The pathos which seems so often to dwell in trifling inanimate objects spoke to Laura from the little discarded shoes, and again society appeared to her as a hideous battle in which the passions preyed upon the ideals, the body upon the soul.

She thought of Perry Bridewell, of his healthy animalism, his complacent self-esteem, while her heart hardened within her.

Was love, when all was said, merely a subjection to the flesh instead of an enlargement of the spirit?
Did it depend for its very existence upon the dress-maker's art and the primitive instinct of the chase?
Had it no soul within it to keep it clean?
Could it see or hear only through the eye or the ear of sense?
"O Gerty, Gerty," she said, "if I could only make you see!" But Gerty, with one of those swift changes of humour which made her moods at once so unexpected and so irresistible, had burst into a peal of mocking laughter.
"I'm prepared to conquer or to die," she said merrily; and going to a large white box on the bed, she opened it and dangled in the air a gorgeous evening gown of silver gauze shot with green.

"This cost me a thousand dollars," she commented in the hard, business-like tones Laura had begun to dread.

"I was keeping it for the ball next week, but there's no call like the call of an emergency.