him as he fell. Her terrified shriek brought Hoichi, who took
instant charge of the situation. He made the unconscious man
comfortable on a divan, applied such restoratives as were at hand,
and directed a frightened maid to telephone for physicians.

Nancy fled to her own room, and sat on the edge of her bed,
frightened and subdued. That quarrel and its serious effect made a
turning-point in her life, though she attached no blame to herself
for the man's illness. She had no love for him, but her heart was
not callous to suffering, and his distorted and agonized face had
terrified and shocked her.

The suddenness of the seizure made his words more impressive.
Suppose he died: what of her? She was not sure that any definite
provision had as yet been made for her. What, then, should she do?

Suppose he recovered: what then? She had cause for serious thought.
All this luxury and ease, this pleasant life of plenty, in which she
reveled with the deep delight of one quite unused to it, hung upon a
contingency--the contingency of absolute obedience. She was not
naturally supine, and her spirit rose against an unconditional
self-surrender to a hot-tempered, imperious old man, who would mold
her to his will, make her over to his own notions, quite as
high-handedly as if she'd been a lump of putty and not a human
being. Nancy tasted the bitterness of having no voice in the making
of her own destiny.

Well, but suppose she defied him? He was quite capable of washing
his hands of her, just as he had threatened. And then? Before that
possibility Nancy recoiled. No. She couldn't, she wouldn't go back
to that old life of squalid slavery--eating bad food, wearing
wretched clothes, suffering all the sodden and sordid misery of the
ignorant, abjectly poor, a suffering twice as poignant now that she
knew better things. She knew poverty too well to have any illusions
about it. The Baxter kitchen rose before her. Why! while she was
sitting here now, in this luxurious room, back there they'd be
getting ready for the noonday dinner. The close kitchen would be
reeking with the odor of boiling potatoes and cabbage, from which a
greasy steam would be arising, so that one saw things as through a
hot mist. One of the children would be screaming, somewhere about
the house, and Mrs. Baxter, in an unsavory wrapper, her face
streaming with perspiration, her hair in sticky strands on her hot
forehead, would be shrilly threatening personal chastisem