“We’ve simply _got_ to accept! It’s our chance. We may not have it again. It’s what I’ve been waiting for ever since we moved to this house. And I can’t go alone. Oh, how selfish you are! You never think of anything but your own comfort. And you can’t or won’t realize any of the higher things of life for which I’m striving. It is too horrible!” If any male reader of this story has known a woman who was, up to a certain time, always able to rouse a strong emotion in him--of love or anger, of pleasure or pain--a woman toward whom he could not be lukewarm, and if that reader can recall the day on which he faced that woman in a situation of stress and found himself calm and patient and kind toward her---- I was surprised to find that Edna was not moving me. Her loveliness did not stir a single tiny flame of passion. Her abuse did not excite resentment or dread. “Just a moment, my dear,” said I with the tranquillity of a judge. “I was trying to say that I would break my engagement.” I saw that she did not believe me but imagined her outburst had terrified and cowed me into submission. How dispassionately I observed and judged! “Accept, if you wish,” I went on. “I like Armitage. We’ve been friends for years.” “Why didn’t you tell me so?” demanded she. “Why have you been plotting against me all this time?” “You forbade me to speak of business,” said I. “So I have never spoken of my business friends.” Her anger against me was almost beyond control. If she had been a lady born, if she had not had a past to live down, a childhood of vulgar surroundings and actions, she would have given way and abused like a fish wife. A lady born dares excesses of passion that a made lady, with her deep reverence for the ladylike, would shrink from. She said through clinched teeth: “I find out that Mrs. Armitage, the leader of the younger set, the most fashionable woman in New York, has been eager to know me for a long time. And _you_ have been preventing it!” “How?” said I, amused, but not showing it. “She called here the other day. She was as friendly as could be. We became friends at once. She said that for months she had been at her husband to get her leave to call on me, but that he and you, between you, had neglected to arrange it.” I saw how this notion of the matter delighted her, and that the truth would enrage her, would make her dislike me more than ever. So, I held my peace and thought, for the first time, I believe, how tiresome a woman without a sense of humor could become--how tryingly tiresome. “She and I are going to do a lot of things together,” continued Edna in the same intense humorless way. “I always knew that if I got a chance to talk with one of those women who could appreciate me, I’d have no further trouble. I knew I was wasting time on those religious fakirs and frumps, but I was always hoping that through them I’d somehow meet a woman of my own sort. Now I’ve met her, and something tells me I’ll have no further trouble.”