xclaimed admiringly, and drew
Milly's smiling face closer for another kiss. "And you have been through
so much since I saw you last--so much sadness."

"Yes," Milly admitted flatly.

Somehow she did not want to talk of her marriage and Jack's death with
Eleanor Kemp, who had been so near her during the ecstatic inception of
that passion.

"How pretty your house is!" Eleanor said, divining Milly's reluctance to
intimacy. "I've been peeking into the next room while I waited."

"Yes, it's pleasant," Milly replied unenthusiastically. "It's small and
the street is rather noisy. But it does well enough. You know it isn't
my house. It belongs to a friend,--Ernestine Geyer."

"Yes, you wrote me."

"She's in business, away all day, and I keep house for her," Milly
explained, as if she were eager not to have her position misunderstood.

"It must be much pleasanter for you and Virginia than being alone."

"Yes," Milly agreed, in the same negative voice, and then showed her
friend over the house, which Mrs. Kemp pronounced "sweet" and "cunning."
As Milly's manner remained listless, Eleanor Kemp suggested their
lunching at the hotel, and they walked over to the large hostelry on the
Avenue, where the Kemps usually stayed in New York.

Walter Kemp not having returned from his picture quest, the women had
luncheon by themselves at a little table near a window in the ornate
dining-room of the hotel. Milly grew more cheerful away from her home.
It always lightened her mind of its burdens to eat in a public place.
She liked the movement about her, the strange faces, the unaccustomed
food, and her opportunities of restaurant life had not been numerous of
late. It was pleasant to be again with her old friend and revive their
common memories of Chicago days. They discussed half the people they
knew. Milly told Eleanor of Vivie Norton's engagement finally to the
divorced man and the marriage, "a week after he got his decree." And
Eleanor told Milly of the approaching marriage of Nettie Gilbert's
daughter to a very attractive youth, etc.

"You must come to visit me this summer," she declared. "Your friends are
all dying to see you."

"Do you think they remember me still?"

"Remember you! My dear, they still talk about your engagement to
Clarence Parker."

Milly laughed gayly.

"That!"... She added quite unexpectedly, "I suppose I ought to have
married him really."

"Milly!"

"Why not?" Milly persisted in a would-be indiff