She was in a pitifully nervous state. She entreated Frances to dress her again and help her downstairs, so that she could wait there, where, in case of fire, she could manage somehow to get out. She couldn’t eat anything for lunch. She sat propped up in bed, her trembling fingers moving ceaselessly, her watery eyes staring vacantly, in dim anxiety, consumed with dread, with the horror of her own helplessness. As she passed by the door, Frances could see her there, each time more intolerably pitiful. Until, one time, she saw her press her poor, clawlike hand against her mouth.... Somehow that decided Frances; she _couldn’t_ leave her; couldn’t endure the idea of her alone there until two in the morning, when the last train would have brought her back. No; she couldn’t go. She went into the room, hard and brusque again. “I won’t go to the city,” she said. “I’ll just harness up Bess somehow and go to the village and send a telegram.” All over--all finished. She knew it. She had no hope, no illusion about the matter, only the certainty that her terribly brief time of happiness was done. II Happiness which existed now only in her memory, in time to grow incredible even there.... One year! She remembered very well when she had made that first visit to Miss Eppendorfer. She had never before been alone in New York, didn’t know how to find the address, had to ask one policeman after another, and try in a sort of agony to comprehend the directions they gave. And when she had arrived, her terror of the unknown city was supplanted by a worse one; suppose she didn’t get the job, that the authoress didn’t like her, and she had to return home, shamefully defeated. She had plenty of time to contemplate this, waiting in the sitting-room of Miss Eppendorfer’s flat. An insolent coloured girl showed her in and left her there without a word. She was almost ill from nervousness; she watched the door without stirring for fifteen minutes or so, then, when no one came, grew bold enough to look about her. It was a small and rather dark room, furnished in a style new to her--the ubiquitous Mission style. Little square chairs of imitation weathered oak, with imitation leather seats, studded with gilt nails, fit for an authoress from the Middle West to sit in while she laughed indulgently at Victorian mahogany. Mock austerity, mock simplicity, a crowd of cheap and monotonous stuff, all square and squat; plain curtains, bookcases with sets of books selected always by authorities, and never by the owner. Replica of a thousand rooms, mirror of a thousand souls, a room which signified and expressed nothing. It was the first cheaply-furnished room Frances had ever entered, and she was innocently impressed with it. The good taste she possessed was not innate, it was traditional; she wasn’t able to judge the unknown.