This, then, is Miss Hallard—­adventuress in a great philosophy.  Her thin lips, her shifting, disconcerting eyes, set deep beneath the brows; the long and narrow face, the high forehead on which the hair hangs heavily; that thin, reedy body, that ill-formed, unnatural breast which never was meant to suckle a child or nurse the drooping of a man’s head—­all these are the signs of her calling.  A woman—­by the irony of a fate that has thwarted the original design of Nature.

Sally Bishop is a woman before everything.  Miss Hallard is a woman last of all.  How these two, in their blatant contrasts, were brought together, is an example of one of those mysterious forces in the great machinery of life which we are unable to comprehend.  It is like the harnessing of electricity to the needs of civilization.  We can make it do what we will; but of what it is, we know nothing.  So we are just as ignorant of that law which governs the contact of personalities.  It cannot be luck; it cannot be chance.  There is too much method in the mad tumble of it all, too much plot and counter-plot, too much cunning intent—­which even we can appreciate—­for us to think that it has no meaning.  Why, the very wind that blows has its assured direction and carries the pollen of this flower to the heart of that.

But there is no need to understand it.  The thing happens—­that is all.  Miss Janet Hallard and Sally are intimates; that is really sufficient.

Yet they were not really intimate enough as yet for Sally to sit down on the bed directly she came into the room and break into an excited description of her adventure.  She knew the cold look of inquiry in Janet’s eyes.  She could foresee the disconcerting questions that would be asked.  Janet’s questions, coming dryly—­all on one note—­from those thin lips of hers, drove sometimes to a point that was almost too deep for Sally’s comprehension.  And Sally is a woman of sex, not of intellect.

“You can have the glass now if you want it,” said Janet, moving away to her bed.

Sally rose wearily and began to take off her things.

“I am fagged!” she exclaimed.

Janet said nothing.  The blue lines under Sally’s eyes, that indescribable drawing of the flesh of those round cheeks, had told her that long ago.

Sally gazed at herself in the glass.  “Look at my eyes!” she exclaimed.

“I know.”

“Awful, aren’t they?”

“Pretty bad.  Can’t think why you don’t stick out for more money when they work you overtime.”

“It’s no good—­they’d get somebody else.”

“Let ’em.”

“Well then, what should I do?”

“Go on the stage.”

Sally looked critically at herself again in the little mahogany-framed glass that stood on the dressing-table.  With an effort she tried to forget the lines under the eyes, tried to efface the look of weariness.  The thought of being an actress did not enter her thoughts.  It was her appearance she considered.