right moment--in development and in mood--to
reveal to her clearly a world into which she had never
penetrated--a world of which she had vaguely dreamed as she read
novels of life in the lands beyond the seas, the life of palaces
and pictures and statuary, of opera and theater, of equipages
and servants and food and clothing of rare quality. She had
rather thought such a life did not exist outside of novels and
dreams. What she had seen of New York--the profuse, the gigantic
but also the undiscriminating--had tended to strengthen the
suspicion. But this woman proved her mistaken.

Our great forward strides are made unconsciously, are the
results of apparently trivial, often unnoted impulses. Susan,
like all our race, had always had vague secret dreams of
ambition--so vague thus far that she never thought of them as
impelling purposes in her life. Her first long forward stride
toward changing these dreams from the vague to the definite was
when Rod, before her on the horse on the way to Brooksburg,
talked over his shoulder to her of the stage and made her feel
that it was the life for her, the only life open to her where a
woman could hope to be judged as human being instead of as mere
instrument of sex. Her second long forward movement toward
sharply defined ambition dated from the sight of the woman of
the milliner's window--the woman who epitomized to Susan the
whole art side of life that always gives its highest expression
in some personal achievement--the perfect toilet, the perfect
painting or sculpture, the perfect novel or play.

But Rod saw in her enthusiasm only evidence of a concealed
longing for the money to indulge extravagant whims. With his
narrowing interest in women--narrowed now almost to sex--his
contempt for them as to their minds and their hearts was so far
advancing that he hardly took the trouble to veil it with
remnants of courtesy. If Susan had clearly understood--even if
she had let herself understand what her increasing knowledge
might have enabled her to understand--she would have hated him
in spite of the hold gratitude and habit had given him upon her
loyal nature--and despite the fact that she had, as far as she
could see, no alternative to living with him but the tenements
or the streets.

One day in midsummer she chanced to go into the Hotel Astor to
buy a magazine. As she had not been there before she made a
wrong turning and was forced to cross one of the restaurants. I