t of their emotions.

For all that, Winifred could not help asking herself with ever
increasing insistence why she alone, among a crude, noisy sisterhood of
a hundred young women of her own age, should be with them yet not of
them. She realized that her education fitted her for a higher place in
the army of New York workers than a bookbinder's bench. She could soon
have acquired proficiency as a stenographer. Pleasant, well-paid
situations abounded in the stores and wholesale houses. There was even
some alluring profession called "the stage," where a girl might actually
earn a living by singing and dancing, and Winifred could certainly sing
and was certain she could dance if taught.

What queer trick of fate, then, had brought her to Brown, Son & Brown's
in the spring of that year, and kept her there? She could not tell. She
could not even guess why she dwelt so far up-town, while every other
girl in the establishment had a home either in or near Greenwich
Village.

Heigho! Life was a riddle. Surely some day she would solve it.

Her mind ran on this problem more strongly than usual that morning.
Still pondering it, she diverged for a moment at the Soldiers' and
Sailors' Monument, and stood on the stone terrace which commands such a
magnificent stretch of the silvery Hudson, with the green heights of the
New Jersey shore directly opposite, and the Palisades rearing their
lofty crests away to the north.

Suddenly she became aware that a small group of men had gathered there,
and were displaying a lively interest in two motor boats on the river.
Something out of the common had stirred them; voices were loud and
gestures animated.

"Look!" said one, "they've gotten that boat!"

"You can't be sure," doubted another, though his manner showed that he
wanted only to be convinced.

"D'ye think a police launch 'ud be foolin' around with a tow at this
time o' day if it wasn't something special?" persisted the first
speaker. "Can't yer see it's empty? There's a cop pointin' now to the
clubhouse."

"Good for you," pronounced the doubtful one. The pointing cop had
clinched the argument.

"An' they're headin' that way," came the cry.

Off raced the men. Winifred found that people on top of motor-omnibuses
scurrying down-town were also watching the two craft. Opposite the end
of Eighty-sixth Street such a crowd assembled as though by magic that
she could not see over the railings. She could not imagine why people
should