destroyed it; but there was no
mirth in her laughter.

"'Would we not shatter it to little bits--and then,'" she murmured.
"No, Mr. John Barrow, I don't believe I'd want to mold you nearer to my
heart's desire. Not after yesterday evening. There's such a thing as
being hurt so badly that one finally gets numb; and one always shrinks
from anything that can deliver such a hurt. Well, it's another day.
And there'll be lots of other days, I suppose."

She gathered up the bits of broken glass and the bent frame, and put
them in a drawer, dressed herself, and went down to breakfast. She was
too deeply engrossed in her own troubles to notice or care whether any
subtle change was becoming manifest in the attitude of her fellow
boarders. The worst, she felt sure, had already overtaken her. In
reaction to the sensitive, shrinking mood of the previous day, a spirit
of defiance had taken possession of her. Figuratively she declared
that the world could go to the devil, and squared her shoulders with
the declaration.

She had a little time to spare, and that time she devoted to making up
a package of Barrow's ring and a few other trinkets which he had given
her. This she addressed to his office and posted while on her way to
work.

She got through the day somehow, struggling against thoughts that would
persist in creeping into her mind and stirring up emotions that she was
determined to hold in check. Work, she knew, was her only salvation.
If she sat idle, thinking, the tears would come in spite of her, and a
horrible, choky feeling in her throat. She set her teeth and thumped
away at her machine, grimly vowing that Jack Barrow nor any other man
should make her heart ache for long.

And so she got through the week. Saturday evening came, and she went
home, dreading Sunday's idleness, with its memories. The people at
Mrs. Stout's establishment, she plainly saw, were growing a trifle shy
of her. She had never been on terms of intimacy with any of them
during her stay there, hence their attitude troubled little after the
first supersensitiveness wore off. But her own friends, girls with
whom she had played in the pinafore-and-pigtail stages of her youth,
young men who had paid court to her until Jack Barrow monopolized
her--she did not know how they stood. She had seen none of them since
Bush launched his last bolt. Barrow she had passed on the street just
once, and when he lifted his hat distantly, she looked s