Let Man ask what he will and Woman will give it, praying only that somewhere she will come upon Love. She adapts herself to him as water adapts itself to the shape of the vessel in which it is placed. She dare not assert herself or be herself, lest, in some way, she should lose her tentative grasp upon the counterfeit which largely takes the place of love. If he prefers it, she will expatiate upon her fondness for vaudeville and musical comedy until she herself begins to believe that she likes it. With tears in her eyes and her throat raw, she will choke upon the assertion that she likes the smell of smoke; she will assume passion when his slightest touch makes her shudder and turn cold. [Sidenote: Her Estimate of Women] And, most pitiful of all, when blinded by her own senses, she will surrender the last citadel of her womanhood to him who comes a-wooing, undismayed by the weeping women around her whose sacred altars have been profaned and left bare. They may have told her that if it is love, the man will protect her even against himself, but why should she take account of the experience of others? Has not he himself just told her that she is different from all other women? Hugging this sophistry to her breast, and still searching for love, she believes him until the day of realisation dawns upon her--old and broken and bitter-hearted, with scarcely a friend left in the world, and not even the compensating coin thriftily demanded by her sister of the streets. Under her countless masques and behind her multitudinous phases, lurks the old hunger, the old appeal. Man, too, though more rarely, guessing that the imperishable beauty of the soul is above the fog of sense and not in it, searches hopefully at first, then despairingly, and finally offers the counterfeit to the living Lie who is waiting for it with eager, outstretched hands. * * * * * [Sidenote: The Clouds Break] Stirred to the depths by the pity of it, Edith brushed away a tear or two. She was not at all sleepy, but drew the blanket closer around her, for the night grew chill as the earth swept farther and farther away from the sun. The clouds had begun to drift away, and faintly, through the shadow, glimmered one pale star. Gradually, others came out, then a white and ghostly moon, with a veil of cloud about it, grey, yet iridescent, like mother-of-pearl. Blown far across the seas of space by a swiftly rising wind, the clouds vanished, and all the starry hosts of heaven marched forth, challenging the earth with javelins of light. "Starbreak," murmured Edith, "up there and in my soul." The blue rays of the love-star burned low upon the grey horizon, that star towards which the eyes of women yearn and which women's feet are fain to follow, though, like a will-o'-the-wisp, it leads them through strange and difficult places, and into the quicksands. [Sidenote: Fellowship with the World]