ts,--abundantly chaperoned. Nothing could have been "nicer" than the
novelist's attitude to his friend's widow, all the women declared, and
it must have been _her_ fault--or else that "other affair" had gone
deeper with him than any one supposed.

Milly herself was not averse to entertaining a new "hope." Her
marriage seemed so utterly dead that she felt free to indulge in a
new sentiment. But the novelist looked at her out of his beady, black
eyes,--indulgently, kindly,--but through and through, as if he had known
her before she was born and knew the worth of every heart-beat in
her.... Gradually beneath that scalping gaze she grew to dislike him,
almost to hate him for his indifference. "He must be horrid with women,"
she said to Hazel, who admitted that "there have been stories--a man
living by himself, as he does!"

And so this solution came to naught.

* * * * *

Milly was "up against it again," as she said to herself. Her small
bank-account was fast melting away. (She had her own sheaf of bills that
she had not cared to present to her brother-in-law, and she found that a
penniless widow has poor credit.) Collectors came with a disagreeable
promptness and followed her with an unerring scent through her various
changes of residence. It became known among her friends that "Milly must
really do something."

The competent wife of the Responsible Editor thought it ought not to be
difficult to find something of "a social nature" for Milly to do. "Your
gift is people," she said flatteringly. "Let me think it over for a day
or two, and I'm sure the right idea will come to me."

She promptly turned the problem over to Mrs. Bunker, with whom she still
maintained amicable relations. That lady in due time wrote Milly a note
and asked her to call the next morning. Milly went with humbled pride,
but with a misgiving due to her previous experiences in the parasitic
field of woman's work. When after many preambles and explanations,
punctuated by "like that, you know," "all that sort of thing," "we'll
have to see," etc., the good lady got to her offer, it sounded like a
combination of lady-housekeeper and secretary. With considerable
decision Milly said that she did not feel qualified for the work, but
Mrs. Bunker was most kind; she would consider her offer and let her
know, and left. She had decided already. The memory of her work for
Eleanor Kemp,--the humiliation and the triviality of this fo