hers sat and watched her with normal,
simply feminine interest growing in her eyes. The things were made
with the absence of any limit in expenditure, the freedom with delicate
stuffs and priceless laces which belonged only to her faint memories of
a lost past.

Nothing had limited the time spent in the embroidering of this
apparently simple linen frock and coat; nothing had restrained the
hand holding the scissors which had cut into the lace which adorned in
appliques and filmy frills this exquisitely charming ball dress.

"It is looking back so far," she said, waving her hand towards them with
an odd gesture. "To think that it was once all like--like that."

She got up and went to the things, turning them over, and touching them
with a softness, almost expressing a caress. The names of the makers
stamped on bands and collars, the names of the streets in which their
shops stood, moved her. She heard again the once familiar rattle of
wheels, and the rush and roar of New York traffic.

Betty carried on the whole matter with lightness. She talked easily
and casually, giving local colour to what she said. She described the
abnormally rapid growth of the places her sister had known in her teens,
the new buildings, new theatres, new shops, new people, the later
mode of living, much of it learned from England, through the unceasing
weaving of the Shuttle.

"Changing--changing--changing. That is what it is always doing--America.
We have not reached repose yet. One wonders how long it will be before
we shall. Now we are always hurrying breathlessly after the next
thing--the new one--which we always think will be the better one. Other
countries built themselves slowly. In the days of their building, the
pace of life was a march. When America was born, the march had already
begun to hasten, and as a nation we began, in our first hour, at the
quickening speed. Now the pace is a race. New York is a kaleidoscope.
I myself can remember it a wholly different thing. One passes down a
street one day, and the next there is a great gap where some building
is being torn down--a few days later, a tall structure of some sort
is touching the sky. It is wonderful, but it does not tend to calm the
mind. That is why we cross the Atlantic so much. The sober, quiet-loving
blood our forbears brought from older countries goes in search of rest.
Mixed with other things, I feel in my own being a resentment
against newness and disorder, and an ins