dered a
flaunting little repast of chicken salad and asparagus, and Neapolitan
ice cream. The men in the dining car eyed her speculatively and with
appreciation. Then their glance dropped to the third finger of her left
hand, and wandered away. She had meant to remove it. In fact, she had
taken it off and dropped it into her bag. But her hand felt so queer, so
unaccustomed, so naked, that she had found herself slipping the narrow
band on again, and her thumb groped for it, gratefully.

It was almost five o'clock when she reached Chicago. She felt no
uncertainty or bewilderment. She had been in Chicago three or four times
since her marriage. She went to a down town hotel. It was too late, she
told herself, to look for a more inexpensive room that night. When she
had tidied herself she went out. The things she did were the childish,
aimless things that one does who finds herself in possession of sudden
liberty. She walked up State Street, and stared in the windows; came
back, turned into Madison, passed a bright little shop in the window of
which taffy--white and gold--was being wound endlessly and fascinatingly
about a double-jointed machine. She went in and bought a sackful, and
wandered on down the street, munching.

She had supper at one of those white-tiled sarcophagi that emblazon
Chicago's down town side streets. It had been her original intention to
dine in state in the rose-and-gold dining room of her hotel. She had
even thought daringly of lobster. But at the last moment she recoiled
from the idea of dining alone in that wilderness of tables so obviously
meant for two.

After her supper she went to a picture show. She was amazed to find
there, instead of the accustomed orchestra, a pipe-organ that panted and
throbbed and rumbled over lugubrious classics. The picture was about a
faithless wife. Terry left in the middle of it.

She awoke next morning at seven, as usual, started up wildly, looked
around, and dropped back. Nothing to get up for. The knowledge did not
fill her with a rush of relief. She would have her breakfast in bed! She
telephoned for it, languidly. But when it came she got up and ate it
from the table, after all. Terry was the kind of woman to whom a pink
gingham all-over apron, and a pink dust-cap are ravishingly becoming at
seven o'clock in the morning. That sort of woman congenitally cannot
enjoy her breakfast in bed.

That morning she found a fairly comfortable room, more within her mean