Yet she would never have entered upon that dangerous affair with Mr. Barclay if it hadn’t been for the awful mental doldrums she found herself in about the time Tickles was two years old and Gil was so worried as to whether he would be able to keep his place at the Tri-State any longer. He had put all the money they had been able to save into that building and loan scheme, and when that had failed they were certainly up against it for a time. There was just nothing to do with, and there was no prospect of relief. To this day she had no clothes to speak of. And there wasn’t much promise of getting them now. And she wasn’t getting any younger. Still, there was Tickles, and she was brushing up on her shorthand again. If the worst came— But she wouldn’t have entered upon that adventure that had come so near to ending disastrously for herself and Tickles—for certainly if Gil had ever found out he could have taken Tickles away from her—if it hadn’t been for that book _Heyday_ which Mr. Barclay wrote and which she came across just when she was feeling so out of sorts with life and Gil and everything. That had pictured her own life so keenly and truly; indeed, it seemed to set her own life before her just as it was and as though some one were telling her about herself. It was the story of a girl somewhat like herself who had dreamed her way through a rather pinched girlhood, having to work for a living from the age of fourteen. And then just as she was able to make her own way had made a foolish marriage with a man of no import in any way—a clerk, just like Gil. And he had led her through more years of meagre living, until at last, very tired of it all, she had been about to yield herself to another man who didn’t care very much about her but who had money and could do the things for her that her husband couldn’t. Then of a sudden in this story her husband chose to disappear and leave her to make her way as best she might. The one difference between that story and her own life was that there was no little Tickles to look after. And Gil would never disappear, of course. But the heroine of the story had returned to her work without compromising herself. And in the course of time had met an architect who had the good sense or the romance to fall in love with and marry her. And so the story, which was so much like hers, except for Tickles and the architect, had ended happily. But hers—well—