have hurt her. Here in this world there was no one who could do her any injury. Alone, isolated, she was stronger than she had been in the very midst of all those who had known her since the beginning.
"I wish," continued Sabine, "that you would tell me about yourself some time. . . . Tell me and Richard. He's interested in such things."
"But I must play now," said Ellen.
On the same night when the hour came for Ellen to be sent home in Mrs. Callendar's cabriolet, the plump woman said, "The next time. . . . Let's see, it's Thursday, isn't it? . . . You must come for dinner. . . . I'll send Wilkes at twenty to eight."
THAT there was any such thing as kindliness involved in all these complicated, new relationships had never occurred to Ellen, perhaps because she had never for a moment expected it. It was only with the invitation to dinner, in itself a tacit recognition of her individuality as something more than a mere music box, that the real state of affairs first became clear to her. It was as if she had progressed a step in the world, as if she had achieved a little already of the vast things she had set out to accomplish. She tried, in her direct, unsubtle way of speaking, to convey something of the idea to Clarence. She wanted him, as always, desperately to understand her actions. She wanted him, perhaps dishonestly, to believe that she could not help acting as she did, that it was not from choice but from a desire to brighten both their lives that she left him now and then to venture forth into regions which it was impossible for him to penetrate. And in her own fashion, as she had done so often with her mother, she told him the truth selectively, so that al-
