ely and becomingly dressed. Even in the seclusion of
her Hungarian estate she had arrayed herself as appropriately for
outdoors, and as fastidiously for the house, as if she had been under
the critical eye of her world, for daintiness and luxury were as
ingrained as ordinary cleanliness and refinement. During the war she
had not rebelled at her hard and unremitting labors, but she had often
indulged in a fleeting regret for the frequent luxury of the bath, the
soft caress of delicate underwear, for charming toilettes; and she had
sometimes scowled at her white cotton stockings with a feeling of
positive hatred.

Judge Trent, while she was still in Austria, had sent her a cheque for
forty thousand dollars. She had given half of it to relief
organizations in Vienna, and then gone to Paris and indulged in an orgy
of clothes. She looked back upon that wholly feminine reversion, when
she had avoided every one she had ever known, as one of the completely
satisfactory episodes of her life. Even with unrestored youth and
beauty, and a soberer choice of costumes, she would still have
experienced a certain degree of excited pleasure in adorning herself.

She had always liked the light freshness of chintz in her bedroom,
leaving luxury to her boudoir; but here she had furnished no boudoir;
her stay was to be short, and her bedroom was as large as two ordinary
rooms. She spent many hours in it, when its violet and white
simplicities appealed to her mood. Today it was redolent of the lilacs
Clavering had sent her, and through the open windows came the singing
of birds in the few trees still left in the old street.

She loved comfort as much as she loved exercise, and after her careful
toilette was finished and her maid had gone, she settled herself
luxuriously in a deep chair before her desk and opened one of the
drawers. The European mail had arrived yesterday and she had only
glanced through half of it. But she must read all of those letters
today and answer some of them before the sailings on Saturday.

The telephone on a little stand at her elbow rang, and she took the
receiver from its spreading violet skirts and raised it to her ear. As
she had expected, it was Clavering. He told her that he had promised
Gora Dwight the evening before to ask her permission to announce their
engagement.

For a moment she stared into the instrument. Then she said hurriedly,
almost breathlessly: "No--I'd rather not. I hate the v