“Politeness demands that ladies receive attention from gentlemen,” said the unsophisticated Mrs. Doring, innocently. “My benighted friend, your name should be Galatea. I don’t mean mere polite attention, but particular attention, sentimental, lover-like attention, with a strong flavor of danger in it.” Cartice began to understand. “What comes of it?” she asked. A shrug of Mrs. Layton’s graceful shoulders. “Nothing, often. Sometimes--well, there are extraordinary cases, and at the beginning it’s best not to think of the end.” “What do you get out of it?” Another shrug. “Come to think of it, nothing particular, unless it be distraction.” “And those who flirt with you,--how do they come out?” “Some of them have the bad taste to become serious, which makes it rather awkward. Then they have to be sent off for good, and perhaps they wail about bruised hearts and such like, which I don’t mind. They never get a whack amiss. What I don’t owe them some other woman does. I only help to even up for women in general.” “But you might grow serious, too, some time.” “I am not afraid, because I have no heart any more. It is as dead as the traditional door-nail. I can dance nearer the edge of a precipice than anybody else and keep my head.” “Some do go over, don’t they?” “Yes; poor fools with hearts who ought not to play in that kind of a game.” “It is something I know nothing whatever about, but it appears to be both perilous and unprofitable,” said Cartice. “You are quite right in your conclusion. The liquor habit is also perilous and unprofitable, yet the man addicted to it keeps right on in it. One must do something to keep from remembering certain other things. With me it’s a case of keeping my mind off misery. I got into it because in the first year of my married life my husband neglected me shamefully, spending most of his time with a mincing little woman who posed for goodness itself. For a time I broke my heart over it; all women do. Then I braced up and began to administer his own medicine to him, only not in such repugnantly large doses. We all do things it would be better not to do, because somebody else does us an injury. We get into one trouble in trying to escape from another. It’s merely a matter of choice between the frying pan and the fire,--a puzzle far too deep for my light head to work on.” * * * * * Nothing is accidental. We meet the people we are destined to meet, and with their help or hindrance work out our problem, be it hard or easy. The most feather-weight of mortals may prove our greatest teacher. In whose keeping we shall find the most precious treasures we know not. But it was written in the great unopened book that the Butterfly was to be help and healing to the bruised heart of Cartice Doring, and to bear a torch which should light for her the very darkest page of life.