VERY firm and self-reliant natures make sometimes the natural mistake of under-estimating the power of passion. Their full self-control and constant watchfulness ignore the possibility of the strange touch of sudden lawlessness—the betrayal of the blood. That one could be one moment standing reason-bound, content, a soul at peace, and in another swept over the verge of thought into a sea of feeling, was absurd to Muriel. Yet the swift flash takes place: the world, like a curtain, rolls up, and all the conventions, the safeguards, the stationary landscapes, disappear! It was such a moment which took possession of her the very night that she had decided to give her lover to another woman. The evening had passed pleasantly, and the still glory of the summer night drew the party out into the dusk of the garden. Muriel slipped away from the rest and wandered into a little wilderness some distance from the house, wondering how best to carry out her plans, when suddenly all the blood in her body rushed to her heart, for there beside her stood the man she loved. It had been possible for her in the calm of loneliness and heartache to dispose of Jack, but now—the moon’s gold and silver gliding through the clouds; the thrushes calling heart to heart their breathless rapture in a liquid continuity of song; all the passion and the pain rushing into beauty, thrilled and throbbing with the heart of night—it was difficult to resist now. And the stars, how they shone down on love, each one a light struck from the royal conquest of their queen, the moon! They were enwrapped in that dream so boundless and so limited which for one breathless moment holds all the world can teach, and then scatters and breaks into the hundred lesser lights of life. A sigh broke the charm, and Muriel, wondering, withdrew herself from his arms, abashed and yet elated at her defeat, so much more sweet than any of the triumphs life had held for her. “Now,” said Jack, smiling down at her, “are you going to tell me that you don’t care?” “I am afraid,” said Muriel, “that it would not be very convincing if I did. It seems to me,” she added breathlessly, “as if before I had been living only on the outskirts of life. I did not know it was like that!” She looked at him wistfully, and asked humbly, “Is it quite right, Jack, do you think?” “What, my dearest?” “To forget everything; to see nothing but the world a background, and that one great avowal drowning all the rest?” “I think it must be,” said Jack. “Just because it’s so powerful it must be meant to be good—in itself, you know—only some of us poor chaps don’t know how to use it.” Muriel shivered a little; there was dampness in the air; the trees seemed to quiver. She remembered Liz and the squalid scenes where the power which meant heaven to her had meant darkness and life-long misery to the other woman. Had she gained the world only to lose it? Jack wrapped her shawl tenderly over her shoulders.