shifted it with busy fingers under the light; it
contrasted exquisitely with her fair, splendid hair, and the cream
and rose of her full blonde complexion. It was a "platform dress,"
she told him, laughing; she was going with the Leverings on a
reading and musical tour; they had got a little company together,
and would give entertainments in the large country towns; perhaps go
to some of the fashionable springs, or up among the mountain places;
folks liked their amusements to come after them, from the cities;
they were sure of audiences where people had nothing to do.

Marion was in high spirits. She felt as if she had the world before
her. She would travel, at any rate; whether there were anything else
left of it or not, she would have had that; that, and the sea-green
dress. While she talked, her mother was ironing in the back room.
The dress was owed for. She could not pay for it till she began to
get her own pay.

What was the use of telling a girl like that--all flushed with
beauty and vanity, and gay expectation--about his having a house to
build? What would it seem to her,--his busy life all spring and
summer among the chips and shavings, hammering, planing, fitting,
chiseling, buying screws, and nails, and patent fastenings, tiles
and pipes; contriving and hurrying, working out with painstaking in
laborious detail an agreement, that a new rich man might get into
his new rich house by October? When she had only to make herself
lovely and step out among the lights before a gay assembly, to be
applauded and boqueted, to be stared at and followed; to live in a
dream, and call it her profession? When Frank Sunderline knew there
was nothing real in it all; nothing that would stand, or remain;
only her youth, and prettiness, and forwardness, and the facility of
people away from home and in by-places to be amused with second-rate
amusement, as they manage to feed on second-rate fare?

It was no use to say this to her, either; to warn her as he had done
before. She must wear out her illusions, as she would wear out her
glistening silk dress. He must leave her now, with the shimmer of
them all about her imagination, bewildering it, as the lovely,
lustrous heap upon her lap threw a bewilderment about her own very
face and figure, and made it for the moment beautiful with all
enticing, outward complement and suggestion.

He told Ray Ingraham; and he said what a pity it was; what a
mistake.

Ray did not answer for a