The hard truth was that Jack Bragdon had not shaken the New York firmament, certainly had not knocked a gilt star from its zenith. At thirty-two he was just a promising failure, one of the grist that the large city eats annually. And his friends were not powerful enough to make up for his lack of _réclame_. "He had a gift--slight though. Nothing much done--charming fellow--died just as he was starting, poor chap!" so the words went. If the portrait of the Russian had been there, the tone might have been less patronizing; but Milly had already sent this off on its long journey. The practical result was fifteen hundred dollars, of which Bunker contributed a thousand, and various convenient sums that dribbled in opportunely from the novelist, "whenever he was able to make a sale." (A good many of Jack Bragdon's things ultimately will come under the hammer when the Reinhard house is broken up.) And that romance which Milly's friends had staged came to nothing. Reinhard called on her often, was very kind to her, and really solicitous for her welfare; he also was charming to little Virginia, who called him Uncle Clive; and he had both at his country place for long visits,--abundantly chaperoned. Nothing could have been "nicer" than the novelist's attitude to his friend's widow, all the women declared, and it must have been _her_ fault--or else that "other affair" had gone deeper with him than any one supposed. Milly herself was not averse to entertaining a new "hope." Her marriage seemed so utterly dead that she felt free to indulge in a new sentiment. But the novelist looked at her out of his beady, black eyes,--indulgently, kindly,--but through and through, as if he had known her before she was born and knew the worth of every heart-beat in her.... Gradually beneath that scalping gaze she grew to dislike him, almost to hate him for his indifference. "He must be horrid with women," she said to Hazel, who admitted that "there have been stories--a man living by himself, as he does!" And so this solution came to naught. * * * * * Milly was "up against it again," as she said to herself. Her small bank-account was fast melting away. (She had her own sheaf of bills that she had not cared to present to her brother-in-law, and she found that a penniless widow has poor credit.) Collectors came with a disagreeable promptness and followed her with an unerring scent through her various changes of residence. It became known among her friends that "Milly must really do something." The competent wife of the Responsible Editor thought it ought not to be difficult to find something of "a social nature" for Milly to do. "Your gift is people," she said flatteringly. "Let me think it over for a day or two, and I'm sure the right idea will come to me."