"Well," the banker remarked, "Milly is settled now anyway--hope she'll be happy! She wasn't much of a business woman, eh?" He looked at Ernestine, who smiled grimly, but made no reply. "She's better off married, I expect--most women are," he philosophized, "whether they like it or not.... That's what a woman like Milly is meant for.... She's the kind that men have run after from the beginning of the world, I guess--the woman with beauty and charm, you know." Ernestine nodded. She knew better than the banker. "She'll never do much anywhere, but she'll always find some man crazy to do for her," and he added something in German about the eternal feminine, which Ernestine failed to get. There was a steady drizzle from a lowering, greasy sky outside of the train-shed, and the two paused at the door. With a long sigh Ernestine emitted,-- "I only hope she'll be happy now!" As if he had not heard this heartfelt prayer, the banker mused aloud,-- "She's Woman,--the old-fashioned kind,--just Woman!" Ernestine looked steadily into the drizzle. Neither commented on what both understood to be the banker's meaning,--that Milly was the type of what men through the ages, in their paramount desire for exclusive sex possession, had made of women, what civilization had made of her, and society still encouraged her to become when she could,--an adventuress,--in the banker's more sophisticated phrase,--a fortuitous, somewhat parasitic creature. In Ernestine's more vulgar idiom, if she had permitted herself to express her conviction, "Milly was a little grafter." But Ernestine would not have let hot iron force the words through her lips.... "And I suppose," the banker concluded, "that's the kind of women men will always desire and want to work for." "I guess so," Ernestine mumbled. Had she not worked for Milly? She would have slaved for her cheerfully all her life and felt it a privilege. Milly had stripped her to the bone, and wounded her heart in addition,--but Ernestine loved her still. * * * * * "Can I put you down anywhere?" Kemp asked, as his car came up to the curb. "No, thanks--I'll walk." "Remember when you want some money for your new business to come and see me!" "I owe you too much now." "Oh," he said good-naturedly, "that account is wiped off. The partnership's been dissolved." "That ain't the way I do business." "I wish more of my men customers felt like _you_," the banker laughed as the car drove away. Ernestine plunged into the drizzle, and while the Sunshine Special was hurrying the old-fashioned woman westward to the golden slopes of California, with her pretty "face that burned the topless towers of Ilium," the new woman plodded sturdily through the mucky Chicago streets on her way to the eternal Job. Milly was settled at last, and, let us assume, "lived happily ever after." BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE HEALER "Distinctly unusual--and distinctly interesting."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._