, smoky, stuffy smell of a newspaper office
was ever sweet in their nostrils."

But, "Not yet," Von Gerhard had said, "It unless you want to have again
this miserable business of the sick nerfs. Wait yet a few months."

And so I have waited, saying nothing to Norah and Max. But I want to be
in the midst of things. I miss the sensation of having my fingers at the
pulse of the big old world. I'm lonely for the noise and the rush and
the hard work; for a glimpse of the busy local room just before press
time, when the lights are swimming in a smoky haze, and the big presses
downstairs are thundering their warning to hurry, and the men are
breezing in from their runs with the grist of news that will be ground
finer and finer as it passes through the mill of copy-readers' and
editors' hands. I want to be there in the thick of the confusion that
is, after all, so orderly. I want to be there when the telephone bells
are zinging, and the typewriters are snapping, and the messenger boys
are shuffling in and out, and the office kids are scuffling in a corner,
and the big city editor, collar off, sleeves rolled up from his great
arms, hair bristling wildly above his green eye-shade, is swearing
gently and smoking cigarette after cigarette, lighting each fresh one at
the dying glow of the last. I would give a year of my life to hear him
say:

"I don't mind tellin' you, Beatrice Fairfax, that that was a darn good
story you got on the Millhaupt divorce. The other fellows haven't a word
that isn't re-hash."

All of which is most unwomanly; for is not marriage woman's highest
aim, and home her true sphere? Haven't I tried both? I ought to know. I
merely have been miscast in this life's drama. My part should have been
that of one who makes her way alone. Peter, with his thin, cruel lips,
and his shaking hands, and his haggard face and his smoldering eyes, is
a shadow forever blotting out the sunny places in my path. I was meant
to be an old maid, like the terrible old Kitty O'Hara. Not one of the
tatting-and-tea kind, but an impressive, bustling old girl, with a
double chin. The sharp-tongued Kitty O'Hara used to say that being an
old maid was a great deal like death by drowning--a really delightful
sensation when you ceased struggling.

Norah has pleaded with me to be more like other women of my age, and
for her sake I've tried. She has led me about to bridge parties and tea
fights, and I have tried to act as though I were enjoying