after the re-investment of her mother's property sufficed to furnish it according to her tastes. The furniture was simple enough, but it was characteristically vivid. The walls were white; there was a crimson drugget on the floor, a plain apple-green writing-table in the window, two big basket chairs with green cushions, and a red-lacquer wardrobe. These things, with the barest apparatus for sleeping and dressing, left the room fairly empty; it was light, full of colour, airy, and private.
It was here that she went to-night with a certain eagerness to be alone at the unusual hour of half-past ten. The process of self-realization which she had spoken of to Maud the night before was like fermenting wine in her brain, and she and this stranger, who was yet herself, were going to be alone together and make their plans. She slipped off her dress, and let her hair make cataracts down her back, and then setting the window looking over the garden wide open, she lit all the candles she had in the room. That was purely instinctive; she scarcely knew that she was doing it, conscious only that she wanted air and light. Then still instinctively expressing herself, she put on a Japanese kimono of old gold and scarlet and threw open the door to this engrossing stranger, herself, whom she was beginning to know. Then suddenly her own image in the glass, brilliant, vivid, gloriously youthful, struck her, and candle in hand she went close up to it, looking at her face slightly flushed, the liquid fire of her eyes, the golden fire of her hair. It was no motive of vanity that dictated this, for vanity, even the most deep-seated, is but a shallow emotion; it was the most intense and eager interest in herself. She looked long and gravely, enthralled at what she saw just because it was herself. Then she said out loud:
"Yes, that's me."
She wanted, she wanted passionately. She wanted to have everything, wealth, position, rank, to have the world at her feet, to be gazed at, admired, envied, and had Mephistopheles, or his feminine counterpart, come in at the moment, the bargain would have been struck the moment he proposed it. As for love, she was quite willing to take it; more than that, she even wanted to be loved with the same passionateness that she wanted everything else, but as for feeling it, or for giving it, she was truly not aware whether it was in her power to do any such thing. Marriage, of course, was necessary for the accomplishment of her desire, and, no doubt, that she should have children would add to the fulfilment of her avarice, but she wanted neither husband nor
