r;
electrically self-started himself once more. Carlisle bowled off with J.
Forsythe Avery, who was well pleased with this token of her regard, and
resolved to make the most of it. But soon the time came when he was
debarked from her conveyance; she was rid of his ponderous ardors; and
Cally rolled through the twilight streets alone....

There had settled down upon her a deep and singular depression. Her
spirit ached, as if from a whipping. She thought a little of the Works;
she had remembered that moment of somewhat painful revelation last year;
but no reflection brought any doubt of her father. Long since she had
reached the sound conclusion that that was the way business was; and if
this fixed belief had been shaken a little now, she was hardly conscious
of it. Papa, of course, did all that was reasonable and right for his
work-people; it was perfectly outrageous that he should be subjected to
abuse in the newspapers. Dr. Vivian, for his part, was conceded a
religious fellow's strange sense of duty, though it required an effort
to concede him that. Still Cally was not thinking of it from these
points of view exactly. It all seemed to be quite personal, somehow....

She gazed through the car-window at the familiar panorama, streets,
houses, and people which she now did not see. It had been, indeed, an
afternoon of snubs, such as she was hardly accustomed to receiving; and
she seemed to have lost something of that wholesome defensive power she
had possessed last year, the power of being righteously indignant.
Time's whirligig had brought her to this,--that she had all but offered
her friendship to Jack Dalhousie's friend, and he had more than repulsed
her. She did feel indignant, a little; but, deeper than that, she felt
wounded, she hardly knew why. After that moment of barrier-less intimacy
in the drawing-room, how could he bear to be so hard?

Her vesper thoughts veered a little, moved from Vivian to Director Pond,
who had also brusquely rebuffed her. It was Mrs. Page's experience that
Cally had had this afternoon, and she too found it humiliating. She had
lately caught a distant glimpse of "work" in terms different from those
which the dull word had worn heretofore: vaguely discerned activities in
which the best women were cooeperating usefully with men--cooeperating
equally as human beings, and no nonsense; not as women at all. There was
something mysteriously inviting in this. She had felt a bracing absence
of