moment than it had ever been. Out of all the talk, the experience, the sorrow, Lily was emerging slowly from the well of mystery that engulfed her.
"It is impossible," said Ellen slowly, "because I could not marry him." She hesitated for a moment and then added in a whisper, "I have a husband already. . . . I've never told any one."
She began to weep once more, gently and wearily, while Mrs. Callendar, poised and remote in black satin and diamonds, regarded her with an expression of astonishment.
At last the older woman said, "You should have told me this. It changes everything. Sabine told me that you had a lover . . . that she had seen him at your flat."
"That was my husband."
"You never spoke of him, so we had nothing else to believe." She smiled suddenly and touched Ellen's hand once more. "I was right then. I did not believe it possible."
Ellen looked at her silently, in amazement. "But you had me to your house, as a friend. How could you have done that when you thought me a woman of that sort?"
Across the gulf that separated them, Mrs. Callendar laughed and said, "But that would have made no difference. I learned long ago not to be concerned with the morals of my friends. You are what you are and I like you, my dear, whether you had one lover or fifty, except that if you had had fifty I should have known you to be a woman of no taste." She paused and lighted another cigarette out of the box she had sent her from Constantinople. "I had no idea," she continued thoughtfully, "how wide the difference was. . . . Besides, you are a musician . . . an artist. One does not require of an artist the morals of the bourgeoisie. One expects such things. It is so because it is so, and there's an end to it." She puffed for a time, slowly, lost in thought, and then added in a kind of postscript. "My poor girl! What a lot you have not learned! You will not be free until you do what you see fit . . . regardless of any one."
