in a
somewhat dilapidated Settlement House in the slums, which only the other
day had been an abandoned hotel, for cause. And never in her vivid life
had she dressed with greater care....

She gazed down, upon a street which she did not see. Ten minutes past
four: but twenty minutes more, out of the long day. By now, he had
already left the Works for the Dabney House.... And she was thinking
that never but once had he made a personal remark to her: when he had
thought, among the hard things, that she was lovely to the eye. But all
that was a long, long time ago....

From the door below there issued her mother's guests, departing. Two
strolled away up the afternoon street; one drove off in an open car; two
stepped into an old-fashioned family carriage. Then, after a little
interval, Mrs. Heth herself came out with two more women; and these
three drove away in the Byrd car, which had been observed waiting
down there.

Cally was alone in the house. And it was good to be alone.

There whizzed up, from the opposite direction, yet another car, jerking
to a standstill at the door. It caught the girl's notice; her vague
thought was that it was William, come a little early. But she saw at
once that this was a strange vehicle, a hired one by the look of it, and
consciousness dreamed out of her eyes again....

The tide of her being pulsed strong within her now. All day her strange
feeling was as if an enveloping shell had, somewhere lately, been
chipped from about her, revealing to her half-startled gaze a horizon
far wider than any guessed before. By the new summonings that made music
in her heart, by these undreamed aspirations and reaching affections,
there was the thrilling seeming that always heretofore she had lived in
some dull half-deadness. And she could not doubt that this port where
she had arrived at last was no other than the gate of Life....

"Why, that's Chas Cooney!" said Cally, suddenly, gazing down.

From the cab below there had stepped a tall young man, out upon her
sidewalk. She recognized her cousin with instant surprise; and
consciousness, returning to her again, set a little frown between her
level brows. Chas made her think at once of the Works. How was it that
he, so busy that he could not even stop for dinner, came driving up here
in the middle of the afternoon? Above all, who was it that he was
helping, so slowly and carefully, from his hired car?

The girl gazed with growing tensity; her hat-b