Her speech had been made the day before with really brilliant success. It had been the most important event in a series of notable meetings and had been received in a way that might well have roused her to fresh endeavour. Yet in the moment of her greatest success she had shown herself strangely indifferent to her manifest duty. This was the result of her having discovered, just as she had begun to accept the fact of her triumph and the rewards that lay before her, that it was all due to a surprising mishap, something altogether beyond her control. She showed that she felt the importance of the occurrence by thinking of it steadily for the rest of the day and well on into the night. This was not because she wanted to think of it particularly; indeed she had made every effort to dismiss her preoccupation; but she could not rid herself of the idea that an accident was responsible for her triumph. In her perplexity she went over the whole thing time and again. There had been an inspiring audience, so much she acknowledged, casting her mind over it. She had observed it in the moments before the meeting was called to order. Looking at the impressive throng she had been annoyed to think that she might have to use her notes. As she rose and moved toward the desk there had been a sudden hush and concentration of attention upon the platform, of so much she had been distinctly conscious. She had felt too that after she laid her notes on the table and began to speak, the intelligent interest which had greeted her opening sentences soon gave way to an eager, fixed intentness and breathless silence. Then all was a blank, till the restrained enthusiasm broke forth. As soon as the meeting was over she had been overwhelmed by congratulations. Her one desire had been to escape, and she felt it difficult to be gracious to her admirers. She had managed at length to get away, and handing her notes to a reporter, had hurried to the door. There she had been stopped by an old gentleman, who, though an utter stranger to her, greeted her as an old friend.