"Poor old girl!" said Carroll.

Anna looked at him, and her eyes suffused and her mouth quivered.
Then she smiled her usual smile of mocking courage, even bravado.
"Oh, well," said she, "I have faced the situation and chewed my cud
of experience for a good many years now, and I am used to it. I may
even end up by tasting the sweet in the bitter."

"You had as hard an experience in another line as I had. I don't know
but it was harder."

"No harder, I reckon," Anna replied, almost indifferently. "It was
the same thing--the doll stuffed with sawdust, and all that; you with
a friend, and I with a lover. Well, it is all over now."

"It isn't; that is the worst of it," Carroll said, gloomily.

"I don't see why."

"A sequence is never over. There is even all eternity for it."

"Well, the first of the sequence is over, anyhow. All we have to
consider is the succeeding stages."

"That is about enough."

Anna laughed. "I agree with you there, dear. Well, I suppose the
stage of the sequence for immediate consideration is the feasibility
of emerging into the next stage. You think it is likely to be more
difficult for the wandering tribe of Carroll to make their exodus
with grace and dignity than usual?"

"It rather looks that way now."

"I suppose that promoting business, that business transacted in the
New York office, got you into rather hotter waters than usual."

Carroll nodded.

"There _was_ an office, I suppose."

Carroll nodded again, laughing a little. Anna laughed too. "One never
knows," said she. "I suppose that was a delegation from the office,
to-night, the two pretty girls and the winking young man."

"Yes," said Carroll.

Anna had flung herself into an easy-chair beside him. Carroll
remained standing. She leaned her head back and crossed her hands
behind her neck in a way she had. She was a thing of lithe grace in
her soft red silk. The dim light obliterated all the worn lines in
her face. Carroll regarded her even in the midst of the distressful
stress of affairs with a look of admiration. It was an absent-minded
regard, very much as a mourner might notice a stained-glass window in
a church while a funeral was in progress. It was the side-light of
grace on affliction involuntarily comprehended, from long training,
by the exterior faculties. Carroll even said, half perfunctorily:

"You look well to-night. That red gown suits you, honey."

"The gown that that poor little beggar of a dress-mak