Was Ogden Cryder the man? An author, yet a man of the world; a man of intellect, yet with fascination and experience of women. It sounded like! It sounded like! Oh! if he were! He might have flaws. He might be the polaric opposite of her ideal. Let him! If he had brain and passion, skill and sympathy, she would love him with every fiber of her being, and thank him on her knees for compelling her so to do. * * * * * CHAPTER XI. A TAILOR-MADE FATE. Helen Simms was a young woman who had cantered gracefully under the flick of society’s whip since the night of her début. Occasionally she broke into a trot, and anon into a run. The speedier locomotion took place on unworn by-paths; when on the broad highway she was a most sedate representative of her riding-school. At times she had been known—to a select few—to kick; and the kick had invariably occurred at the crossing of the highway and the by-path, and just before she had made up her mind to forsake the road for the hedges. She had all the virtues of her kind. On Sunday mornings she attended St. Thomas’s, and after service was over walked home with her favorite youth, whom she patronizingly spoke of as her “infant.” In the afternoon she entertained another “infant” or read a French novel. Nor was her life entirely given over to frivolity. She belonged to the sewing-class of her church, and like its other members fulfilled her mission as a quotable example, if she pricked her fingers seldom; and once a week she attended a Shakespeare “propounding.” She took a great deal of exercise, skimmed through all the light literature of the day, including the magazines, and even knew a little science, just enough to make the occasional clever man she met think her a prodigy as she smiled up into his face and murmured something about “the great body of force” or a late experiment in telepathy. She had a bright way of saying nothing, a cool, shrewd head, and an endless stock of small-talk. Both sexes approved of her as a clever, charming, well-regulated young woman—all of which she indisputably was. Enthusiasm had long since been drilled out of her, but she had for Hermia an attachment very sincere as far as it went—it may be added that, if there had been more of Miss Simms, there would have been more attachment. It is possible that Hermia, without her brilliant position, would not have attracted the attention of Miss Simms, but it is only just to Helen to say that the conditions affected her not a whit; she was quite free from snobbery.