When the weather was dark and cloudy Edna could not work. She needed the

sun to mellow and temper her mood to the sticking point. She had reached

a stage when she seemed to be no longer feeling her way, working, when

in the humor, with sureness and ease. And being devoid of ambition, and

striving not toward accomplishment, she drew satisfaction from the work

in itself.

On rainy or melancholy days Edna went out and sought the society of

the friends she had made at Grand Isle. Or else she stayed indoors

and nursed a mood with which she was becoming too familiar for her own

comfort and peace of mind. It was not despair; but it seemed to her as

if life were passing by, leaving its promise broken and unfulfilled.

Yet there were other days when she listened, was led on and deceived by

fresh promises which her youth held out to her.

She went again to the races, and again. Alcee Arobin and Mrs. Highcamp

called for her one bright afternoon in Arobin's drag. Mrs. Highcamp was

a worldly but unaffected, intelligent, slim, tall blonde woman in the

forties, with an indifferent manner and blue eyes that stared. She had

a daughter who served her as a pretext for cultivating the society of

young men of fashion. Alcee Arobin was one of them. He was a familiar

figure at the race course, the opera, the fashionable clubs. There was

a perpetual smile in his eyes, which seldom failed to awaken a

corresponding cheerfulness in any one who looked into them and listened

to his good-humored voice. His manner was quiet, and at times a little

insolent. He possessed a good figure, a pleasing face, not overburdened

with depth of thought or feeling; and his dress was that of the

conventional man of fashion.

He admired Edna extravagantly, after meeting her at the races with her

father. He had met her before on other occasions, but she had seemed to

him unapproachable until that day. It was at his instigation that Mrs.

Highcamp called to ask her to go with them to the Jockey Club to witness

the turf event of the season.

There were possibly a few track men out there who knew the race horse as

well as Edna, but there was certainly none who knew it better. She sat

between her two companions as one having authority to speak. She laughed

at Arobin's pretensions, and deplored Mrs. Highcamp's ignorance. The

race horse was a friend and intimate associate of her childhood. The

atmosphere of the stables and the breath of the blue grass paddock

revived in her memory and lingered in her nostrils. She did not perceive

that she was talking like her father as the sleek geldings ambled in

review before them. She played for very high stakes, and fortune favored

her. The fever of the game flamed in her cheeks and eyes, and it got

into her blood and into her brain like an intoxicant. People turned

their heads to look at her, and more than one lent an attentive ear to

her utterances, hoping thereby to secure the elusive but ever-desired

"tip." Arobin caught the contagion of excitement which drew him to

Edna like a magnet. Mrs. Highcamp remained, as usual, unmoved, with her

indifferent stare and uplifted eyebrows.




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