to her to study them before.  She found that the outer envelopes of her personality could be made to shift with kaleidoscopic brilliancy, and except when Hedworth needed repose—­she had much tact—­she treated him to these many moods in turn.  It is possible that she added to her fascination, but, having won him without effort, she might have rested on her laurels.  He was deeply in love with her, and worried himself with presentiments of what might happen before she would consent to name the wedding-day.  Both being children of worldly wisdom, however, they harlequined their misgivings and were happy when together.

Fortunately for both, she was heavy-laden with femininity, and was content to give all, and receive the little that man in the nature of his life and inherited particles has to offer.  She was satisfied to be adored, desired, mentally appreciated.  If his ego was always paramount, his spiritual demands so imperious that he appropriated the full measure of sympathy and comprehension that Nature has let loose for man and woman, not caring to know anything of her beyond the fact that she was the one woman in the world in whom he saw no fault, she was satisfied to have it so.  She was a clever woman, but not too clever; and their chances of happiness were good.

And then a strange thing happened to her.

Hedworth was called to Switzerland by his mother, who fell ill.  His parting with Edith occupied several hours, and during the three or four days following, his affianced protested that she was inconsolable.  But his letters were frequent and characteristic, and she began to enjoy the new phase of their intercourse:  the excitement of waiting for the post, the delight which the first glimpse of the envelope on her breakfast-tray gave her, the novelty of receiving a fragment of him daily, which her imagination could expand into his hourly life and thoughts.  The season was over, and she had little else to do.  She expected him back at any moment, and preferred to await his arrival in town.

One evening she was sitting in her bedroom thinking of him.  The night was hot and the windows were open.  It was very late.  She had been staring down upon the dark mass of tree-tops in the Park, recapitulating, phase by phase, the growth of her feeling for Hedworth.  Suddenly it occurred to her that it bore a strong racial resemblance to her first passion, and, being too intelligent to have escaped the habit of analysis, she dug up the old love and dissected it.  It had been better preserved than she would have thought, for it did not offend her sense; and she gave an hour to the office.  She went back to her first moment of conscious interest in the hero of her tragedy, galvanized the thrill she had felt when he entered her presence, her restlessness and doubt and jealousy when he was away, or appeared to neglect her; the recognition that she was in the hard grasp of a passion in which she had had little faith;