. But how ridiculous
the position of the women who prided themselves on the steadiness and
continuity of their service! Surely they must find it an empty success
at times. They must regret.

She was passing through the chapel. Two scrubbing-women were
straightening the chairs, their backs turned to her.

"From all I hear," said one, with a chuckle and a sly glance, "we'll be
afther gettin' our invitations soon."

"An' to what?" demanded the other quickly.

"Sure, they say it's a weddin'."

"Ah, now, hush yer noise, Mary Nolan; 'tis no such thing. I've had
enough o' husbands. I know when I'm doin' well, an' that's as I am!"

"'Tis strange that the men sh'd think different, now, but they do!"

They laughed heartily and long. The German assistant looked at the broad
backs meditatively. Just now they seemed to her more consistent than any
other women in the great building.

She walked quickly across the greening campus. The close-set brick
buildings seemed to press up against her; every window stood for some
crowded, narrow room, filled with books and tea-cups and clothes and
photographs--hundreds of them, and all alike. In her own room she tried
to reason herself out of this intolerable depression, to realize
the advantages of a quiet life in what was surely the same pleasant,
cultured atmosphere to which she had so eagerly looked forward three
years ago. Her room was large, well furnished, perfectly heated; and
if the condition of her closet would have appeared nothing short of
appalling to a householder, that condition was owing to the hopeless
exigencies of the occasion. With the exception of that whited sepulchre,
all was neat, artistic, eminently habitable. She surveyed it critically:
the "Mona Lisa," the large "Melrose Abbey," the Burne-Jones draperies,
and the "Blessed Damozel" that spread a placid if monotonous culture
through the rooms of educated single women. A proper appreciation of
polished wood, the sanitary and aesthetic values of the open fire, a
certain scheme in couch-pillows, all linked it to the dozen other rooms
that occupied the same relative ground-floor corners in a dozen other
houses. Some of them had more books, some ran to handsome photographs,
some afforded fads in old furniture; but it was only a question of more
or less. It looked utterly impersonal to-day; its very atmosphere was
artificial, typical, a pretended self-sufficiency.

How many years more should she live in it--three, ni