ilored suit, and a shirtwaist, and as a rule, the shirtwaist
did not fit. Margaret never wore shirtwaists,--she understood that
she was too short unless she combined a white skirt with a waist.
Margaret would have broken a commandment with less hesitation than
she would have broken the line of her graceful little figure with two
violently contrasting colours. Mrs. Sturtevant in a grey skirt and an
elaborate white waist, which emphasised her large bust, looked
ridiculous beside this fair, elegant little Margaret, although her
clothes had in reality cost more. Wilbur watched his wife as she
talked sweetly with the other woman, and his heart swelled with the
pride of possession. When they were on the train and he sat by
himself in the smoker, having left Margaret with Mrs. Sturtevant, his
heart continued to feel warm with elation. He waited to assist his
wife off the train at Jersey City and realised it a trial that he
could not cross the river on the same ferry. Margaret despised the
tube and he wished for the short breath of sea air which he would get
on the Courtland ferry. He glanced after her retreating black skirts
with the glimpses of yellow, regretfully, before he turned his back
and turned toward his own slip. And he glanced the more regretfully
because this morning, with all his admiration of his wife, he had a
dim sense of something puzzling which arose like a cloud of mystery
between them.

Wilbur Edes sailing across the river had, however, no conception of
the change which had begun in his little world. It was only a shake
of the kaleidoscope of an unimportant life, resulting in a different
combination of atoms, but to each individual it would be a tremendous
event partaking of the nature of a cataclysm. That morning he had
seen upon Margaret's charming face an expression which made it seem
as the face of a stranger. He tried to dismiss the matter from his
mind. He told himself that it must have been the effect of the light
or that she had pinned on her hat at a different angle. Women are so
perplexing, and their attire alters them so strangely. But Wilbur
Edes had reason to be puzzled. Margaret had looked and really was
different. In a little while she had become practically a different
woman. Of course, she had only developed possibilities which had
always been dormant within her, but they had been so dormant, that
they had not been to any mortal perception endowed with life.
Hitherto Margaret had walked al