t a glimpse of women--beautiful, they seemed to
her--clad in loose, low-cut, gaily colored gowns. There were men
there, too; and some one sat at a piano playing sprightly music. She
had seen pianos like that in Cartagena, and on the boat, and they had
seemed to her things bewitched. In the room at the end of the hall men
and women were dancing on a floor that seemed of polished glass. Loud
talk, laughter, and singing floated through the rooms, and the air
was warm and stuffy, heavy with perfume. The odor reminded her of the
roses in her own little garden in Simiti. It was all beautiful,
wonderful, fairy-like.

But she had only a moment for this appraisal. Seizing her hand again,
the woman whisked her up the flight of stairs before them and into a
warm, light room. Then, without speaking, she went out and closed the
door, leaving the girl alone.

Carmen sank into a great, upholstered rocking chair and tried to grasp
it all as she swayed dreamily back and forth. So this was his home,
Mr. Reed's. It was a palace! Like those Jose had described. She
wondered if Harris dwelt in a place of such heavenly beauty; for he
had said that he did not live with Reed. What would the stupid people
of Simiti think could they see her now! She had never dreamed that
such marvels existed in the big world beyond her dreary, dusty, little
home town! Jose had told her much, ah, wonderful things! And so had
Harris. But how pitifully inadequate now seemed all their stories! She
still wondered what had made that carriage go in which she had come up
from the boat. And what would one like it cost? Would her interest in
La Libertad suffice to buy one? She speculated vaguely.

Then she rose and wandered about the room. She passed her hand over
the clean, white counterpane of the bed. "Oh," she murmured, "how
beautiful!" She went dreamily to the bureau and took up, one by one,
the toilet articles that lay there in neat array. "Oh, oh, oh!" she
murmured, again and again. She glanced into the clear mirror. The
little figure reflected there contrasted so oddly with the gorgeously
beautiful ones she had glimpsed below that she laughed aloud. Then she
went to the window and felt of the soft curtains. "It is heaven," she
murmured, facing about and sweeping the room, "just heaven! Oh, how
beautiful even the human mind can be! I never thought it, I never
thought it!"

Again she sat down in the big rocker and gave herself up to the charm
of her surrounding