“No, indeed,” I assented, for I liked the idea myself. This better neighborhood _looked_ more like her than her own, seemed to her lover’s eyes exactly suited to her beauty and her stylishness--for the “Lady Book” was teaching her to make herself far more attractive to the eye than were the other girls over in our part of town. I still puzzle at why Charley Putney gave her up; the only plausible theory seems to be that she was so sick in love with him that she wearied him. The most attractive girl in the world, if she dotes on a young man too ardently, will turn his stomach, and alarm his delicate sense of feminine propriety. As we walked on, she with an elate and proud air, she said: “How different it smells over here!” At first I didn’t understand what she meant. But, as I thought of her remark, the meaning came. And I believe that was the beginning of my dissatisfaction with what I had all my life had in the way of surroundings. I have since observed that the sense of smell is blunt, is almost latent, in people of the lower orders, and that it becomes more acute and more sensitive as we ascend in the social scale. Up to that time my ambition to rise had been rather indefinite--a desire to make money which everyone seemed to think was the highest aim in life--and also an instinct to beat the other fellows working with me. Now it became definite. I began to smell. I wanted to get away from unpleasant smells. I do not mean that this was a resolution, all in the twinkling of an eye. I simply mean that, as everything must have a beginning, that remark of hers was for me the beginning of a long and slow but steady process of what may be called civilizing. Presently she said: “If we couldn’t afford a house, we might take one of the flats.” “But I’m afraid you’d be lonesome, away off from everybody we know.” She tossed her head. “A good lonesome,” said she. “I’m tired of _common_ people. I was reading about reincarnations the other day.” “Good Lord!” laughed I. “What are they?” She explained--as well as she could--probably as well as anybody could. I admired her learning but the thing itself did not interest me. “I guess there must be something in it,” she went on. “I’m sure in a former life I was something a lot different from what I am now.” “Oh, you’re all right,” I assured her, putting my arm round her in the friendly darkness of a row of sidewalk elms. When we had indulged in an interlude of love-making, she returned to the original subject. “I wonder how much rent we could afford to pay,” said she. “They say the rent ought never to be more per month than the income is per week.” “Then we could pay twenty-five a month.”