hicago boasts with Edgar Duncan,
who had returned from Washington sooner than expected and had asked
Milly by telegraph to lunch with him. Seated in the spacious, cool room
overlooking the Boulevard and the Lake, at a little table cosily placed
beside the open window, Milly might easily have looked through the
fragrant plants in the flower-box and descried Ernestine doggedly
tramping homeward from her final task at the Cake Shop. Milly preferred
to study the menu through her little gold lorgnette, and when that
important matter had been settled to her satisfaction, she sat back
contentedly and smiled upon the man opposite her, who, after a
successful hearing before the Commerce Commission, had more than ever
the alert air of a man who knows his own business. Outside in the summer
sunlight, above the blue water of the Lake and over the dingy sward of
the Park, the airmen were man[oe]uvring their winged ships, casting
great shadows as they dipped and soared above the admiring throngs.

"See," Milly pointed excitedly through the open window. "He's going up
now!" And she twisted her neck to get the last glimpse of the mounting
machine.

"Yes," Duncan remarked indifferently, "they're doing a lot of stunts."
But he hadn't come back from Washington by the first train that left
after the hearing to talk aeroplanes. And Milly let him do the talking,
as she always had, listening with a childlike interest to what he had to
say.

By this time the reader must know Milly well enough to be able to divine
for himself what was passing in her mind as she daintily excavated the
lobster shell on her plate and listened to the plea of her rejected
lover. Probably this was no more able to stir her pulses to a mad rhythm
to-day than it had been ten years before. Edgar Duncan was somewhat
nearer being her Ideal,--not much. But Milly was ten years older and
"had had her throbs," as she once expressed it. She knew their meaning
now, their relative value, and she knew other values.

The value of a home and a stable position among her fellows, for
instance, no matter how small, and so she listens demurely while the man
talks hungrily of the Joy of Home and the Beauty of Woman in the Home,
"where they belong, not in business." (How Ernestine would give it to
him for that, and Hazel, too, Milly thought!)

"You are such a woman, Milly!" he exclaims.--"Just a woman!" and in his
voice the expression has a tender, reverential sound that falls
pleas