Breakfast had been cleared away and Alden, with evident regret, had gone to school. Madame gave her orders for the day, attended to a bit of dusting which she would trust no one else to do, gathered up the weekly mending and came into the living-room, where the guest sat, idly, robed in a gorgeous negligÉe of sea-green crÊpe which was fully as becoming as her dinner-gown had been the night before.

Madame had observed that Mrs. Lee was one of the rarely fortunate women who look as well in the morning as in the evening. Last night, in the glow of the pink-shaded candles, she had been beautiful, and this morning she was no less lovely, though she sat in direct sunlight that made a halo of her hair.

The thick, creamy skin, a direct legacy from Louise Lane, needed neither powder nor rouge, and the scarlet lips asked for no touch of carmine. But the big brown eyes were wistful beyond words, the dark hollows beneath spoke of sleepless nights, and the corners of the sweet mouth drooped continually, in spite of valiant efforts to smile.

"I think I should have known you anywhere," Madame began. "You look so much like your mother."

"Thank you. It was dear of you to put her picture on my dressing-table. It seemed like a welcome from her."

Madame asked a few questions about her old schoolmate, receiving monosyllabic answers, then waited. The silence was not awkward, but of that intimate sort which, with women, precedes confidences.

"I suppose you wonder why I came," the younger woman said, after a long pause.

"No," Madame replied, gently, "for you told me in your note that you were troubled and thought I could help you."

"I don't know why I should have thought of you especially, though I have never forgotten what mother told me about coming to you, if I were in trouble, but two or three days ago, it came to me all at once that I was wandering in a maze of darkness and that you could show me the way out."

"I hope I may," the old lady murmured. "I shall be very glad to, if I can. What has gone wrong?"

"Everything," she returned, her brown eyes filling with mist. "Of course it's my husband. It always is, isn't it?"

"I don't know why it should be. Is he cruel to you?"

"No, that is, he doesn't beat me or anything of that sort. He isn't coarse. But there's a refined sort of cruelty that hurts worse. I—I couldn't bear it any longer, and so I came away."

"Was he willing for you to come?"

"I didn't ask him. I just came."

Madame's glasses dropped from her aristocratic nose in astonishment. "Why, my dear Mrs. Lee! How could you!"

"Edith, please, if you will," she answered, wiping her eyes. Then she laughed bitterly. "Don't be kind to me, for I'm not used to it and it weakens my armour of self-defence. Tell me I'm horrid and have done with it."

"Poor child," breathed Madame. "Poor, dear child!"

For a few moments the young woman bit her lips, keeping back the tears by evident effort. Then, having gained her self-control, she went on.

"I'm twenty-eight, now," she said. "I remember mother used to say she always had her suspicions of a woman who was willing to tell the truth about her age."

"Sounds just like her," commented Madame, taking up a dainty lavender silk stocking that had "run down" from the hem.

"I've been married six years, but it seems like twenty. Almost from the first, there has been friction between us, but nobody knows it, except you—unless he's told his friends, and I don't think he'd do that. We've both had a preference for doing the family laundry work on the premises."

"What?" queried Madame, missing the allusion.

"Not washing our soiled linen in public," Edith explained. "While I live with my husband as his wife, we stand together before the world as far as it is in my power to manage it. I do not intentionally criticise him to anyone, nor permit anyone to criticise him. I endeavour to look ahead, protect him against his own weakness or folly, and, as far as a woman's tact and thought may do, shield him from the consequences of his own mistakes. I lie for him whenever necessary or even advisable. I have tried to be, for six years, shelter, strength, comfort, courage. And," she concluded bitterly, "I've failed."

"How so?"

"We live in the same house, but alien and apart. We talk at the table as two strangers might in a crowded restaurant or hotel, that is, when he's there. I dare not ask people to dinner, for I never know whether he's coming or not. He might promise faithfully to come, and then appear at midnight, without apology or excuse."

"He supports you," suggested Madame, glancing at the sea-green crÊpe.

"Yes, of course. That is, the question of money hasn't arisen between us, one way or another. I have no children, father and mother left me plenty of money, and I don't mind using it in any way that seems advisable. In fact, if I had to, I'd rather pay the household bills than beg for money, as many a wife is compelled to do—or, for that matter, even ask for it. It isn't as if I had to earn it myself, you know. If I had to, I'd probably feel differently about it, but, as it is, money doesn't matter between us at all.

"Friends of mine," she resumed, "have to resort to all sorts of subterfuges. I know women who bribe the tradespeople to make their bills larger than they should be and give them the difference in cash. I know men who seem to think they do their wives a favour by paying for the food they themselves eat, and by paying their own laundry bills. Then, every once in a while, I see in some magazine an article written by a man who wonders why women prefer to work in shops and factories, rather than to marry. It must be better to get a pay-envelope every Saturday night without question or comment, than it is to humiliate your immortal soul to the dust it arose from, begging a man for money to pay for the dinner he ate last night, or for the price of a new veil to cover up your last year's hat."

"All this," said Madame, threading her needle again, "is new to me. I live so out of the world, that I know very little of what is going on outside."

"Happy woman! Perhaps I should be happy, also, since this particular phase of the problem doesn't concern me. Money may not be your best friend, but it's the quickest to act, and seems to be favourably recognised in more places than most friends are. For the size of it, a check book is about the greatest convenience I know of."

The brown eyes were cold now, and their soft lights had become a glitter. The scarlet mouth was no longer sweet and womanly, but set into a hard, tight line. Colour burned in her cheeks—not a delicate flush, but the crimson of defiance, of daring. She was, as she sat there, a living challenge to Fate.

"Is he happy?" queried Madame.

"I suppose so. His ideal of a wife seems to be one who shall arrange and order his house, look after his clothing, provide for his material comfort, be there when he comes, sit at the head of his table, dressed in her best, when he deigns to honour dinner with his presence, ask no questions as to his comings or goings, keep still if he prefers to read either the morning or evening paper while he eats, and to refrain from annoying him by being ill, or, at least, by speaking of illness.

"I saw, once, a huge cocoa-husk door-mat, with the word 'Welcome' on it in big red letters. I've been sorry ever since that I didn't buy it, for it typified me so precisely. It would be nice, wouldn't it, to have at your front door something that exactly indicated the person inside, like the overture to a Wagner opera, using all the themes and motifs that were coming? That's what I've been for six years, but, if a worm will turn, why not a wife?"

"If you'll excuse me for saying so," Madame answered, in a tone of quiet rebuke, "I don't think it was quite right to come away without letting him know you were coming."

"Why not?"

"He'll wonder where you are."

"I've had plenty of opportunity to wonder where he was."

"But what will he think, when he finds out you have gone?"

"He may not have noticed it. I have competent servants and they'll look after him as well or better than I do. If I had left a wax figure in the library, in one of my gowns, with its back to the door and its head bent over a book, I could have been well on my way to China before I was missed, or, rather, that I was among those not present. If he has found it out, it has been by the application of the same inductive methods by which I discover that he's not coming home to dinner."

"Do you love him?" In the answer to that question lay Madame's solution of all difficulties, past and to come. To her, it was the divine reagent of all Life's complicated chemistry; the swift turning of the prism, with ragged edges breaking the light into the colours of the spectrum, to a point where refraction was impossible.

"I did," Edith sighed, "but marriage is a great strain upon love."

The silvery cadence of Madame's laughter rang through the house and echoed along the corridor. As though in answer, the clock struck ten, the canary sang happily, and a rival melody came from the kitchen, in cracked soprano, mercifully muted by distance and two closed doors.

"See what you've started," Edith said. "It's like the poem, where the magic kiss woke the princess, and set all the clocks to going and the little dogs to barking outside. Don't let me talk you to death—I've been chattering for considerably over an hour, and, very selfishly, of my own affairs, to the exclusion of everything else."

"But your affairs interest me extremely, I wish I knew of some way to help you."

"In the last analysis, of course, it comes to this—either go on and make the best of it, or quit."

"Not—not divorce," breathed Madame. Her violet eyes were wide with horror.

"No," Edith answered, shortly, "not divorce. Separation, possibly, but not divorce, which is only a legal form permitting one to marry again. Personally, I feel bound by the solemn oath I took at the altar, 'until death do us part,' and 'forsaking all others keep thee only unto me so long as we both shall live.' All the laws in the country couldn't make me feel right with my own conscience if I violated that oath."

"If the marriage service were changed," Madame said, nodding her approval, "it might be justified. If one said, at the altar, 'Until death or divorce do us part,' or 'Until I see someone else I like better,' there'd be reason for it, but, as it is, there isn't. And again, it says, 'Those whom God hath joined let no man put asunder.'"

"Those whom God hath joined no man can put asunder," Edith retorted, "but did God do it? It doesn't seem right to blame Him for all the pitiful mistakes that masquerade as marriage. Mother used to say," she resumed, after a little, "that when you're more miserable without a man than you think you ever could be with him, it's time to marry him, and when you're more miserable with him than you think you ever could be without him, it's time to quit."

"And," suggested Madame, "in which class do you belong?"

"Both, I think—that is, I'm miserable enough to belong to both. I'm unhappy when he's with me and wretched when he isn't. As he mostly isn't, I'm more wretched than unhappy. In the small circle in which I move, I'm considered a very fortunate woman.

"Women who are compelled to be mendicants and who do not know that I have a private income, envy me my gowns and hats, my ability to ask a friend or two to luncheon if I choose, and the unfailing comfort of a taxicab if I'm caught in the rain. They think, if they had my gowns and my grooming, that they could win and keep love, which seems to be about all a woman wants. But these things are, in reality, as useless as painting the house when the thermometer is below zero and you need a fire inside to warm your hands by. I have imported gowns and real lace and furs and jewels and all the grooming I'm willing to take, but my soul is frozen and starved.

"My house," she went on, "isn't a mansion, but it has all the comforts anyone could reasonably require. As far as my taste can discover, it's artistic and even unusual. The dinner my cook sends up every night is as good, or better than any first-class hotel can serve, though it may not be quite so elaborate.

"I myself am not so bad to look at, I am well dressed, and never untidy. I am disgustingly well, which is fortunate, for most men hate a sick woman. If I have a headache I don't speak of it. I neither nag nor fret nor scold, and I even have a few parlour tricks which other people consider attractive. For six years, I have given generously and from a full heart everything he has seemed to require of me.

"I've striven in every way to please him, adapting myself to his tastes. I've even been the sort of woman men call 'a good fellow,' admiringly among women and contemptuously among themselves. And, in return, I have nothing—not even the fairy gold that changes to withered leaves when you take it into the sunshine."

"You seem to have a good deal, dear—youth and health and strength and sufficient income. How many women would be glad to have what you have?"

"I want love," cried Edith, piteously. "I want someone to care for me—to be proud of me for what I am and the little things I can do! If I painted a hideous dog on a helpless china plate, I'd want someone to think it was pretty. If I cooked a mess in the chafing-dish or on the stove, I'd want someone to think it was good, just because I did it! If I embroidered a red rose on a pink satin sofa cushion, or painted a Winter scene on a wooden snow-shovel and hung it up in the parlour, I'd want someone to think it was beautiful. If I wrote a limerick, I'd want someone to think it was clever. I want appreciation, consideration, sympathy, affection! I'm starving for love, I'm dying for it, and I'd go across the desert on my knees for the man who could give it to me!"

"Perhaps he cares," said Madame, consolingly, "and doesn't show it."

"You can tell by the way a man kisses you whether he cares or not. If he doesn't kiss you at all, he doesn't care and doesn't even mind your knowing it. If he kisses you dutifully, without a trace of feeling, and, by preference, on your cheek or neck, he doesn't care but thinks he ought to, and hopes you won't find out that he doesn't. But, if he cares—ah, how it thrills you if he cares!"

Madame's violet eyes grew dim. "I know," she said, brokenly, "for I had it all once, long ago. People used to say that marriage changes love, but, with us, it only grew and strengthened. The beginning was no more the fulness of love than an acorn is the oak tree which springs from it. We had our trials, our differences, and our various difficulties, but they meant nothing.

"I've had almost all the experiences of life," she continued, clearing her throat. "The endless cycle of birth and death has passed on its way through me. I've known poverty, defeat, humiliation, doubt, grief, discouragement, despair. I've had illness and death; I've borne children only to lose them again. I've worked hard and many times I've had to work alone, but I've had love, though all I have left of it is a sunken grave."

"And I," answered Edith, "have had everything else but love. Believe me, I'd take all you've had, even the grave, if I could have it once."

"It may come," said Madame, hopefully.

Edith shook her head. "That's what I'm afraid of."

"How so? Why be afraid?"

"You see," she explained, "I'm young yet and I'm not so desperately unattractive as my matrimonial experiences might lead one to believe. I haven't known there was another man on earth except my husband, but his persistent neglect has made me open my eyes a little, and I begin to see others, on a far horizon. Red blood has a way of answering to red blood, whether there are barriers between or not, and if I loved another man, and he were unscrupulous——"

"But," objected the older woman, "you couldn't love an unscrupulous man."

"Couldn't I? My dear, when I see the pitiful specimens of manhood that women love, the things they give, the sacrifices they make, the neglect and desertions they suffer from, the countless humiliations they strive to bear proudly, I wonder that any one of us dares to look in the mirror.

"It's the eternal woman-hunger for love that makes us what we are, compels us to endure what we do, and keeps us all door-mats with 'Welcome' printed on us in red letters. Eagerly trustful, we keep on buying tickets to the circus, and never discover until we're old and grey, that it's always exactly the same entertainment, and we're admitted to it, each time, by a different door.

"Sometimes we see the caged wild animals first, and again, we arrive at the pink-lemonade stand; or, up at the other end, where the trapezes are, or in the middle, opposite the tank. Sometimes the band plays and sometimes it doesn't, but all you need in order to be thoroughly disillusioned is to stay to the concert, which bears about the same relation to the circus that marriage does to your anticipations."

"Are you afraid," laughed Madame, "that you'll buy another ticket?"

"No, but I'll find it, or somebody will give me a pass. I'm too young to stay to the concert and there's more of life coming to me still. I only hope and pray that I'll manage to keep my head and not make the fatal, heart-breaking mistake of the women who go over the precipice, waving defiance at the social law that bids them stay with the herd."

"Your metaphors are mixed," Madame commented. "Concerts and circuses, and herds, and precipices and door-mats. I feel as though you had presented me with a jig-saw puzzle."

"So I have. Is my life anything more than that? I don't even know that all the pieces are there. If they would only print the picture on the cover of the box, or tell us how many pieces there are, and give us more than one or two at a time, and eternity to solve it in, we'd stand some chance, perhaps."

"More mixed metaphors," Madame said, rolling up the mended stockings.

A maid came into the dining-room and began to set the table for luncheon. Edith rose from her chair and came to Madame. The dark hollows under her eyes were evident now and all the youth was gone from her face and figure.

"Well," she said, in a low tone, "what am I to do?"

It was some little time before Madame answered. "I do not know. These modern times are too confused for me. The old way would have been to wait, to do the best one could, and trust God to make it right in His own good time."

Edith shook her head. "I've waited and I've done the best I could, and I've tried to trust."

"No one can solve a problem for another, but, I think, when it's time to act, one knows what to do and the way is clearly opened for one to do it. Don't you feel better for having come here and talked to me?"

"Yes, indeed," said the young woman, gratefully. "So much was right—I'm sure of that. The train had scarcely started before I felt more at peace than I had for years."

"Then, dear, won't you stay with me until you know just what to do?"

Edith looked long and earnestly into the sweet old face. "Do you mean it? It may be a long time."

"I mean it—no matter how long it is."

Quick tears sprang to the brown eyes, and Edith brushed them aside, half ashamed. "It means more trunks," she said, "and your son——"

"Will be delighted to have you with us," Madame concluded.

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely." Madame was not at all sure, but she told her lie prettily.

"Then," said Edith, with a smile, "I'll stay."