ss you've
got to."

"I couldn't do that," said the girl.

Mabel laughed queerly. "Oh, yes, you could--and will. But
remember my advice. Don't sell your body because it seems to be
the easy way to make a living. I know most women get their
living that way."

"Oh--no--no, indeed!" protested Susan.

"What a child you are!" laughed Mabel. "What's marriage but
that?. . . Believe your Aunt Betsy, it's the poorest way to make
a living that ever was invented--marriage or the other thing.
Sometimes you'll be tempted to. You're pretty, and you'll find
yourself up against it with no way out. You'll have to give in
for a time, no doubt. The men run things in this world, and
they'll compel it--one way or another. But fight back to your
feet again. If I'd taken my own advice, my name would be on
every dead wall in New York in letters two feet high.
Instead----" She laughed, without much bitterness. "And why? All
because I never learned to stand alone. I've even supported
men--to have something to lean on! How's that for a poor fool?"

There Violet Anstruther called her. She rose. "You won't take my
advice," she said by way of conclusion. "Nobody'll take advice.
Nobody can. We ain't made that way. But don't forget what I've
said. And when you've wobbled way off maybe it'll give you
something to steer back by."

Susan sat on there, deep in the deepest of those brown studies
that had been characteristic of her from early childhood.
Often--perhaps most often--abstraction means only mental
fogginess. But Susan happened to be of those who can
concentrate--can think things out. And that afternoon, oblivious
of the beauty around her, even unconscious of where she was, she
studied the world of reality--that world whose existence, even
the part of it lying within ourselves, we all try to ignore or
to evade or to deny, and get soundly punished for our folly.
Taking advantage of the floods of light Mabel Connemora had let
in upon her--full light where there had been a dimness that was
equal to darkness--she drew from the closets of memory and
examined all the incidents of her life--all that were typical or
for other reasons important. One who comes for the first time
into new surroundings sees more, learns more about them in a
brief period than has been seen and known by those who have
lived there always. After a few hours of recalling and
reconstructing Susan Lenox understood Sutherland probably better
than