pposed curiosities, and that
simple remark of Milly's--if simple it was--became the most important
thing that had ever happened to her; it deprived the love-interest, for
the time, of actuality and even of pertinence; it moved her first, in
short, in a high degree, to gratitude, and then to no small compassion.
Yet in respect to this relation at least it was what did prove the key
of knowledge; it lighted up as nothing else could do the poor young
woman's history. That the potential heiress of all the ages should
never have seen any one like a mere typical subscriber, after all, to
the "Transcript" was a truth that--in especial as announced with
modesty, with humility, with regret--described a situation. It laid
upon the elder woman, as to the void to be filled, a weight of
responsibility; but in particular it led her to ask whom poor Mildred
_had_ then seen, and what range of contacts it had taken to produce
such queer surprises. That was really the inquiry that had ended by
clearing the air: the key of knowledge was felt to click in the lock
from the moment it flashed upon Mrs. Stringham that her friend had been
starved for culture. Culture was what she herself represented for her,
and it was living up to that principle that would surely prove the
great business. She knew, the clever lady, what the principle itself
represented, and the limits of her own store; and a certain alarm would
have grown upon her if something else hadn't grown faster.

This was, fortunately for her--and we give it in her own words--the
sense of a harrowing pathos. That, primarily, was what appealed to her,
what seemed to open the door of romance for her still wider than any,
than a still more reckless, connection with the "picture-papers." For
such was essentially the point: it was rich, romantic, abysmal, to
have, as was evident, thousands and thousands a year, to have youth and
intelligence and if not beauty, at least, in equal measure, a high,
dim, charming, ambiguous oddity, which was even better, and then on top
of all to enjoy boundless freedom, the freedom of the wind in the
desert--it was unspeakably touching to be so equipped and yet to have
been reduced by fortune to little humble-minded mistakes.

It brought our friend's imagination back again to New York, where
aberrations were so possible in the intellectual sphere, and it in fact
caused a visit she presently paid there to overflow with interest. As
Milly had beautifully invited