She had reached, she must have reached about the time I was taking my flight upward by the help of Morris Polatkin, the full level of her capacity to experience. She was living still, as I saw by the card which I still held in my hand, in Evanston, and she was living there because it was no longer within the scope of her possibility to live anywhere else. All this flashed through me in the moment in which Pauline, checked by what she was able to guess of unfamiliar elements in me, was crossing the room and taking me by the hands in the old womanly way, keyed down to the certainty of not requiring it in her business any more. It was so patent that Pauline was now in the position of having done her duty toward life and Henry Mills, and was accepting all that came to her from it as her due, that it almost seemed for a moment that she had said something of the kind. What did pass between us besides a kiss of greeting, were some commonplaces about my being there and how pleased Henry and the children would be to see me. We sat down on a sofa together and for a moment the old girlish confidence put forth a tender sprig of renewal. "So many years since we were at school together! You've gone a long way since then, Olivia." "A long way," I admitted, but she didn't catch the double meaning the phrase had for me. "Henry and I were talking about it this morning. And the times you had here in Chicago, you poor dear; you had to make a good many starts before you got on the right road at last." "A great many." "But you found out that it all came right in the end, didn't you? That it was best just for you to trust ... you used to be bitter about it ... but trusting is always best." "Oh, if you think I've been trusting all these years ... I've been working." "Of course, _of_ course." Much of her old manner came back with the occasion for moralizing. "But you were too amusing, you were quite fierce with Henry because he wouldn't do anything about it." She laughed reminiscently. "And now, you see...." Her look travelled about the rose-coloured room, full of the evidence of prosperity. "Pauline," I said, "if you are thinking that I could have gone to New York and become the success I am, _without_ the help that you and Henry might have given me, you are making a great mistake. What did happen was that I had to accept it from a quarter where it wasn't so much to be expected, and was not nearly so agreeable." "That man Mark Eversley found for you, you mean. Well, I suppose you did get on better for a little start." "Start!" I cried. "Start! I had to have everything--food and clothes." A sudden recollection flashed upon me of those first days in New York, of myself become merely a dummy on which to hang a fat little Jew's notions of acceptable contours; the offence of it; the greater offence from which by the opportune appearance of the Jew I had so hardly escaped.