street cars."

She sat very still in the empty room, her face burning.

Characteristically, her father had not once mentioned the rector of St.
John's, yet had contrived to imply that her interest in Hodder was
greater than her interest in religion. And she was forced to admit, with
her customary honesty, that the implication was true.


The numbers who knew Alison Parr casually thought her cold. They admired
a certain quality in her work, but they did not suspect that that quality
was the incomplete expression of an innate idealism capable of being
fanned into flame,--for she was subject to rare but ardent enthusiasms
which kindled and transformed her incredibly in the eyes of the few to
whom the process had been revealed. She had had even a longer list of
suitors than any one guessed; men who--usually by accident--had touched
the hidden spring, and suddenly beholding an unimagined woman, had
consequently lost their heads. The mistake most of them had made (for
subtlety in such affairs is not a masculine trait) was the failure to
recognize and continue to present the quality in them which had awakened
her. She had invariably discovered the feet of clay.

Thus disillusion had been her misfortune--perhaps it would be more
accurate to say her fortune. She had built up, after each invasion, her
defences more carefully and solidly than before, only to be again
astonished and dismayed by the next onslaught, until at length the
question had become insistent--the question of an alliance for purposes
of greater security. She had returned to her childhood home to consider
it, frankly recognizing it as a compromise, a fall . . . .