been for him! How hopelessly middle-class they
must have seemed! How idiotic of her to think, for one moment, that she
could ever belong in this new-old life of his!

What traditions had she? None, of course, save to be honest and good
and to do her best for the people around her. Her mother's people, the
Kennedys went back a long way, but they had always been poor. A library
full of paintings and books! She remembered the lamp with the blue-silk
shade, the figure of Eve that used to stand behind the minister's
portrait, and the cherry bookcase with the Encyclopaedia in it and
"Beacon Lights of History." When K., trying his best to interest her and
to conceal his own heaviness of spirit, told her of his grandfather's
old carriage, she sat back in the shadow.

"Fearful old thing," said K.,--"regular cabriolet. I can remember yet
the family rows over it. But the old gentleman liked it--used to have
it repainted every year. Strangers in the city used to turn around and
stare at it--thought it was advertising something!"

"When I was a child," said Sidney quietly, "and a carriage drove up and
stopped on the Street, I always knew some one had died!"

There was a strained note in her voice. K., whose ear was attuned to
every note in her voice, looked at her quickly. "My great-grandfather,"
said Sidney in the same tone, "sold chickens at market. He didn't do it
himself; but the fact's there, isn't it?"

K. was puzzled.

"What about it?" he said.

But Sidney's agile mind had already traveled on. This K. she had never
known, who had lived in a wonderful house, and all the rest of it--he
must have known numbers of lovely women, his own sort of women, who had
traveled and knew all kinds of things: girls like the daughters of the
Executive Committee who came in from their country places in summer
with great armfuls of flowers, and hurried off, after consulting their
jeweled watches, to luncheon or tea or tennis.

"Go on," said Sidney dully. "Tell me about the women you have known,
your friends, the ones you liked and the ones who liked you."

K. was rather apologetic.

"I've always been so busy," he confessed. "I know a lot, but I don't
think they would interest you. They don't do anything, you know--they
travel around and have a good time. They're rather nice to look at, some
of them. But when you've said that you've said it all."

Nice to look at! Of course they would be, with nothing else to think of
in all the wor