“You will never know—until you have them,” she said. “The greatest happiness in all the world, Joy. If only people realized! I myself didn’t know. I thought I had come to the crown of my life when I married. To have the love of the one you love—that is surely the greatest honour and happiness that life can bring. But this—this brings so infinitely much more—that you think you could only have barely existed, before!” She relinquished the knob, turning it gently so that the catch would hold. “All the happiness in the world, Joy, transmutes itself into this great one. After all, everything speaks in terms of love.” She laughed, half apologetically. “It’s true—we married people pity everyone who doesn’t go and do likewise!” Joy was thinking of the phrases she had heard bandied with such assurance—yes, that she herself had bandied in her own mind; “the risks and sacrifices of marriage,” “marriage clipping the wings.” In the nursery—and now, with Mabel’s suddenly iridescent love spreading beauty in her face—a career with all its gilt glory seemed very far away and unreal. But they came back to a room which was echoing to great music filtered through a sounding-box; and nursery and Mabel’s face sank away. Different hearts, different loves—and what could one love one-half so satisfying as music? Eustace Drew and the college girl were selecting other records from the cabinet—Jerry and Phil Lancaster were on the other side of the room, beyond the candles, talking. Jerry was sitting on the window-seat; he was standing looking down upon her, his back to the room. Joy frantically wished that she were a pane in that window, then sat down beside the college girl, who turned a smiling face to her with some comment on the music. Joy answered it without impetus, and in the ensuing conversation was surprised to find that Miss Dalrymple was actually interesting on the subject. Besides being well-read, as Joy innocently supposed all college girls to be, she was evidently well-heard. She decided that Miss Dalrymple added up to a very attractive girl. She wasn’t the type that a man would ask to a Prom to cut a wide swath and impress the other fellows with looks and jazz, but she was very attractive just the same. She had beauty of an unobtrusive sort; her clothes were quietly right; and she had a responsive glow that was most winning. Joy continued the conversation in an investigating frame of mind. This girl must be several years older than she was. She seemed older, in some few ways, but on the whole, so much younger. . . . After a long conversation Joy again looked at the two at the end of the room. It was so maddening to sit through an evening in ignorance of all that was passing. Mabel followed her look. “Your friend seems to have bewitched my brother, Joy,” she said lightly. “She must be a sorceress, and cast a spell—he hasn’t even been polite to a girl for so long.”