This was no startling contribution to the conversation. But the exclamation “Hum!” uttered by an old woman who has buried two husbands and kept boarders is not to be despised. There is more wisdom in such a monosyllable than in all the pages of the valedictory of a girl emerging from college—which is generally credited with being an erudite message. Two husbands and a succession of boarders may teach things that even professors of sociology have not had called to their attention. “She’s so infernally alone,” said Jim. Marie stepped into the dining-room again—one might almost say pounced. Her eyes glittered, her hands were clenched. “I am infernally alone. Oh, I heard! I heard what you said before that, I listened. What business have you to discuss me and my affairs? I suppose it’s your meddlesome notion to help me. I don’t want help; I don’t need help; and what help could you give? What do you know about me—or about life? What do you know about a woman? I will not be discussed by either of you. I have the right to order my own life—to make it good or bad as I want to—and it’s nobody’s business. Do you think I don’t know Michael Moran? I tell you I see into the farthest corner of his soul. I’m not demanding happiness. I doubt if happiness is the best thing life has to give. But I do demand to live. Nobody can compel me to rot. What if I do suffer? What if there is pain and suffering and remorse? That is part of life. It is living. And you would meddle! I tell you again that I see what I am doing; that I am not deceived; that I have weighed consequences. If the time comes when Michael Moran is the stepping-stone I need, I shall use him. Nobody can prevent it—” “I calc’late there’s somebody might prevent it, Marie,” said the widow, quietly, “and I calc’late there’s somethin’ would fill you up with a kind of regret you ain’t anticipatin’ if it was to happen afterward.” “Who?” demanded Marie, passionately. “And what?” “The man you loved might stop you—and comin’ to love a man afterward might bring that kind of remorse that would make dyin’ better ’n livin’.” Marie stared at the widow, then after one might slowly have counted a dozen she sank into a chair and gazed fixedly downward. Nobody spoke, Jim felt extremely uncomfortable. Presently Marie lifted her eyes, first to Jim, then to the widow.