ted the girl. "You are
thinking about men, aren't you?"

"Men are always ready to destroy a woman," said her mother. "You must
be careful--"

Mildred was laughing. "Oh, mamma," she cried, "do be sensible and do
give me credit for a little sense. I've got a very clear idea of what
a woman ought to do about men, and I assure you I'm not going to be
FOOLISH. And you know a woman who isn't foolish can be trusted where a
woman who's only protected by her principles would yield to the first
temptation--or hunt round for a temptation."

"But you simply can't go to New York and live there all alone--and with
nothing!"

"Can I stay here--for more than a few days?"

"But maybe, after a few days--" stammered her mother.

"You see, I've got to begin," said Mildred. "So why delay? I'd gain
nothing. I'd simply start Hanging Rock to gossiping--and start Mr.
Presbury to acting like a fiend again."

Her mother refused to be convinced--was the firmer, perhaps, because
she saw that Mildred was unshakable in her resolve to leave
forthwith--the obviously sensible and less troublesome course. They
employed the rest of Mildred's three hours' stop in arguing--when
Mildred was not raging against the little general. Her mother was more
than willing to assist her in this denunciation, but Mildred preferred
to do it all herself. She had--perhaps by unconsciously absorbed
training from her lawyer father--an unusual degree of ability to see
both sides of a question. When she assailed her husband, she saw only
her own side; but somehow when her mother railed and raved, she began
to see another side--and the sight was not agreeable. She wished to
feel that her husband was altogether in the wrong; she did not wish to
have intruded upon her such facts as that she had sold herself to
him--quite in the customary way of ladies, but nevertheless quite
shamelessly--or that in strict justice she had done nothing for him to
entitle her to a liberal money allowance or any allowance at all.

On the train, going back to New York, she admitted to herself that the
repulsive little general had held strictly to the terms of the
bargain--"but only a devil and one with not a single gentlemanly
instinct would insist on such a bargain." It took away much of the
shame, and all of the sting, of despising herself to feel that she was
looking still lower when she turned to despising him.

To edge out the little general she began to think of her mother,