was the trouble with Milly?
She had not meant to go so far.

VII

CAPITULATIONS

They found another pastry-cook,--a French-Canadian woman. But if her
ancestors had ever seen the Isle de France, it must have been centuries
ago, and the family had become fatally corrupted since by British
gastronomic ideals. Her pastry was thicker and heavier than Paul's
worst, and she had "no more imagination than a cow" according to Milly.
How could one make fine cakes without imagination? "They make better
ones at the Auditorium Hotel even," Milly observed disgustedly. The Cake
Shop had gone down another peg. Now it served afternoon tea with English
wafers instead of the exotic "sirops" and "liqueurs," and advertised
"Dainty Luncheons for Suburban Shoppers." (That was Ernestine's
phrasing.) Milly almost never went near the place, and acted as if she
wanted to forget it altogether.

In her efforts to revive her partner's waning interest Ernestine even
suggested Milly's going again to Paris to engage a fresh crew, but Milly
only shrugged her shoulders. "What's the use? You know we haven't the
money."

"Borrow it!" Ernestine said desperately.

"When a thing is dead, it's dead," Milly pronounced, and added
oracularly, "Better to let the dead past bury its dead," and murmured
the lines from a celebrated new play, "Smashed to hell is smashed to
hell!" If she were willing to see her creation die, Ernestine ought to
be. But that was not Ernestine's nature: she was not artistic nor
temperamental, as Milly often proved to her. In her dumb, heavy fashion
she still tried to prop up the ill-fated Cake Shop and make it pay
expenses at least, in one way or another.

The time came, as it must come, when even this was more than Ernestine
could compass. She had tried every device she could think of, but, as
she reflected sadly, she had not been brought up to the "food business."
It was a peculiar business, like all businesses, especially the
delicatessen end, and needed an expert to diagnose its cure. So the
doors were closed, and a "To Rent" sign plastered on the front panes.
Ernestine acknowledged defeat.

Milly was outwardly unmoved. She had divined the outcome so much sooner
than her partner that she had already passed through the agonies of
failure and come to that other side where one looks about for the next
engagement with life. Possibly she had already in view what this was to
be. She assented indifferently to Ernestine's pro