h afflictions, it
was finally over. Jerry arrived at nine, full of thanks to her, and
carried the _enfant terrible_ off to her school.

Jane hurried home, for this was to be a momentous day to her. Martin
Christiansen had written that he was coming to see her at three o'clock
in the afternoon, to talk over her work.

"Let me come to you in your own quarters, where you write and live, will
you, my friend?" he had written her.

She had sent for him to come, and this was the day. She was not ashamed
of the little room in the tenement house, where she had spent so many
hours. She looked about it as she let herself in, trying to see it with
his eyes--eyes used to beauty and comfort.

It was a square room, on the corner with two windows, west and south,
hung with white curtains. It was small, but not cramped. The walls were
calcimined white. The bed and dresser were white, as were the few
chairs. A table, by one window, had on it a student lamp and neat piles
of manuscript, while a dozen books were supported by book ends, against
the wall. The rug was inexpensive, but dull in colour. It was
scrupulously clean, and its bareness suggested deliberate asceticism
rather than poverty.

"We aren't ashamed of it, Milly," she said to the cat. "It certainly is
not beautiful, but it's clean, and sort of self-respecting, and those
are the virtues of our class. He will understand that. I do hope you
will like him, Milly," she added.

She hurried with her luncheon, gave Milly a bath, made a careful toilet
herself. The same dark dress to be sure, but little fine collars and
cuffs were added, to take away its austerity. She let her hair coil
itself loosely instead of screwing it back as she usually did. She made
these preparations, not at the dictation of vanity, for she was
singularly free from it, but from an instinct to make herself fit for
what she felt to be a crisis in her life. Whether Martin Christiansen
said good or bad really did not matter so much as the fact that she had
come to this point of testing--this day of judgment.

While she waited for his coming she let her mind return to Jerry and his
latest difficulty. She laughed aloud at the memory of the girl's
passionate absurdity. She thought back to her own first romance, a mad
infatuation for the little town beau, to whom she never spoke. Yet how
he had filled her dreams, how she had planned her marriage to him, under
romantic circumstances, just as Isabelle had planned