The gift of enlisting sympathy and assistance was peculiarly Honora's.
And if some one had predicted that morning to Mr. Wentworth that before
nightfall he would not only have put a lady in distress on the highroad
to obtaining a western divorce (which he had hitherto looked upon as
disgraceful), but that likewise he would miss his train for Pride's
Crossing, buy the lady's tickets, and see her off at the South Station
for Chicago, he would have regarded the prophet as a lunatic. But that
is precisely what Mr. Wentworth did. And when, as her train pulled out,
Honora bade him goodby, she felt the tug at her heartstrings which comes
at parting with an old friend.

"And anything I can do for you here in the East, while--while you are
out there, be sure to let me know," he said.

She promised and waved at him from the platform as he stood motionless,
staring after her. Romance had spent a whole day in Boston! And with Mr.
Alden Wentworth, of all people!

Fortunately for the sanity of the human race, the tension of grief is
variable. Honora, closed in her stateroom, eased herself that night by
writing a long, if somewhat undecipherable, letter to Chiltern; and was
able, the next day, to read the greater portion of a novel. It was only
when she arrived in Chicago, after nightfall, that loneliness again
assailed her. She was within nine hours--so the timetable said--of St.
Louis! Of all her trials, the homesickness which she experienced as she
drove through the deserted streets of the metropolis of the Middle West
was perhaps the worst. A great city on Sunday night! What traveller
has not felt the depressing effect of it? And, so far as the incoming
traveller is concerned, Chicago does not put her best foot forward. The
way from the station to the Auditorium Hotel was hacked and bruised--so
it seemed--by the cruel battle of trade. And she stared, in a kind of
fascination that increased the ache in her heart; at the ugliness and
cruelty of the twentieth century.

To have imagination is unquestionably to possess a great capacity for
suffering, and Honora was paying the penalty for hers. It ran riot now.
The huge buildings towered like formless monsters against the blackness
of the sky under the sickly blue of the electric lights, across the
dirty, foot-scarred pavements, strange black human figures seemed to
wander aimlessly: an elevated train thundered overhead. And presently
she found herself the tenant of two rooms in that