O'Hara had moved her, not as a man, but as a force--a force as impersonal as the wind or the sea, which had swept her intellect away from its anchorage in the deeps of tradition.

She had thought herself free, but she understood now that she had never really broken away--that in spite of her struggles to escape, the past had still held her.

To-night it was more than an awakening, it was a conversion through which she was passing, and she knew she could never again believe as she had believed a few hours ago, that she could never judge again as unintelligently as she had judged yesterday.

"So that is a man's world," and then with a rush of impulse: "What a mean little life I have been living--what a mean little life!" For she really knew nothing of life except dressmaking; she was familiar with no part of it except the way to Dinard's.

She had been living a little life, with little standards, little creeds, little compromises.