g to her feet and threw a gorgeous robe about her. "Come along,
Sally! Let's go down and make some chocolate! I've come to crave
nocturnal nourishment, and much as I adore talking about myself I've
really had enough of the topic for to-night. How many pupils have you
now? And how near is the baby-grand?"

* * * * *

She stayed three months at home, tapping briskly at her typewriter in the
mornings and giving her afternoons and evenings to the old innocuous
routine, and it was said of her that she had changed and gotten citified,
of course, but seemed very much interested in everything and everybody,
and many were the placid hours in the pink nursery, the drives with the
Edward R. Hunters in the new roadster, the teas in the burlapped studio
with Sarah Farraday, the meetings of the Ladies' Aid and the Tuesday Club
where she gave gay little talks and readings and vague old ladies asked
her gently if she was still going on with her literary work.

The only radical change was Martin Wetherby, whose case came up for
decision at once, in spite of the sage counsels of the Teddy-bear's
father.

The second evening at home Miss Lydia Vail had risen flutteringly and
left them alone on the porch in the soft dusk, and at once he had plunged
to his doom. There was no serene confidence about him this time, no
snatching her into a short-breathed embrace; he was rather pathetically
humble before her new poise and achievements, pleading, desperate.

"Marty, dear," said Jane unhappily, "I don't want to be unsympathetic,
but indeed I don't think I'm ruining your life! You're so nice and young,
and you're doing famously at the bank! Oh, I know it's just because
you've held to the idea for so long--and so many other people have, and
made it seem--settled. It's just your _habit_--not your heart, that's
aching!"

But in spite of this cheering reassurance she had to admit to Sarah that
Marty continued to droop at the corners, and to have, in spite of the
assistant cashiership, a look of shaken confidence. His mother, that
former arranger of little gatherings for the young people and dispenser
of light refreshments, treated Jane with coolness, and had her adherents
here and there in the village.

Jane went back to New York the first of September and sold immediately
the one-act play she had written during the summer, and was engulfed in
the business of putting it on, and presently Rodney Har