lad, too, of the opportunity really to know a countrywoman
of a type so different from her own friends. She, like Wilbur, had heard
all her life of these interesting and inspiring beings; intense,
marvellously capable, peerless, free-born creatures panoplied in
chastity and endowed with congenital mental power and bodily charms, who
were able to cook, educate children, control society and write
literature in the course of the day's employment. The newspapers and
popular opinion had given her to understand that these were the true
Americans, and caused her to ask herself whether the circle to which she
herself belonged was not retrograde from a nobler ideal. In what way she
did not precisely understand, except that she and her friends did not
altogether disdain nice social usages and conventional womanly ways.
But, nevertheless, the impression had remained in her mind that she must
be at fault somehow, and it interested her that she would now be able to
understand wherein she was inferior.

She went to see Selma as often as she could, and encouraged her to call
at her lodgings on the mornings when she was at home, expecting that it
might please her sister-in-law to become familiar with the budding
educational enterprises, and that thus a fresh bond of sympathy would be
established between them. Selma presented herself three or four times in
the course of the next three months, and on the first occasion expressed
gratifying appreciation of the cosiness of the new lodgings.

"I almost envy you," she said, "your freedom to live your own life and
do just what you like. It must be delightful away up here where you can
see over the tops of the houses and almost touch the sky, and there is
no one to disturb the current of your thoughts. It must be a glorious
place to work and write. I shall ask you to let me come up here
sometimes when I wish to be alone with my own ideas."

"As often as you like. You shall have a pass key."

"I should think," said Selma, continuing to gaze, with her far away
look, over the vista of roofs which the top story of the apartment house
commanded, "that you would be a great deal happier than if you had
married him."

The pause which ensued caused her to look round, and add jauntily, "I
have heard, you know, about Dr. Page."

A wave of crimson spread over Pauline's face--the crimson of wounded
surprise, which froze Selma's genial intentions to the core.

"I didn't think you'd mind talking about