"And knowing one woman--properly or improperly--won't help you to understand another. _I_ never knew there was so much in her." "She didn't know it herself. She used to say it wasn't in her. It was the most mysterious thing I ever saw." It was his turn to shelter himself behind Freda's gift. He piled up words, and his mind cowered behind them, thinking no thought, seeing nothing but Freda's dead face with its shut eyes. "What was it?" he said. "Where did it come from?" "It came," said Mrs. Dysart, "from somewhere deep down in her heart, a part of her that had only one chance to show itself." She rose and delivered herself of all her fire. "There was something in Freda infinitely greater, infinitely more beautiful, than her gift. It showed itself only once in her life. When it couldn't show itself any more the gift left her. We can't account for it." He followed her to the door. She pressed his hand as she said good-bye to him, and he saw that there were tears in her eyes. "I told you," she said, "to do all you could for her. She knew that you had done--all you could." He bowed his head to her rebuke. VII Upstairs Julia was waiting for him. Her pale face turned to him as he came in. He saw a hunger in it that was not of the soul. He had never been greatly interested in Julia's soul, and till now her face had told him nothing of it. It had clipped it tight, like the covers of a narrow book. He had never cared to open it. Freda's soul was like an illuminated missal, treasured under transparence; its divine secret flamed, unafraid, in scarlet and gold. He did not take his seat beside her, but stood off from her, distant and uneasy. She rose and laid her hand upon his arm, and he drew back from her touch. "Wilton," she said, "you are not going to let this trouble you?" "What's the good of talking? It won't undo what we did." "What _we_ did?" "I, then." "What else could you do?" He did not answer, and she murmured, "Or I? I was right. She _was_ in love with you." He turned on her. "I wish," he said, "you had never told me." THE FAULT I Gibson used to say that he would never marry, because no other woman could be half as nice as his own mother. Then, of course, he broke his mother's heart by marrying a woman who was not nice at all. He was a powerful fellow with a plain, square face, and a manner that was perfection to the people whom he liked. Unfortunately they were very few. He did not like any of the ladies whom his mother wanted him to like, not even when they reproduced for him her gentle, delicate distinction.