Now these ladies had been in London, and Emmie heard much from them of the glories and greatness of that city; she had long opportunity to learn respect for their manners and gowns, which alike came from there. They had not happened upon Dorastus; they could not remember hearing of him, and as that seemed to make it plain to Emmie they had not been in the most polite places, they explained that the city was so large and populous you might not come across a person in a lifetime. They left on a rainy autumn morning. Emmie, with her forehead against the glass, watched their carriages dwindling, dwindling. Gone, with all their patterns for gowns, with the last sweet thing in worsted-work; gone, with their fashionable conversation, the art of which she had not had quite time yet to master. But even if she had become perfect in all, as they, of what use could it have been to her here? she asked, turning from the dripping window-pane. She moved with an air of being the moon by day. The sickness of the decaying year seemed to have got into her blood; she felt as if she herself were the perishing summer, which had somehow been wasted. She said over her children's ages with a sort of terror, a sense of time having stolen a march on her; she was vaguely panic-stricken to think there was so little of the good time of life left before her. She sought the mirror to divert her mind with trying on again the bonnet the sisters had bestowed on her, pronouncing it so becoming. Under the severe gray light the face she saw reflected held more than ever to her discontented eyes a forecast of the cheerless coming days when the rose should be withered, the gold gone. The deadly quiet of the country, the silence of the well-regulated house, suddenly seemed to her an outrage, a roof incontrovertible that no one cared what happened to her. Gregory in particular did not care. Else would he not have comprehended that movement and novelty and gayety alone could at this pass save her from the insidious oncreeping evil that encouraged hard lines between the pale cheek and the drooping mouth? Clearly he did not care. He cared for nothing but not to be disturbed after dinner. In this connection she thought over many a subtle wrong she had been putting up with for years. She thought of Dorastus, from whom this husband, with his royal indifference, allowed her to be so long separated; Dorastus, who as she looked to him, turning from the lukewarm, apathetic tribe surrounding her, seemed an embodiment of swiftness and strength, a tempered steel blade to rely on, a flame at which to warm the numb hands of the heart. Ah, well, he was making a home for her with him, yonder in the living city. She lost sight of the mirror into which she was staring; she saw that home. Suddenly it seemed to her she could not live longer without seeing her boy. She rose with the energy of true inspiration. It was such an obviously legitimate desire, this desire to behold again