“How do you know? My husband says I am clever, but I don’t think I am. I am alive. So many people are merely in the preface to being alive, and never get any farther. I am well in the middle of the book; and I am eager, so eager, that sometimes I long to eat up the whole world in order to know the taste of everything. Do you understand that?” “No. I am content with my slice.” “Ah, that is it. I am not content with mine. You have your husband and children.” “But you have a husband.” “Yes, I have a husband too; a funny old husband, a long way off, who is rapidly—too rapidly, I fear—coming nearer”—Florence hated her—“and no children. I amused myself with the old lady—Mrs. Baines—till she fled from me. Now I try other things. Good-bye.” “Good-bye,” Florence said. As Mrs. North was going out of the door she turned and asked, “Have you many friends—women friends?” “Yes, a great many, thank you,” Mrs. Hibbert said, with a little haughty inclination of the head. The haughtiness seemed to amuse Mrs. North, for the merry look came over her face again, but only for a moment. “I thought you had,” she answered. “I have none; I don’t want them. Good-bye.” It was nearly dark, and the one servant left to help Florence get the house ready had neglected to light the lamp on the staircase. Mrs. North groped her way down. “I want to tell you something,” she said. “You said just now that I was clever. I don’t think I am, but I can divine people’s thoughts pretty easily. You are very good, I think; but consider this, your goodness is of no use if you are not good to others; good to women especially. The good of goodness is that you can wrap others inside it. It ought to be like a big cloak that you have on a cold night, while the shivering person next to you has none. If you don’t make use of your goodness,” she went on with a catch in her breath, “what is the good of it?—I seem to be talking paradoxes—you prove how beautiful it is, perhaps, but that is all; you make it like the swan that sings its own death-song. One listens and watches, and goes away to think of things more comprehensible, and to do them. Good-bye, Mrs. Hibbert,” she said gently, and almost as if she were afraid she held out her hand. Florence took it, a little wonder-struck. “You are like a Madonna, very like one, as I said just now; but though you are older than I am, I think I know more about some things than you do—good and bad. Madonnas never know the world very well. Give my love to the old lady, and say I hope she has forgiven me. I am going to Monte Carlo the day after to-morrow, only for three days, to brace myself up for my husband’s return; tell her that too. It will shock her. Say that I should like to have taken her,” and with a last little laugh she went out—into the darkness, it seemed to Florence. But the next minute there were two flashing lamps before the house; there was the banging of a door, and Mrs. North was driven away.