The Spoils of Poynton

likes with dislikes and memories with fears; and she had for not thinking of them the excellent reason that she was too occupied with the actual. The actual was not that Owen Gereth had seen his necessity where she had pointed it out; it was that his mother's bare spaces demanded all the tapestry that the recipient of her bounty could furnish. There were moments during the month that followed when Mrs. Gereth struck her as still older and feebler, and as likely to become quite easily amused.

At the end of it, one day, the London paper had another piece of news: 'Mr. and Mrs. Owen Gereth, who arrived in town last week, proceed this morning to Paris.' They exchanged no word about it till the evening, and none indeed would then have been uttered had not Mrs. Gereth irrelevantly broken out: 'I dare say you wonder why I declared the other day with such assurance that he wouldn't live with her. He apparently is living with her.'

'Surely it's the only proper thing for him to do.'

'They're beyond me—I give it up,' said Mrs. Gereth.

'I don't give it up—I never did,' Fleda returned.

'Then what do you make of his aversion to her?'

'Oh, she has dispelled it.'

Mrs. Gereth said nothing for a minute. 'You're prodigious in your choice of terms!' she then simply ejaculated.

But Fleda went luminously on; she once more enjoyed her great command of her subject: 'I think that when you came to see me at Maggie's you saw too many things, you had too many ideas.'

'You had none,' said Mrs. Gereth: 'you were completely bewildered.'

'Yes, I didn't quite understand—but I think I understand now. The case is simple and logical enough. She's a person who's upset by failure and who blooms and expands with success. There was something she had set her heart upon, set her teeth about—the house exactly as she had seen it.'

'She never saw it at all, she never looked at it!' cried Mrs. Gereth.

'She doesn't look with her eyes; she looks with her ears. In her own way she had taken it in; she knew, she felt when it had been touched. That probably made her take an attitude that was extremely disagreeable. But the attitude lasted only while the reason for it lasted.'

'Go on—I can bear it now,' said Mrs. Gereth. Her companion had just perceptibly paused.

'I know you can, or I shouldn't dream of speaking. When the pressure was removed she came up again. From the moment the house was once more what it had to be, her natural charm reasserted itself.'

'Her natural charm!' Mrs. Gereth could barely articulate.

'It's very great; everybody thinks so; there must be something in it. It operated as it had operated before. There's no need of imagining anything very monstrous. Her restored good humor, her splendid beauty, and Mr. Owen's impressibility and generosity sufficiently cover the ground. His great bright sun came out!'

'And his great bright passion for another person went in. Your explanation would doubtless be perfection if he didn't love you.'

Fleda was silent a little. 'What do you know about his 'loving' me?'

'I know what Mrs. Brigstock herself told me.'

'You never in your life took her word for any other matter.'

'Then won't yours do?' Mrs. Gereth demanded. 'Haven't I had it from your own mouth that he cares for you?'

Fleda turned pale, but she faced her companion and smiled. 'You confound, Mrs. Gereth, you mix things up. You've only had it from my own mouth that I care for him!'

It was doubtless in contradictious allusion to this (which at the time had made her simply drop her head as in a strange, vain reverie) that Mrs. Gereth, a day or two later, said to Fleda: 'Don't think I shall be a bit affected if I'm here to see it when he comes again to make up to you.'

'He won't do that,' the girl replied. Then she added, smiling: 'But if he should be guilty of such bad taste, it wouldn't be nice of you not to be disgusted.'

'I'm not talking of disgust; I'm talking of its opposite,' said Mrs. Gereth.

'Of its opposite?'

'Why, of any reviving pleasure that one might feel in such an exhibition. I shall feel none at all. You may personally take it as you like; but what conceivable good will it do?'

Fleda wondered. 'To me, do you mean?'

'Deuce take you, no! To what we don't, you know, by your wish, ever talk about.'

'The old things?' Fleda considered again. 'It will do no good of any sort to anything or any one. That's another question I would rather we shouldn't discuss, please,' she gently added.

Mrs. Gereth shrugged her shoulders.

'It certainly isn't worth it!'

Something in her manner prompted her companion, with a certain inconsequence, to speak again. 'That was partly why I came back to you, you know—that there should be the less possibility of anything painful.'

'Painful?' Mrs. Gereth stared. 'What pain can I ever feel again?'

'I meant painful to myself,' Fleda, with a slight impatience, explained.

'Oh, I see.' Her friend was silent a minute. 'You use sometimes such odd expressions. Well, I shall last a little,