Somehow she did not want to talk of her marriage and Jack's death with Eleanor Kemp, who had been so near her during the ecstatic inception of that passion. "How pretty your house is!" Eleanor said, divining Milly's reluctance to intimacy. "I've been peeking into the next room while I waited." "Yes, it's pleasant," Milly replied unenthusiastically. "It's small and the street is rather noisy. But it does well enough. You know it isn't my house. It belongs to a friend,--Ernestine Geyer." "Yes, you wrote me." "She's in business, away all day, and I keep house for her," Milly explained, as if she were eager not to have her position misunderstood. "It must be much pleasanter for you and Virginia than being alone." "Yes," Milly agreed, in the same negative voice, and then showed her friend over the house, which Mrs. Kemp pronounced "sweet" and "cunning." As Milly's manner remained listless, Eleanor Kemp suggested their lunching at the hotel, and they walked over to the large hostelry on the Avenue, where the Kemps usually stayed in New York. Walter Kemp not having returned from his picture quest, the women had luncheon by themselves at a little table near a window in the ornate dining-room of the hotel. Milly grew more cheerful away from her home. It always lightened her mind of its burdens to eat in a public place. She liked the movement about her, the strange faces, the unaccustomed food, and her opportunities of restaurant life had not been numerous of late. It was pleasant to be again with her old friend and revive their common memories of Chicago days. They discussed half the people they knew. Milly told Eleanor of Vivie Norton's engagement finally to the divorced man and the marriage, "a week after he got his decree." And Eleanor told Milly of the approaching marriage of Nettie Gilbert's daughter to a very attractive youth, etc. "You must come to visit me this summer," she declared. "Your friends are all dying to see you." "Do you think they remember me still?" "Remember you! My dear, they still talk about your engagement to Clarence Parker." Milly laughed gayly. "That!"... She added quite unexpectedly, "I suppose I ought to have married him really." "Milly!" "Why not?" Milly persisted in a would-be indifferent tone. "Then I shouldn't be keeping house for somebody else for my living." Mrs. Kemp gave her a quick look, and then turned it off with,-- "You should have stayed in Chicago, whatever you did. We all miss you so!..." In her glances about the crowded room Milly's eyes had rested upon a little woman seated at a table not far away,--a blond, fluffy-haired, much-dressed and much-jewelled creature, who was scrutinizing the long menu with close attention. "Do you know who she is, Nelly?" Milly asked, indicating the little blond person. "It seems to me she's some one I ought to know." Mrs. Kemp glanced out of her lowered eyes; then as the other looked up both bowed. She said in a whisper to Milly,--