affectionate habit than a passion; and in whom devotion would be strong
because devotion was the key-note of her nature. The dress of a nun
would have turned her into a saint; of a peasant would have made her a
Madonna; of a Quaker, would have made her a dreamer and a devote; of a
queen, would have made her benign yet unapproachable. It struck him all
at once as he looked, that this woman had one quality in absolute kinship
with Guida Landresse--honesty of mind and nature; only with this young
aristocrat the honesty would be without passion. She had straight-
forwardness, a firm if limited intellect, a clear-mindedness belonging
somewhat to narrowness of outlook, but a genuine capacity for
understanding the right and the wrong of things. Guida, so Detricand
thought, might break her heart and live on; this woman would break her
heart and die: the one would grow larger through suffering, the other
shrink to a numb coldness.

So he entertained himself by these flashes of discernment, presently
merged in wonderment as to what was in Philip's mind as he stood there,
destiny hanging in that drop of ink at the point of the pen in the Duke's
fingers!

Philip was thinking of the destiny, but more than all else just now he
was thinking of the woman before him and the issue to be faced by him
regarding her. His thoughts were not so clear nor so discerning as
Detricand's. No more than he understood Guida did he understand
this clear-eyed, still, self-possessed woman. He thought her cold,
unsympathetic, barren of that glow which should set the pulses of a man
like himself bounding. It never occurred to him that these still waters
ran deep, that to awaken this seemingly glacial nature, to kindle a fire
on this altar, would be to secure unto his life's end a steady, enduring
flame of devotion. He revolted from her; not alone because he had a