"That sounds all right," said the indignant dame opposite her, "but as I said before, if you don't marry,--what are you going to do?" Faced by that cold question, Mary met it defiantly. "If the worst comes, I can work. Other women work." "You haven't the training or the experience." Aunt Frances told her coldly; "don't be silly, Mary. You couldn't earn your shoe-strings." And thus having said all there was to be said, the two ate their salad with diminished appetite, and rode home in a taxi in stiff silence. Aunt Frances' mind roamed back to Aunt Isabelle, and fixed on her as a scapegoat. "She's like you, Isabelle," she said, "with just the difference between the ideals of twenty years ago and to-day. You haven't either of you an idea of the world as a real place--you make romance the rule of your lives--and I'd like to know what you've gotten out of it, or what she will." "I'm not afraid for Mary." There was a defiant ring in Aunt Isabelle's voice which amazed Aunt Frances. "She'll make things come right. She has what I never had, Frances. She has strength and courage." It was this conversation with Aunt Frances which caused Mary, in the weeks that followed, to bend for hours over a yellow pad on which she made queer hieroglyphics. And it was through these hieroglyphics that she entered upon a new phase of her friendship with Roger Poole. He had gone to work one morning, haggard after a sleepless night. As he approached the Treasury, the big building seemed to loom up before him like a prison. What, after all, were those thousands who wended their way every morning to the great beehives of Uncle Sam but slaves chained to an occupation which was deadening? He flung the question later at the little stenographer who sat next to him. "Miss Terry," he asked, "how long have you been here?" She looked up at him, brightly. She was short and thin, with a sprinkle of gray in her hair. But she was well-groomed and nicely dressed in her mannish silk shirt and gray tailored skirt. "Twenty years," she said, snapping a rubber band about her note-book. "And always at this desk?" "Oh, dear, no. I came in at nine hundred, and now I am getting twelve hundred." "But always in this room?" She nodded. "Yes. And it is very nice. Most of the people have been here as long as I, and some of them much longer. There's Major Orr, for example, he has been here since just after the War." "Do you ever feel as if you were serving sentence?" She laughed. She was not troubled by a vivid imagination. "It really isn't bad for a woman. There aren't many places with as short hours and as good pay." For a woman? But for a man? He turned back to his desk. What would he be after twenty years of this? He waked every morning with the day's routine facing him--knowing that not once in the eight hours would there be a demand upon his mentality, not once would there be the thrill of real accomplishment.