Well--it had all grown out of the other choice she had made when, years ago, she had said: “Thy gods shall _not_ be my gods.” And now she but dimly guessed who their gods were. At the moment when her very life depended on her knowing their passwords, holding the clue to their labyrinth, she stood outside the mysterious circle and vainly groped for a way in. Nollie Tresselton, of course, could have put the clue in her hand; but to speak to Nollie was too nearly like speaking to Anne. Not that Nollie would betray a confidence; but to be divined and judged by her would be almost as searing an experience as being divined and judged by Anne. And so Kate Clephane continued to sit there between them, hugging her new self in her anxious arms, turning its smooth face toward them, and furtively regulating its non-committal gestures and the sounds that issued from its lips. Only the long nights of dreamless sleep were gone; and her heart stood still each time she slipped the key into the studio door. * * * * * “Mother, Uncle Fred wants to take us to Baltimore next week to see the Maclew library; you and Lilla and me.” Anne threw it over her shoulder as she stood before her easel, frowning and narrowing her lips at the difficulty of a branch of red pyrus japonica in a brass pot, haloed with the light of the sunlit window. Kate, behind her, was leaning back indolently in a deep wicker armchair. She started, and echoed in a blank voice: “Next week?” “Well, you see, I’ve promised to spend a few days in Washington with Madge Glenver, who has taken a house at Rock Creek for the spring. This is just the moment for the magnolias; and I thought we might stop at Baltimore on the way, and Uncle Fred could bring you and Lilla back from there.” It sounded perfectly simple and sensible; Anne spoke of it in her usual matter-of-course tone. Her mother tried for the same intonation in answering, with a faint touch of surprise: “Lilla too?” Anne turned around completely and smiled. “Oh, Lilla particularly! You mustn’t speak of it yet, please--not even to Aunt Enid--but there’s a chance ... a chance of Lilla’s marrying.” Kate’s heart gave a great bound of relief or resentment--which? Why, relief, she instantly assured herself. She had been right then--that was the key to the mystery! And why not? After all, what did it matter to her? Had she, Kate, ever imagined that Chris’s love-affairs would cease when she passed from his life? Wasn’t it most probably in pursuit of a new one that he had left her? To think so had been, at any rate, in spite of the torturing images evoked, more bearable than believing he had gone because he was tired of her. For years, as she now saw, she had been sustained by her belief in that “other woman”; only, that she should take shape in Lilla was unbelievably humiliating.