water, Susan walked up and down the
show parlors weighted with dresses and cloaks, furs for arctic
weather. The other girls, even those doing almost nothing,
were all but prostrated. It was little short of intolerable,
this struggle to gain the "honest, self-respecting living by
honest work" that there was so much talk about. Toward five
o'clock her nerves abruptly and completely gave way, and she
fainted--for the first time in her life. At once the whole
establishment was in an uproar. Jeffries cursed himself loudly
for his shortsightedness, for his overestimating her young
strength. "She'll look like hell this evening," he wailed,
wringing his hands like a distracted peasant woman. "Maybe she
won't be able to go out at all."

She soon came round. They brought her whiskey, and afterward
tea and sandwiches. And with the power of quick recuperation
that is the most fascinating miracle of healthy youth, she not
only showed no sign of her breakdown but looked much better.
And she felt better. We shall some day understand why it is
that if a severe physical blow follows upon a mental blow,
recovery from the physical blow is always accompanied by a
relief of the mental strain. Susan came out of her fit of
faintness and exhaustion with a different point of view--as if
time had been long at work softening her, grief. Spenser
seemed part of the present no longer, but of the past--a past
far more remote than yesterday.

Mary Hinkle sat with her as she drank the tea. "Did you make
a date with Gid?" inquired she. Her tone let Susan know that
the question had been prompted by Jeffries.

"He asked me to dine with him, and I said I would."

"Have you got a nice dress--dinner dress, I mean?"

"The linen one I'm wearing is all. My other dress is for
cooler weather."

"Then I'll give you one out of stock--I mean I'll borrow one
for you. This dinner's a house affair, you know--to get Gid's
order. It'll be worth thousands to them."

"There wouldn't be anything to fit me on such short notice,"
said Susan, casting about for an excuse for not wearing
borrowed finery.

"Why, you've got a model figure. I'll pick you out a white
dress--and a black and white hat. I know 'em all, and I know
one that'll make you look simply lovely."

Susan did not protest. She was profoundly indifferent to what
happened to her. Life seemed a show in which she had no part,
and at which she sat a listless spectator. A few minutes