bertha sat perfectly still. She, too, knew how he had looked. But there was no reason, she told herself, for the sudden horrible revulsion of feeling which rushed upon her with the remembrance. A little while before, when Agnes had told her story, there had been a reason why she should be threatened by her emotions; but now it was different,—now that there was, so to speak, no pathos in the air; now that they were merely talking of commonplace, unemotional things. But she remembered so well; if she could have forced herself to forget for one instant she might have overcome the passion of unreasoning anguish which seized her; but it was no use, and as she made the effort Agnes sat and watched her, a strange questioning dawning slowly in her eyes.

"He looked—very large"—

She stopped short, and her hands clutched each other hard and close. A wild thought of getting up and leaving the room came to her, and then she knew it was too late.

A light flickered up from the wood-fire and fell upon her face as she slowly turned it to Agnes.

For an instant Agnes simply looked at her, then she uttered a terror-stricken exclamation.

"Bertha!" she cried.

"Well," said Bertha; "well!" But at her next breath she began to tremble, and left her place on the hearth and stood up, trembling still. "I am tired out," she said. "I must go away. I ought not to have come here."

But Agnes rose and went to her, laying her hand on her arm. She had grown pale herself, and there was a thrill of almost passionate feeling in her words when she spoke.

[Pg 266]

"No," she said. "You were right to come. This is the place for you."

She drew her down upon the sofa and held both her hands.

"Do you think I would let you go now," she said, "until you had told me everything? Do you think I did not know there was something you were struggling with? When I told you of my own unhappiness, it was because I hoped it would help you to speak. If you had not known that I had suffered you could not have told me. You must tell me now. What barrier could there be between us,—two women who have—who have been hurt, and who should know how to be true to each other?"

Bertha slipped from her grasp and fell upon her knees by the sofa, covering her face.

"Agnes," she panted, "I never thought of this—I don\'t know how it has come about. I never meant to speak. Almost the worst of it all is that my power over myself is gone, and that it has even come to this,—that I am speaking when I meant to be silent. Don\'t look at me! I don\'t know what it all means! All my life has been so different—it is so unlike me—that I say to myself it cannot be true. Perhaps it is not. I have never believed in such things. I don\'t think I believe now; I don\'t know what it means, I say, or whether it will last, and if it is not only a sort of illness that I shall get better of. I am trying with all my strength to believe that, and to get better; but while it lasts"—

"Go on," said Agnes, in a hushed voice.

Bertha threw out her hands and wrung them, the pretty baubles she had not removed when she undre............