fortune and live as the gods had ordained for her.

If Victor had been different in that one respect! ... The
infatuation, too, was a fact. The wise course was flight--and she fled.

That winter, in Chicago and in New York, Jane amused herself--in the
ways devised by latter day impatience with the folly of wasting a
precious part of the one brief life in useless grief or pretense of
grief. In Remsen City she would have had to be very quiet indeed,
under penalty of horrifying public sentiment. But Chicago and New York
knew nothing of her grief, cared nothing about grief of any kind.
People in deep mourning were found in the theaters, in the gay
restaurants, wherever any enjoyment was to be had; and very sensible it
was of them, and proof of the sincerity of their sorrow--for sincere
sorrow seeks consolation lest it go mad and commit suicide--does it not?

Jane, young, beautiful, rich, clever, had a very good time indeed--so
good that in the spring, instead of going back to Remsen City to rest,
she went abroad. More enjoyment--or, at least, more of the things that
fill in the time and spare one the necessity of thinking.

In August she suddenly left her friends at St. Moritz and journeyed
back to Remsen City as fast as train and boat and train could take her.
And on the front veranda of the old house she sat herself down and
looked out over the familiar landscape and listened to the katydids
lulling the woods and the fields, and was bored and wondered why she
had come.

In a reckless mood she went down to see Victor Dorn. "I am cured," she
said to herself. "I must be cured. I simply can't be small and silly
enough to care for a country town labor agitator after all I've been
through--after the attentions I've had and the men of the world I've
met. I'm cured, and I must prove it to myself ."

In the side yard Alice Sherrill and her children and several neighbor
girls were putting up pears and peaches, blackberries and plums. The
air was heavy with delicious odors of ripe and perfect fruit, and the
laughter, the bright healthy faces, the strong graceful bodies in all
manner of poses at the work required made a scene that brought tears to
Jane's eyes. Why tears she could not have explained, but there they
were. At far end of the arbor, looking exactly as he had in the same
place the year before, sat Victor Dorn, writing. He glanced up, saw
her! Into his face came a look of welcome that warmed her chilled h