ifted above the pharisaism of clothes into the purer
ether. She was calm-eyed and well-poised, and Lena hated her for the
rest of her life for her obliviousness of the sordid. Behind her walked
a young man who now opened the carriage door and lingered a moment and
laughed as he talked with the girl who had taken her seat. Lena
involuntarily drew her feet closer beneath her skirts that no careless
glance of that girl should fall upon their shabbiness. She looked at the
man as she looked at the Russian sables. He was a type of that
delectable world from which she was shut out.

"I should be ashamed to be silly about fellows, the way some girls are,"
was her inward comment. "But I'd just like to have people see me with a
thing like that dangling around me. And I shall, some time. I'm a whole
heap prettier than she is."

The carriage door shut abruptly. Lena's too thin boots, out of plumb,
suddenly slipped on a half-formed piece of ice. She made a desperate
grab at the smooth surface of the window and then came ignominiously
down--not wholly ignominiously, however, since her accident brought to
her aid the man who was a type.

She didn't have to stop to consider that the man would notice neither
her hat nor her boots. She knew it instinctively and instantly. But the
rose-petal face and the big eyes were overwhelmingly present to her
consciousness. She saw them reflected in the look on his face as he bent
over her.

"I hope you're not hurt."

"Not in the least. Only humiliated." Lena smiled, because people are
always attracted by cheerfulness.

"You are sure you have not twisted your ankle?" he insisted.

"Nothing but my hat and my hair," she pouted. "Thank you for coming to
my rescue."

"It wasn't much of a rescue," he said.

"Are you sorry I didn't have a tragedy and give you a chance to play
hero?" she inquired naively.

"When you are in need, may I be the one to help?" he said with growing
boldness.

Lena flushed and nodded as he lifted his hat and was gone. She walked
slowly homeward, actually forgetting to stop at her favorite window in
the lace store, so occupied was she with the latest story she was
telling herself. It was a story in which a large house with soft rugs
and becoming pink lights occupied the foreground, and somewhere in the
background hovered a man who was a type and who loved to spend money on
diamonds. The vision was so lovable that she lived with it all the way,
even through the narrow