by a large brown picture in a broad brown frame of Watts' Sir
Galahad. After her mother's death, that winter, Mary added a Botticelli
Madonna, the one with the pomegranate, which she hung by itself on a wall
panel. There was a narrow black oak table under it to carry a Fra
Angelico triptych flanked by two tall candlesticks. It wasn't exactly a
shrine, even if there was a crimson cushion conveniently disposed before
it, and if Mary for a while said her prayers there instead of in the old
childish way at her bedside, and if she genuflected when she passed it,
that was her own affair.

Coming to it now, as to port after storms, with the intention almost
openly avowed to herself of lying down upon the bed and, for an hour or
two, feeling as sorry for herself as she could, she found an appalling
strangeness about its very familiarity that pulled her up short. The
abyss she stared into between herself and the Mary Wollaston whose
image was so sharply evoked by the ridiculously unchanged paraphernalia
of that Mary's life, turned her giddy. Even the face which looked back
at her from the frame of that mirror seemed the other Mary's rather
than her own.

From the doorway she stood, for a moment, staring. Then she managed a
smile (it was the only possible attitude to take) at Sir Galahad, above
the bed. The notion of flinging herself down for a self-pitying revel
upon that bed,--the other Mary's virginal little narrow bed--had become
unthinkable. The thing to do was to stop thinking. Quickly.

She stripped off her suit and blouse, slipped on a pongee kimono that she
got out of her hand-bag, unlocked her trunk and began discharging its
contents all about the room. She covered the chairs with them, the bed,
the narrow table--that had never had anything upon it but that Fra
Angelico triptych and the two candlesticks--the round table with the
reading lamp, the writing desk in the corner, the floor. Then, a little
out of breath, she paused.

Which among two or three possible frocks should she wear for the party
to-night? What sort of party was it going to be anyhow? It was curious,
considering the fact that they had done nothing but sit and talk all the
morning, how vague her ideas about it were. Her father had said
something out in the car about having a few old friends in for dinner.
Paula was going to sing and professed herself frightened by the
prospect. Also she had cited it as the reason for an unusually and
almost strenuou