m was forced
to be subconscious, for none other was allowed. Of late, however,
crowd it back as she would, a haunting sense of his presence had been
with her, and under the busy and absorbed air with which she had gone
about the day's demands there had been sharp surge of unpermitted
memories of which she was impatient and ashamed.

Also there had been disquieting questions, questions to which she had
long refused to listen, and in the crush and crowd they had pursued
her, peered at her in unexpected places, and faced her in the quiet of
her room, and from them she was making effort to escape when
Carmencita burst in upon her. The latter was too excited, too full of
some new adventure, to talk clearly or coherently. Always Carmencita
was adventuring, but what could she mean by demanding to know the name
of her sweetheart, and by saying she had found him and then lost him?
And why had she, Frances Barbour, told her as obediently as if their
positions were reversed and she the child instead of Carmencita?

Elbow on the table and chin in the palm of her hand, she tapped the
desk-pad with her pen and made small dots in the large circles she had
drawn on the paper, and slowly she wrote a name upon it.

What could Stephen Van Landing be doing in this part of the town? He
was one of the city's successful men, but he did not know his city.
Disagreeable sights and sounds had by him been hitherto avoided, and
in this section they were chiefly what was found. Why should he have
come to it? That he was selfish and absorbed in his own affairs, that
he was conventional and tradition--trained, was as true to-day,
perhaps, as when she had told him so three years ago, but had they
taught him nothing, these three years that were past? Did he still
think, still believe--

With a restless movement she turned in her chair, and her hands
twisted in her lap. Was she not still as stubborn as of old, still as
proud and impatient of restraint where her sense of freedom and
independence of action were in question, still as self-willed? And was
it true, what Carmencita had said--was she giving herself to others
and refusing herself to the only one who had the right to claim her,
the royal right of love?

But how did she know he still needed her, wanted her? When she had
returned to her own city after long absence she had told of her
present place of residence to but few of her old friends. Her own
sorrow, her own sudden facing of the inevita