-

"I take it back.... No, I couldn't! Not even with all the clothes and
jewels."

"Of course you couldn't!"

"It's fate--it's all fate!" Milly sighed. That was her way of saying
that everything in this world depended upon the individual soul, and she
couldn't manage her soul differently. She felt relieved.

The dessert arriving just then, Milly's attention was distracted from
the Clarence Alberts and from her soul. She took much time and care in
selecting a piece of _patisserie_. French pastry, which had become a
common article in New York hotels by that time, always interested Milly.
She liked the sweet, seductive cakes, and they brought back to memory
happy times in Paris and her visits to Gage's with Jack.

"I am afraid they aren't very good," her hostess remarked, observing
that Milly after all her research into the dish merely tasted her cake
and pushed it away. "They don't seem able to make the nice French ones
over here--they're usually as heavy as lead."

"No, they're not a bit like those we used to get at Gage's. I wonder why
they don't find somebody who can make real French pastry.... Now there's
an idea!" she exclaimed with sudden illumination. "A cake shop like
Gage's with real cakes and a real _Madame_ in black at the desk!"

She gave Eleanor a vivid description of the charms of Gage's. Her friend
laughed indulgently.

"You funny child, to remember that all this time!"

"But why not?" Milly persisted. "Everybody likes French pastry. I
believe you could make heaps of money from a good cake shop in America."

"Well, when you are ready to open your cake shop, come to
Chicago!... And anyway you are coming to visit me next month."

Milly readily promised to make the visit when Virginia's school closed,
and shortly afterwards the friends parted.

* * * * *

Milly strolled home in a revery of Eleanor Kemp, who always brought back
her past, of Clarence Albert and Clarence Albert's expensive wife. "If I
had--" she mused. If somehow she had done differently and instead of
being a penniless widow she were happily married with ample means; if
the world was this or that or the other!... But back of all her
thoughts, beneath all her revery, simmered the idea of the Cake Shop. In
telling Ernestine of her day's adventure, however, she made no reference
to the New Idea. This time she would not expose her conception to the
chilling blast of the Laundryman's criticism until she h