Hearing the maid tap lightly on her door for the third or fourth time, Ulrica uttered a semiconscious “Come.” It was her usual rising hour but to-day she was more depressed than usual, although the condition was common enough at all times. The heavy drag of a troubled mental state was upon her. Was it never to end? Was she never to be happy again? After several weeks of a decidedly acceptable loneliness, during which Harry had been in the west looking after his interminable interests, he was about to return. The weariness of that, to begin with! And while she could not say that she really hated or even disliked him deeply (he was too kind and considerate for that), still his existence, his able and different personality, constantly forced or persuaded upon her, had come to be a bore. The trouble was that she did not truly love him and never could. He might be, as he was, rich, resourceful and generous to a fault in her case, a man whom the world of commerce respected, but how did that avail her? He was not her kind of man. Vivian before him had proved that. And other men had been and would be as glad to do as much if not more. Vivian had given all of himself in a different way. Only Harry’s seeking, begging eyes pleading with her (after Vivian’s death and when she was so depressed) had preyed upon and finally moved her to sympathy. Life had not mattered then, (only her mother and sister), and she had become too weary to pursue any career, even for them. So Harry with his wealth and anxiety to do for her— (The maid entered softly, drew back the curtains and raised the blinds, letting in a flood of sunshine, then proceeded to arrange the bath.) It had been, of course, because of the magic of her beauty—how well she knew the magic of that!—plus an understanding and sympathy she had for the miseries Harry had endured in his youth, that had caused him to pursue her with all the pathetic vehemence of a man of fifty. He was not at all like Vivian, who had been shy and retiring. Life had seemed to frighten poor Vivian and drive him in upon himself in an uncomplaining and dignified way. In Harry’s case it had acted contrariwise. Some men were so, especially the old and rich, those from whom life was slipping away and for whom youth, their lost youth, seemed to remain a colored and enthralling spectacle however wholly gone. The gifts he had lavished upon her, the cars, the jewels, this apartment, stocks and bonds, even that house in Seadale for her sister and mother! And all because of a beauty that meant so little to her now that Vivian was gone, and in the face of an indifference so marked that it might well have wearied any man.