n old woman," said Cyrilla. And, with a tightening at the heart
Mildred saw, deep in the depths of her eyes, the look of old age. "I've
found that I'm too old for love--for man-and-woman love--and that means
I'm an old woman."

Mildred felt that there was only a thin barrier of reserve between her
and some sad secret of this strange, shy, loving woman's--a barrier so
thin that she could almost hear the stifled moan of a broken heart. But
the barrier remained; it would have been impossible for Cyrilla
Brindley to talk frankly about herself.

When Mildred came out of her room the next morning, Cyrilla had gone,
leaving a note:

I can't bear good-bys. Besides, we'll see each other very soon.
Forgive me for shrinking, but really I can't.

Before night Mildred was settled in the new place and the new room,
with no sense of strangeness. She was reproaching herself for
hardness, for not caring about Cyrilla, the best and truest friend she
had ever had. But the truth lay in quite a different direction. The
house, the surroundings, where she had lived luxuriously, dreaming her
foolish and fatuous dreams, was not the place for such a struggle as
was now upon her. And for that struggle she preferred, to sensitive,
sober, refined, impractical Cyrilla Brindley, the companionship and the
sympathy, the practical sympathy, of Agnes Belloc. No one need be
ashamed or nervous before Agnes Belloc about being poor or unsuccessful
or having to resort to shabby makeshifts or having to endure coarse
contacts. Cyrilla represented refinement, appreciation of the finished
work--luxurious and sterile appreciation and enjoyment. Agnes
represented the workshop--where all the doers of all that is done live
and work. Mildred was descending from the heights where live those who
have graduated from the lot of the human race and have lost all that
superficial or casual resemblance to that race. She was going down to
live with the race, to share in its lot. She was glad Agnes Belloc was
to be there.

Generalizing about such a haphazard conglomerate as human nature is
highly unsatisfactory, but it may be cautiously ventured that in New
England, as in old England, there is a curiously contradictory way of
dealing with conventionality. Nowhere is conventionality more in
reverence; yet when a New-Englander, man or woman, happens to elect to
break with it, nowhere is the break so utter and so defiant. If Agnes
Belloc, cut loose from the c