k so very much? When
I get my rise it will make a lot of difference."

Then they clung together, kissing and whispering, and the cream walls
and the golden-brown curtains were as beautiful to them as ever.

"Be a happy girl!" he cried, before he shut the front door.

"I am!" she called back, and he was gone.

She went down gaily, in spite of her weariness, and used the
hall-porter's telephone to ring up Julia. Miss Winter would come and
was very pleased, thank you. Marie went upstairs again, the ascent
making her breathless.

The stairs and the landings were grey stone, uncarpeted, for this was
the cheapest block of flats in the road. Oh, money, money! Accursed,
lovable stuff!

Marie sat down, panting, in her kitchen. A mist rose before her eyes;
she shut them and took a long breath; her head was light and dizzy.
She began to be afraid.

An angel, in the guise of Mrs. Amber, knocked upon the front door.
Marie dragged along the corridor, and could have wept once more for
sheer relief at seeing so irreplaceable, so peculiarly comforting a
person as her own mother upon the threshold. But she restrained
herself with a great effort from the relief.

"Well, duck," said Mrs. Amber cheerfully, with that wise eye upon her
girl's face, "I was out and I just thought I'd run in and see how you
were. You're not too busy for me, love? Ah, you've overdone it and you
look very pale."

She sat in Osborn's easychair in the dining-room. She was stout and
solid, a comforting rock upon which the waves of trouble might fret
and break in vain, for she had weathered her storms long ago. But
Marie refrained from going to her and laying her head in her lap and
crying like a little girl. She was twenty-five, married and worldly,
with great things upon her shoulders. Instead of going to that true
rock of ages, the mother, for shelter she sat down opposite,
composedly, in the companion chair, and answered:

"There's a good deal to do in a home."

"Ah, you've found that out?" said Mrs. Amber regretfully. "We all find
it out sooner or later. But a little domestic work shouldn't make a
girl of your age look so pale and tired as you do. How do you feel,
love?"

"Ragged," said Marie, "and--and awf'ly limp."

A great question was crying in Mrs. Amber's heart, but she was too
tactful to pursue it. Modern girls were not lightly to be
comprehended; she knew well that she did not understand her own
daughter, and young people kept their secr