ing but a hideous dream."

The expression of her face was so extraordinary, such a combination of
fear, bewilderment, and something that was far deeper than dismay, that
he stared at her for a moment without speaking.

"Nora, what's the matter!"

"I don't know," she said hoarsely.

But she did, she did.

At his words, the picture of the little shack--her home now--as it had
looked the first time she saw it in all its comfortlessness, its untidy
squalor, rose before her eyes. And she saw a lonely man clumsily busying
himself about the preparation of an illy-cooked meal, and later sitting
smoking in the desolate silence. She saw him go forth to his daily toil
with all the lightness gone from his step, to return at nightfall, with
a heaviness born of more than mere physical fatigue, to the same bleak
bareness.

And she saw herself, back at Tunbridge Wells. No longer the mistress,
but the underpaid underling. Eating once more off fine old china, at a
table sparkling with silver and glass. But the bread was bitter, the
bread of the dependent. And she came and went at another's bidding, and
the yoke was not easy. She trod once more, round and round, in that
little circle which she knew so well. She used to think that the walls
would stifle her. How much more would they not stifle her now that she
had known this larger freedom?

"I say," said Reggie's voice from the doorway, "here's someone coming to
see you."

CHAPTER XVII

It was Mrs. Sharp, making her laborious way slowly up the path.

"Why," said Nora, in a low voice, "it's Mrs. Sharp, the wife of our
neighbor. Whatever brings her here on foot! She never walks a step if
she can help it."

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Sharp," she called.

Mrs. Sharp had apparently come on some sudden impulse. Usually, well as
they knew each other by this time, she always made more or less of a
toilet before having her husband drive her over. But to-day she had
evidently come directly from her work. She wore a battered old skirt and
a faded shirt-waist, none too clean. On her head was an old sunbonnet,
the strings of which were tied in a hard knot under her fat chin.

"Come right in," said Nora cordially. "You _do_ look warm."

"Good afternoon to you, Mrs. Taylor. Yes, I'm all in a perspiration.
I've not walked so far--well, goodness alone knows when!"

"This is my brother," said Nora, presenting Eddie.

"Your brother? Is _that_ who it is!"

"Why, you seem surprised."