her best to make it stay there.  She discovered how sore its fret had been only with the relief she felt when she simplified it at a stroke that afternoon on which everything came to an end between her and Elfrida.  Since the burden of obligation their relation imposed had been removed Janet had analyzed her friendship, and had found it wanting in many ways to which she had been wilfully blind before.  The criticism she had always silenced came forward and spoke boldly; and she recognized the impossibility of a whole-hearted intimacy where a need for enforced dumbness existed.  All the girl’s charm she acknowledged with a heart wrung by the thought that it was no longer for her.  She dwelt separately and long upon Elfrida’s keen sense of justice, her impulsive generosity, her refined consideration for other people, the delicacy of some of her personal instincts, her absolute sincerity toward herself and the world, her passionate exaltation of what was to her the ideal in art.  Janet exacted from herself the last jot of justice toward Elfrida in all these things; and then she listened, as she had not done before, to the voice that spoke to her from the very depths of her being, it seemed, and said, “Nevertheless, no!” She only half comprehended, and the words brought her a sadness that would be long, she knew, in leaving her; but she listened and agreed.

And now it seemed to her that she must ignore it again, that the wise, the necessary, the expedient thing to do was to go to Elfrida and re-establish, if she could, the old relation, cost what it might.  She must take up her burden of obligation again in order that it might be mutual.  Then she would have the right to beg Elfrida to stop playing fast and loose with her father, to act decisively.  If Elfrida only knew, only realized, the difference it made, and how little right she had to control, at her whim, the happiness of any human being —­and Janet brought a strong hand to bear upon her indignation, for she had resolved to go; and to go that night.

Lawrence-Cardiff bade his daughter an early, good-night after their unusually pleasant dinner.  “Do you think you can do it?” he asked her before he went Janet started at the question, for they had not mentioned Elfrida again, even remotely.

“I think I can, daddy,” she answered him gravely, and they separated.  She looked at her watch; by half-past nine she could be in Essex Court.

Yes, Miss Bell was in, Miss Cardiff could go straight up, Mrs. Jordan informed her, and she mounted the last flight of stairs with a beating heart.  Her mission was important—­oh, so important!  She had compromised with her conscience in planning it, and now if it should fail!  Her hand trembled as she knocked.  In answer to Elfrida’s “Come in!” she pushed the door slowly open.  “It is I, Janet,” she said; “may I?”

“But of course!”

Elfrida rose from a confusion of sheets of manuscript upon the table and came forward, holding out her hand with an odd gleam in her eyes, and an amused, slightly excited smile about her lips.