plane-trees in Russell Square;
while Mary generally went to a gaudy establishment, upholstered in red
plush, near by, where, much to the vegetarian's disapproval, you could
buy steak, two inches thick, or a roast section of fowl, swimming in a
pewter dish.

"The bare branches against the sky do one so much GOOD," Mrs. Seal
asserted, looking out into the Square.

"But one can't lunch off trees, Sally," said Mary.

"I confess I don't know how you manage it, Miss Datchet," Mr. Clacton
remarked. "I should sleep all the afternoon, I know, if I took a heavy
meal in the middle of the day."

"What's the very latest thing in literature?" Mary asked, good-humoredly
pointing to the yellow-covered volume beneath Mr. Clacton's arm, for he
invariably read some new French author at lunch-time, or squeezed in
a visit to a picture gallery, balancing his social work with an ardent
culture of which he was secretly proud, as Mary had very soon divined.

So they parted and Mary walked away, wondering if they guessed that she
really wanted to get away from them, and supposing that they had not
quite reached that degree of subtlety. She bought herself an evening
paper, which she read as she ate, looking over the top of it again
and again at the queer people who were buying cakes or imparting their
secrets, until some young woman whom she knew came in, and she called
out, "Eleanor, come and sit by me," and they finished their lunch
together, parting on the strip of pavement among the different lines of
traffic with a pleasant feeling that they were stepping once more into
their separate places in the great and eternally moving pattern of human
life.

But, instead of going straight back to the office to-day, Mary turned
into the British Museum, and strolled down the gallery with the shapes
of stone until she found an empty seat directly beneath the gaze of the
Elgin marbles. She looked at them, and seemed, as usual, borne up on
some wave of exaltation and emotion, by which her life at once became
solemn and beautiful--an impression which was due as much, perhaps,
to the solitude and chill and silence of the gallery as to the actual
beauty of the statues. One must suppose, at least, that her emotions
were not purely esthetic, because, after she had gazed at the Ulysses
for a minute or two, she began to think about Ralph Denham. So secure
did she feel with these silent shapes that she almost yielded to an
impulse to say "I am in love with