‘How strange it is!’ said Maude, looking at her own pretty tear-marked face in the mirror. ‘You have only been here a few minutes, as time goes, and yet I feel that in some things I am more intimate with you than with any woman I have ever met. How can it be? What bond can there be to draw us together like this? And it is the more extraordinary, because I felt that you disliked me when you entered the room, and I am sure that you won’t be offended if I say that when you had been here a little I thought that I disliked you. But I don’t. On the contrary, I wish you could come every day. And I want to come and see you also when I am in town.’ Maude, for all her amiability, was not gushing by nature, and this long speech caused her great astonishment when she looked back upon it. But at the moment it came so naturally from her heart that she never paused to think of its oddity. Her enthusiasm was a little chilled, however, by the way in which her advances were received. Violet Wright’s eyes were more kindly than ever, but she shook her head. ‘No, I don’t suppose we shall ever meet again. I don’t think I could ask you to visit me in London. I wanted to see you, and I have seen you, but that, I fear, must be the end of it.’ Maude’s lip trembled in a way which it had when she was hurt. ‘Why did you wish to see me, then?’ she asked. ‘On account of that slight acquaintance with your husband. I thought it would be interesting to see what sort of wife he had chosen.’ ‘I hope you are not disappointed,’ said Maude, making a roguish face. ‘He has done very well—better than I expected.’ ‘You had not much respect for his taste, then?’ ‘Oh yes, I always thought highly of his taste.’ ‘You have such a pretty way of putting things. You know my husband very slightly, but still I can see that you know the world very well. I often wonder if I am really the best kind of woman that he could have married. Do you think I am, Mrs. Wright?’ Her visitor looked in silence for a little at the gentle grace and dainty sympathetic charm of the woman before her. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, as one who weighs her words. ‘I think you are. You are a lady with a lady’s soul in you. A woman can draw a man down very low, or she can make him live at his very highest. Don’t be soft with him. Don’t give way when you know that your way is the higher way. Pull him up, don’t let him ever pull you down. Then his respect for you will strengthen his love for you, and the two together are so much greater than either one apart. Your instinct would be to do this, and therefore you are the best sort of woman for him.’ Her opinion was given with so much thought, and yet so much decision, that Maude glowed with pride and with pleasure. There was knowledge and authority behind the words of this unaccountable woman.