, there were dresses and underclothing,
shoes and stockings to buy, in spite of darning and mending; little
treats with Eda that mounted up; and occasionally the dentist--for Janet
would not neglect her teeth as Lise neglected hers. She managed to save
something, but it was very little. And she was desperately unhappy when
she contemplated the grey and monotonous vista of the years ahead, saw
herself growing older and older, driven always by the stern necessity of
accumulating a margin against possible disasters; little by little drying
up, losing, by withering disuse, those rich faculties of enjoyment with
which she was endowed, and which at once fascinated and frightened her.
Marriage, in such an environment, offered no solution; marriage meant
dependence, from which her very nature revolted: and in her existence,
drab and necessitous though it were, was still a remnant of freedom that
marriage would compel her to surrender....

One warm evening, oppressed by such reflections, she had started home
when she remembered having left her bag in the office, and retraced her
steps. As she turned the corner of West Street, she saw, beside the canal
and directly in front of the bridge, a new and smart-looking automobile,
painted crimson and black, of the type known as a runabout, which she
recognized as belonging to Mr. Ditmar. Indeed, at that moment Mr. Ditmar
himself was stepping off the end of the bridge and about to start the
engine when, dropping the crank, he walked to the dashboard and
apparently became absorbed in some mechanisms there. Was it the glance
cast in her direction that had caused him to delay his departure? Janet
was seized by a sudden and rather absurd desire to retreat, but Canal
Street being empty, such an action would appear eccentric, and she came
slowly forward, pretending not to see her employer, ridiculing to herself
the idea that he had noticed her. Much to her annoyance, however, her
embarrassment persisted, and she knew it was due to the memory of certain
incidents, each in itself almost negligible, but cumulatively amounting
to a suspicion that for some months he had been aware of her: many times
when he had passed through the outer office she had felt his eyes upon
her, had been impelled to look up from her work to surprise in them a
certain glow to make her bow her head again in warm confusion. Now, as
she approached him, she was pleasantly but rather guiltily conscious of
the more rapid beatin