dozen times that she looks prettier in the white embroidered dress with the wide sash, and that none of the other girls there will have silk dresses on-but do hurry."

Thus again Hortense Wendell, not yet seven, had come out first-best in a clash of wills with her elders. She had never been defeated, and, reasonably, she was accepting her opinions and desires as right, if not righteous. Already the richest opportunities that life had given her parents wholesomely to mold their child's future had passed, without a constructive touch.

Grandfather Wendell had been a sea-captain, and a wild rover he was. Not until time and much reckless living had saddened and sobered him did he take sufficient thought for the future to lay aside the thousands which in those days constituted the Wendell fortune. Of his children we shall record only the facts relating to Hortense's father. His early days oscillated between feast and famine, the result of his father's eccentric providing. But later he was enabled to attend the state university and graduate in law. And when the captain died there was enough for a Chestnut Street stonefront, where he and his bride of fine family graciously ornamented Philadelphia society for years.

Mr. Wendell was truly a man of excellent parts and unquestionably merited the associated judgeship which politics finally awarded him. Mrs. Wendell was not weak save when in combat with her daughter. In fact, quite the contrary. She had a wilful way with her parents and her husband, and never brooked interference when her domestic or social mind was settled. Truth to tell, it would have been a cavilling spirit which recognized the possibility of improving on Mrs. Wendell's decisions. But all her austerity and self-confidence and her unquestionable good judgment had been as chaff before the wishes and whims of her small daughter. Hortense was the only child, and therein lurked the tragedy; had there been others, their various ways would have been so devious that Hortense would occasionally have felt the rectifying tonic of denial. Like many another "good husband," the judge limited his expressions of authority to his judicial duties. Home to him was never to be a place of strife. Mrs. Wendell was entirely competent for the domestic situation. Both husband and wife were ambitious, reasonably so, the worldly-wise would declare. Their financial hold on the wealthy exclusive circle they affected was far from secure, so they both devoted their

best graces to the precarious business of holding on. This may be a reason why Hortense's governess conferred often and at length with the mother about the daughter's dresses and shoes and hats. This, too, may explain why at six years the little miss believed that clothes were vital. And as her opinion had never failed to win respect in all past differences, there was not the slightest doubt (how could there be?) that her blue silk dress was the right one to wear that afternoon to Martha Morton's lawn-party. And it was not long before she was thus befittingly attired and serenely on her way.

THE CHILD.

Wiser parents would have found Hortense difficult, even in her very early years, for to her had been given the high art of persuasion. She was witchingly handsome, having the good looks which only fade when emptiness of soul begins to haunt the eyes. And to this was added sweetness of appeal which could stand several denials unruffled. Most winsomely she would respond to her mother's "I wish you wouldn't, Hortense" with happily confident eyes and smilingly dimpled face, and a charming, "I wish Hortense would, Mother dear" which was usually the beginning of the end-for the mother knew too well how inevitably the sparkle of sunshine would fade into sullen clouds to hang low through the lengthening hours, till the original request was realized. Twice while Hortense was three her mother had followed Solomon's advice; she had actually hair-brushed her darling. No winsome appeals then, no hours of quiet, grieved, hurt feelings, but an explosion fairly vicious in its intensity, a blind, destructive, wrecking passion before which her mother was appalled and against which she feared to contend. And so it was to be through a long drag of years. The child, the girl, the woman, the wife, was to meet denial, first sweetly, then sullenly and, if necessary, viciously. The day her mother determined to control her, the child had already successfully had her way many hundred times, and while at three and during years after wholesome discipline could have protected this promising life and created a character of lasting worth, those early best days when mother-guidance is simply instituted were lost. In other ways Mrs. Wendell failed in her high duty to her daughter. While quite too conventionally refined to call her child's attention baldly to her fine eyes, unusual skin, symmetric features and dainty figure she failed

to check the repeated comments on these qualities that were made in the child's presence. Miss Willis, the governess, let few hours pass without some reference to her charge's physical attractions, her grace of action, becomingness of her dress, charm, or brilliance of speech. Miss Willis must have realized that it was enjoyable to mother as well as daughter, though her own pride in the child cannot be questioned. This governess undoubtedly possessed in a rare degree a capacity for adjusting herself comfortably to her surroundings.

THE YOUNG Girl.

It is probable that conflict between mother and daughter would have been relatively rare through the years had Hortense's desires always been in accord with the conventions of her mother's circle. It is also probable that the family's social standing would have been hurt by Hortense's wilful choice of dresses and sundry other nonexclusive manifestations had it not been for her unquestioned charm and increasing good looks. Hortense never offended crudely, she just had her own way her own way in food, and hours, in going to parties and giving parties, in staying in bed or playing tennis through the dinner hour, and, later, in choosing studies and in spending her vacations. Her life became more and more irregular. No one had ever made her do what she decided against, and an insidious weakness gradually rendered her incapable of commanding herself to any undesired effort or denial. She had been given an unusual physique, which, though indulgently fed and sporadically exercised, developed into apparent robustness. With unusual ability of hands, muscle, and mind, and a comfortable conscience, it would seem that she lorded life, even as she did the youths, callow and callous, whom she irresistibly attracted. Confidently her mother looked into her daughter's matrimonial future. Hortense could choose as she wished. But even at eighteen, when the Misses Claybrook, respected heads of the Park Place School for Young Ladies, considerately granted her an unearned certificate of graduation, comfort had become the first law of her life.

Hortense weighed one hundred and forty that summer, but soon after her commencement complained of being "all worn out." She had studied too hard, her friends said, of course; and the doctor advised a summer in the Scotch highlands for a former generation saw health only in European

terms. The prescription was justified, however, in this case, and by fall Hortense was ready for a season in Paris, radiantly ready physically, and eager for the richness Paris offered to her pleasure-loving nature.

Jordan Clark's father had made a mint of money in Cincinnati while Jordan himself had been away from home so long, receiving an eastern education, that he had quite outgrown any deficiencies that his early home training had created. Having graduated, there was no reason why he should not see the world, and he hied him to Paris. There was, apparently, no limit to his allowance, and so he became another gay young American in the gay metropolis. Had he met Hortense in a less artificial atmosphere, his good sense probably would have detected her defects. But, even in the midst of French beauties, her fine features, color, and figure impressed him as the most beautiful of all, and to find superlative beauty within his reach gratified something pertinent and youthful which he found himself thrilled in satisfying. "The daughter of Judge Wendell, too, a good family," and so it was a match! An exceptional one, Mrs. Wendell assured herself.

THE WIFE.

The young couple returned to two homes, one on the heights at Cincinnati, where the husband could attend his "business," and a west side appartment in New York leased by the season. The bride's mother had been a most fastidious and capable domestic manager. It had always been the judge's pride to bring his friends to his home, for Mrs. Wendell entertained with an ability that produced effects quite above their means. Untrained in any detail of useful doing, Hortense had some conception of her responsibility to reproduce her mother's art, and she tried during their short seasons at home, those first years, to be a competent mistress. But within two years, when she was but twenty-three, her inadequacy manifested itself in a rapid loss of interest in her home life, with an unquestioned neglect of home responsibilities. In fact, she was restless and apathetic, and Europe was again prescribed. For six months she had a companion-the doctor had suggested it would be wiser for her not to be left alone -until at last she asked to return, and was her gay, attractive self again for several years. A trained housekeeper relieved her of housekeeping cares.

THE MOTHER.

At the age of twenty-seven a burden was laid upon Hortense, the first true test of her womanhood. But she had not willed it, and she rebelled. This time it was not fond mother or contention-avoiding husband who was to be moved by the sunshine of her smiles or chilled by the grey sullenness of sulking days, or one least bit affected by her destructive outbursts of rage. Against the laws of life these prevailed not, and through the long months she sinned in her soul as she hated the child that was to be. But the suffering, the first real physical pain she had ever known, which laid hold on her with God's relentless tenderness, purged the evil away, and Jordan Clark thought he saw the divinity of the Madonna as the beautiful mother pressed her son to her breast, with love-light as a halo about her face. How small an amount of the rectifying pain that her mother so inadequately applied might have purged away those early tendencies which, unchecked, were to grow into clanking balls and chains, fettering her soul!

All too short were the days of the love-light, for the little wayfarer tarried but a week, and again this woman faced the inscrutable, the inevitable, the impersonal; and for months, twenty damaging months, she railed at fate, she cursed her religion and her God. During these days there was no ray of sunshine; no smile nor cheer could touch her in the depression which she had created. Then in a week her vivacity returned; almost reckless she was, especially as she flaunted her unbelief in churches and rectors and religions; and from this time on she never had the mildly stabilizing influence of her early conventional religion to lead or deter her now almost wanton will. Gay and brilliant she undoubtedly was, and Jordan Clark soon found his home a salon for the almost giddy. There had been no adequate physical preparation to furnish reserve to meet this life of gaiety, and within two years a cloud of suspicion, a suspicion which questioned mother and husband specially, put an end to the round of festivities. In six months the cloud lifted, only to settle again later for nearly a year, during which time she was haunted by doubts of the goodness of those who cherished her most.

Jordan Clark accepted his wife's manifest defects without comment, and throughout the years his relations with her