What should she do? Flee? She had come to New York for one purpose only, to settle her financial affairs in the briefest possible time and return to the country where her work lay. But she had been detained beyond expectation, for the slow reorganization of one of the companies in which a large portion of her fortune was invested would not be complete without her final signature. There were other important transfers to be made, and moreover Judge Trent had insisted that she become thoroughly acquainted with her business affairs and able to maintain an intelligent correspondence with her trustees when he himself had retired. She had shown a remarkable aptitude for finance and he was merciless in his insistence, demanding an hour of her time every day. Business. She hated the word. What did it matter---- But she knew that it did matter, and supremely. She might have the beauty, the brains, and the sex domination to win men to her way of thinking when she launched herself into the maelstrom of politics, but she was well aware that her large fortune would be half the battle. It furnished the halo and the sinews, and it gave her the power to buy men who could not be persuaded. She had vowed that Austria should be saved at any cost. No, she could not go now. She must remain for another month--two months, possibly. She was no longer in that undisciplined stage of youth when flight from danger seems the only solution. To wreck the lives of others in order to secure her own peace of mind would make her both ridiculous and contemptible in her own eyes, and she had yet to despise herself. She would "stick it out," "see it through," to quote the vernacular of these curious American novels she had been reading; trusting that she had merely been suffering from a flurry of the senses . . . not so remarkable perhaps. . . . But her mind drifted back to the past month. Senses? And if it were not that alone, but merely the inevitable accompaniment of far stranger processes . . . if it were what she had once so long sought and with such disastrous results . . . She had believed for so many years that it existed somewhere, in some man . . . that it was every woman's right . . . even if it could not last for ever. . . . But while it lasted! After all, imagination had its uses. It helped to prolong as well as create. . . . She sank back and closed her eyes, succumbing to an ineffable languor. It lasted but a moment. She started up with an exclamation of impatience and disgust; and she shivered from head to foot. The room was bitterly cold. There were only ashes on the hearth. XIII