pect happiness to come of it. She would doubtless bear you a son . . . a fine strong son because she is a fine cold animal. But don't expect any satisfaction from her. She knows too well exactly where she is bound."
During this long speech the son stood smoking silently with a shadow of the mocking smile on his lips. When she had finished he did not answer her but sat, with a thoughtful air, looking out into the garden which Thérèse this year had not bothered to have planted.
After a time she spoke again to say, "Surely you don't fancy you could ever control her. . . . She's a wild young filly. . . . No man will ever control her . . . not for long."
"I've never thought of marrying her," he replied quietly. "Why, she has a lover already."
At this Mrs. Callendar's countenance assumed an expression of passionate interest. "But she is not that sort . . . not a demi-mondaine. She is an honest woman . . . a cold woman. One can see that."
He smiled, this time even more softly and mockingly and into the gray eyes there came a gleam of ironical humor. "It was Sabine who said she had a lover," he said. "You remember, Miss Tolliver told us nothing of what has happened to her since she came here. . . . Besides, cold women are the most successful. They do not lose their heads."
IF Ellen had ever had any use for such a creature as a confidante, she would have told her no doubt that life, at this moment, was an exasperating puzzle. Between the manners of Herman Biggs and Clarence and the manners of such a man as Richard Callendar, there lay a vast gulf, a sort of blank page in the book of her experience, an hiatus that left her uneasy and disturbed.
