Consequences

in and

ight with characteristic suavity, and

a long way off, don't they?

lroom, seemed to appraise its gl

ther than the words,

time, aren't you, Queenie?

ss Torrance, her eyes

not won

cued from oblivion by the most determined of hostesses, going down to supper on the arm of young Goldstein and lingering with him in prolonged tête-à-tête. Goldstein, at the little round table across

s Alex sometimes did, and Lady Isabel did not allow her daughter to take up the fashionable practice of bicycling in Battersea Park, at which Queenie Torra

eet everywhere, and it will be so odd if I never ask

r you contented yourself with m

sterious unreason to provoke the answer whi

being friends with very much," said Lady Isabel with

, uttered by her mother and he

alked about?" Alex

good in the long run either. Men may flirt with girls of that sort, and like to dance with them and pay t

people would like

w?" Lady Isabel

k at other women, and, true to the traditions of youth and of the race to which she belon

ith him and every sort of thing.... It's not the girl's fault exactly, though I don't like the way she dresses, and a wreath of artificial flowers, or whatever it is she wear

in her glance at her daughter, made Alex wonder sensitiv

nbecomingly dictatorial manner. She had been led to expect, from constant veiled references to the subject, that as soon as she grew up, opportunity would be afforded her to attain the goal of every well-born girl's destiny-that of matrimony. Girls who became engaged to be married in their f

years old, still going yearly through the sea

t a

one had shown her the faintest inclination to ask her in marriage, or even express any particula

w one another more intimately. Sometimes she had heard girls talk of looking forward to som

same terms with all of them-polite, imp

tein. His manner to all women verged upon the effusive, and Alex was secretly faintly ashamed of feeling slightly, but perceptibly, flattered at the

Jew who seems to get himself asked everywhere," she did not forbid Alex to dance with him, and he was the on

outh's love of romance, partly from a desire to find out, if she could,

she felt dimly, perhaps i

e last big ball she was to attend that year, Al

for Queenie was also present, although she had

d conducted her ceremoniously

ples, or an occasional group of three or four, li

re?" said Goldste

rceived that they were within sight of the alcove where sat Queenie Torra

luntarily, as Goldstein's lowering g

ded no more to make him laun

gesticulations of his hands, as though emotion had startled him into a dis

enie, and that it drove him nearly mad

her to marry you?" ex

n stared

een times," he said at

mes!" Alex w

ed up to, uttered at some propitious moment, preferably by moonl

you'd even seen her fourteen

e with my business. You won't give me away, I know-you're her friend,

y Isabel. Was this

ts, and when I can meet her, and when I may take he

was p

e you e

admitted; "and I have to see her surrounded and admired everywhere she goes, and have no hold on her whatever. If she would only marry me!" he made a gesture of rather t

e," Goldstein muttered f

served. Her eyes moved unseeingly across Alex and Maurice Goldstein. The rest of the room was empty. With a little hal

he felt herself colouring hotly, as she watched, with involuntary fascination, Queeni

y of modern freedom shocked her sincerely, nor could even her inexperien

stily for her

irs again?" she aske

rose witho

ne glance at him, saw tha

l, he spoke in a quick, low, dram

s driving me frantic; but

playing even a secondary r?le in what

rtnerless, beside her mother, she saw Queenie

t once her eyelids dropped again. But in that instant Maurice Goldstein had left the wall against whi

ide of the tall, white-clad figure,

no more that night. She herself drove home to Cleved

nd although a faint but bitter regret that the experience had not been

dy Isabel, her voice sleepy. "A rest will do y

whose duty it was to sit up for her mistress's return, undid the com

," said Alex hastily.

wn till lunch-time, Alex-w

up one more flight of stairs to her own room, wrapped in her

n in the big, swinging mirror, she made personal application o

f her as Maurice Goldstein spoke

; any man make his way to her through a crowd

mpered by any light of experience. But the hero of the dream was a nebulous, shadowy figur

nion with others, and that no intimacy other than one of the surface had as yet ever resulted from any intercourse of hers with her fellow-creatures. Her nearest approach t

hing mattered except the people one loved, that nothing was so much worth while as the affection and understanding which one knew so well, from oneself, must exist, and for the bestowal of which on one's own lonely, ardent spirit one prayed so passionately

er own reflection for traces of the spell wielded by Queenie Torrance. She had not

s pretty

r, that fell no lower than her shoulders. She reflected disconsolately on the undue prominence of the two, whit

ch Lady Isabel so regretted was sharply manifested in the exposed collar-bones just above the open dressing-gown, and in the childishly thi

she passed other, moral, att

t for one's beauty. But she could not suppose herself to be goo

answer within her to bring to it, and that force she had been

fancies that usurped the place of realities, and unaware that the temperame