"Will you tell me what it was? If my attitude was silly, Marian, at least it was sincere."
"I was wondering whether I would tell you or not, Stuart. Most women would not; but I'm reported to be startlingly—perhaps shockingly candid—so perhaps I will."
Formerly he had thought her clever with a play of wit which made for fascination, but he had believed her processes of thought transparent to his own scrutiny. Of late he had discovered in her something baffling and subtle. This was not the same Marian but a Marian of whom his old acquaintance had been merely the matrix as iron is the beginning of tempered steel. The woman whose eyes dwelt on him now with a sort of inscrutable indulgence was one who reversed their positions. It was as if she read him easily in these days, while in herself she retained depths which he had no means of fathoming. But two things he could read in her eyes: courage and utter honesty—and these were qualities which he esteemed.
After a little she asked him with a direct reading of his thoughts which made him start uncomfortably, "You find me changed?"
Stuart drew a long breath. It broke suddenly upon him that if this woman had begun life under other auspices she might have developed into something rather magnificent.
"Not changed—" he answered promptly. "Transformed!"
"Thank you," she said, holding her voice steady. "It was the realization of the change that made me try the experiment."
"What experiment?" His bewilderment was growing.
"If I'm going to tell you—and one can talk frankly of things that belong unmistakably to the past—I must lay the foundation."
"Yes?"