you know, Verena, this isn't our _real_
life--it isn't our work," Olive went on.

"Well, no, it isn't, certainly," said Verena, not pretending at first
that she did not know what Olive meant. In a moment, however, she added,
"Do you refer to this social intercourse with Mr. Burrage?"

"Not to that only." Then Olive asked abruptly, looking at her, "How did
you know his address?"

"His address?"

"Mr. Ransom's--to enable Mrs. Burrage to invite him?"

They stood for a moment interchanging a gaze. "It was in a letter I got
from him."

At these words there came into Olive's face an expression which made her
companion cross over to her directly and take her by the hand. But the
tone was different from what Verena expected, when she said, with cold
surprise: "Oh, you are in correspondence!" It showed an immense effort
of self-control.

"He wrote to me once--I never told you," Verena rejoined, smiling. She
felt that her friend's strange, uneasy eyes searched very far; a little
more and they would go to the very bottom. Well, they might go if they
would; she didn't, after all, care so much about her secret as that. For
the moment, however, Verena did not learn what Olive had discovered,
inasmuch as she only remarked presently that it was really time to go
down. As they descended the staircase she put her arm into Miss
Chancellor's and perceived that she was trembling.

Of course there were plenty of people in New York interested in the
uprising, and Olive had made appointments, in advance, which filled the
whole afternoon. Everybody wanted to meet them, and wanted everybody
else to do so, and Verena saw they could easily have quite a vogue, if
they only chose to stay and work that vein. Very likely, as Olive said,
it wasn't their real life, and people didn't seem to have such a grip of
the movement as they had in Boston; but there was something in the air
that carried one along, and a sense of vastness and variety, of the
infinite possibilities of a great city, which--Verena hardly knew
whether she ought to confess it to herself--might in the end make up for
the want of the Boston earnestness. Certainly, the people seemed very
much alive, and there was no other place where so many cheering reports
could flow in, owing to the number of electric feelers that stretched
away everywhere. The principal centre appeared to be Mrs. Croucher's, on
Fifty-sixth Street, where there was an informal gathering of
sympathisers who didn