"Life--what is life? To do without avail The decent ordered tasks of every day: Talk with the sober: join the solemn play: Tell for the hundredth time the self-same tale Told by our grandsires in the self-same vale Where the sun sets with even, level ray, And nights, eternally the same, make way For hueless dawns, intolerably pale--'" "But I know the verse." "No; hear it out;--hear what you sent me: "'And this is life? Nay, I would rather see The man who sells his soul in some wild cause: The fool who spurns, for momentary bliss, All that he was and all he thought to be: The rebel stark against his country's laws: God's own mad lover, dying on a kiss.'" She had completed the verse with the hint of a sneer in her tones. "Yes, truly, I remember it; but some day you'll thank me for saving you; of course it would have been regular in a way, but people here never really forget those things--and we'd have been helpless--some day you'll thank me for thinking for you." "Why do you believe I'm not thanking you already?" "Hang it all! that's what you made me think yesterday when I met you." "And so you called me heartless? Now tell me just what you expect a woman in my position to do. I offered to go to you when you were ready. Surely that showed my spirit--and you haven't known me these years without knowing it would have to be that or nothing." "Well, hang it, it wasn't like the last time, and you know it; you're not kind any longer. You can be kind, can't you?" Her lip showed faintly the curl of scorn. "No, I can't be kind any longer. Oh, I see you've known your own mind so little; there's been so little depth to it all; you couldn't dare. It was foolish to think I could show you my mind." "But you still care for me?" "No; no, I don't. You should have no reason to think so if I did. When I heard you'd made it up I hated you, and I think I hate you now. Let us go back. No, no, please don't touch me--ever again." Farther down-town in the cosy drawing-room of a house in a side street east of the Avenue, two other persons were talking. A florid and profusely freckled young Englishman spoke protestingly from the hearth-rug to a woman who had the air of knowing emphatically better. "But, my dear Mrs. Drelmer, you know, really, I can't take a curate with me, you know, and send up word won't she be good enough to come downstairs and marry me directly--not when I've not seen her, you know!" "Nonsense!" replied the lady, unimpressed. "You can do it nearly that way, if you'll listen to me. Those Westerners perform quite in that manner, I assure you. They call it 'hustling.'" "_Dear_ me!" "Yes, indeed, 'dear you.' And another thing, I want you to forestall that Milbrey youth, and you may be sure he's no farther away than Tuxedo or Meadowbrook. Now, they arrived yesterday; they'll be unpacking to-day and settling to-morrow; I'll call the day after, and you shall be with me."