The rest of that day is a blank to me now. If I had suffered before, I suffered a thousand-fold now. I could not look at the miniature. I was even angry with Father--dearest Father, who had done his "human best" for me. I hated myself, I hated life, I wanted to die. To be laughed at; to have had my little defiances and independences met with the secret thought "the very clothes on her back were bought with my money"; to have been fooled and fooled again, to his heart's content; to have lived on the bounty of a man who despised me, hurt and wounded me at every turn--it was unbearable. When I was home again, when the tangle finally became unraveled, I would go to Uncle John. I would ask him frankly what to do; tell him the whole, bitter little story; ask him to find work for me--reading proof, correcting manuscript, scrubbing floors--I didn't care. There were business schools, I thought vaguely--and cursed the years of invalidism which had kept from me so much knowledge of the world, so unfitted me to cope with it, once I was on my material feet. Father need never know. He would think it a whim, would be, I imagined, even a little proud, would believe, even, that I sought to distract myself after the wreck of my married life. Other women had done the same thing. I thought of the city as I had seen it: the crowds and the loneliness and the bleakness of the streets: the hurrying, uncaring people--I had read of girls in the city; the indignities of the boarding house; the strain and the demand and the difficult way that lies before the untrained wage-earner-- Mavis of Green Hill in a New York office! I laughed aloud at the thought, and the sound of my own voice frightened me. I couldn't cry. Somehow, I hadn't a tear left. I could only clench and unclench my hands on the lap of the little mauve gown which William Denton had bought for me--I wondered if Mrs. Goodrich knew. It had been she who had attended to all my purchases before I left Green Hill, who had gone into town with my measurements and returned with two trunks full of everything I needed, and assured me that the "bill was taken care of." What a fool I had been! I did not go out to tea. Sarah brought me something in my room. I told her I had a headache. It was the truth. And through my closed door I could hear Bill's voice asking for me. Mr. Crowell was there; he had ridden over some time before. I sent my regrets and stayed in my room. At dinner I hardly spoke. I was too conscious of the clothes I wore, the food I ate. The one burdened me, the other choked me. Bill, which was unusual, talked nervously all through the meal, about everything and nothing. Even through the dull sense of impotence and anger that possessed me, I could see that he was ill-at-ease, excited, waiting for something--waiting, perhaps, for me to reopen the last painful chapter. He could wait, I thought.