In the restlessness that youth thinks is aspiration for the ideal, particularly for the ideal love, is a large element of craving for place and interest. After her marriage, at least, Bessie might have had enough of both; but the obvious purpose was too limited to appeal to her. Now two appetites and the four seasons supplied motive enough for industry. There was nothing magnificent in this manifest destiny, but it had the advantage of being imperative and constant. It was no small tax on her acquired delicacy, but it gave less time for hunting symptoms. It did not answer the _Whence, Whither, and Why;_ it pointedly changed the subject. Her work began to carry her out of herself. “Bibi dear, what a sorry end to all my promises!” She had been thinking just that herself with a sense of injury and imposition; and she was used all her life to having people see everything as she saw it, from her side only. But Guy had just turned over to his few creditors the hole in the ground into which so far most of his work had gone. “Bibi dear, what a sorry end to all my plans!” was what she expected him to say. And what he did say and what he didn't, met surprised in her mind and surveyed each other. “Oh, Guy!” she deprecated, suddenly ashamed. For the first time it occurred to her to wonder why this had been sent on _him_. With a rush of remorseful sympathy and appreciation, she slipped down beside his chair. “My poor old boy!” He clung to her like a drowning man--Guy, who, after the first single cry at the blow, had been so self-contained (or self-repressed?) through it all! She remembered that she had omitted a good many things lately. “You're tired to-day,” he said. “Yes, I am.” She caught at it hurriedly with apologetic self-defence. “I'm pretty constantly tired lately. And this morning Mrs. Grey was so trying. She doesn't understand her machine, and she doesn't understand business, and she was _too_ silly and stupid. I don't wonder you men laugh at us and don't want us in _your_ affairs!” “It's all hard on you, Bibi.” There was a lump in his voice. It was the first time he had been able to speak of it. “Yes;” her own throat was so strained that for a moment she could not go on. “But,” it struck her again, “I don't suppose an unbiased observer would think it exactly festive for you.” And, to be sure, when one came to think of it, how, pray, was he to blame? From that day there began to be more than necessity to her work, and more than work to carry her out of herself. In the present of commercial femininity we have two types--one, the business man; the other, an individual without gender, impersonal, capable. She never does anything ill-bred, certainly, but one no more thinks of specifying that she is a lady than that her hair is black; it isn't the point.