casual subterfuges. The evasion which he summoned
to his lips perished silently.

"A string of pearls," he muttered.

"Why did you crush the pretty box if they were
for -- for me or for your sister, if it was to be a
surprise? I can't understand--"

"It, it was--"

"Who were they for, Gordon?"

A blundering panic swept over him; Lettice was
more strange than familiar; she was unnatural; her
hair didn't shine in the sunlight streaming into the
shallow, green basin; in the midst of the warm efflorescence
she seemed remote, chill.

"For her," he moved his head toward Meta Beggs.

She withdrew her burning gaze from Gordon Makimmon
and turned to the school-teacher.

"For Miss Beggs," she repeated, "why... why,
that's bad, Gordon. You're married to me; I'm
your wife. Miss Beggs oughtn't... she isn't anything
to you."

Meta Beggs stood motionless, silent, her red cotton
dress drawing and wrinkling over her rounded
shoulders and hips. The necklace hung gracefully
about the slender column of her throat.

The two women standing in the foreground of
Gordon Makimmon's vision, of his existence,
summed up all the eternal contrast, the struggle, in
the feminine heart. And they summed up the du-

[[257]]

p256 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p257w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p258

v?