“I think I can find out,” said the Interviewer, whose professional ambition was beginning to be excited.  “I never came across anybody yet that I could n’t get something out of.  I am going to stay here a week or two, and before I go I will find out the secret, if there is any, of this Mr. Maurice Kirkwood.”

We must leave the Interviewer to his contrivances until they present us with some kind of result, either in the shape of success or failure.

XI

The interviewer attacks the Sphinx.

When Miss Euthymia Tower sent her oar off in flashing splinters, as she pulled her last stroke in the boat-race, she did not know what a strain she was putting upon it.  She did know that she was doing her best, but how great the force of her best was she was not aware until she saw its effects.  Unconsciousness belonged to her robust nature, in all its manifestations.  She did not pride herself on her knowledge, nor reproach herself for her ignorance.  In every way she formed a striking contrast to her friend, Miss Vincent.  Every word they spoke betrayed the difference between them:  the sharp tones of Lurida’s head-voice, penetrative, aggressive, sometimes irritating, revealed the corresponding traits of mental and moral character; the quiet, conversational contralto of Euthymia was the index of a nature restful and sympathetic.

The friendships of young girls prefigure the closer relations which will one day come in and dissolve their earlier intimacies.  The dependence of two young friends may be mutual, but one will always lean more heavily than the other; the masculine and feminine elements will be as sure to assert themselves as if the friends were of different sexes.

On all common occasions Euthymia looked up to her friend as her superior.  She fully appreciated all her varied gifts and knowledge, and deferred to her opinion in every-day matters, not exactly as an oracle, but as wiser than herself or any of her other companions.  It was a different thing, however, when the graver questions of life came up.  Lurida was full of suggestions, plans, projects, which were too liable to run into whims before she knew where they were tending.  She would lay out her ideas before Euthymia so fluently and eloquently that she could not help believing them herself, and feeling as if her friend must accept them with an enthusiasm like her own.  Then Euthymia would take them up with her sweet, deliberate accents, and bring her calmer judgment to bear on them.