To begin with, she had turned her thought to her own home, where cleanliness and order ruled, but where she had hitherto refrained from other than haphazard efforts at pleasing effects. Her idea had been to be comfortable and decent, and to let the rest take care of itself, but now the ambition was awakened to impart taste to her surroundings. To her satisfaction she found that this was not difficult to accomplish even with her modest resources, as her mentor had predicted. Her woman's intelligence and native refinement reinforced her aroused interest, and by altering the angles and position of her furniture, and by introducing a few spots of color to enliven the monotony of her rooms she was able to effect a modest transformation delightful to her own eyes. To plant flowers in boxes for her windows and to arrange the few pictures she owned to advantage was the next step. The modern design of her apartment lent itself to her efforts, as though its newness, its modern tiles and its wall-papers were in league against dull commonplaceness, and it seemed to her presently almost horrible that she had remained indifferent for so long to the necessity of external appearances, absorbed in the processes of introspection. When she and Emil had married her predominant impulse had been to be a good, loving wife to him, and to make his home inviting by her cheerfulness and tact. The new, clean house had seemed to her pretty in itself, and she had taken for granted that the sets of furniture, the carpets, and other household goods, bought hastily, could not fail to set it forth to advantage. They were substantial, fresh, and paid for, and in her happiness it had not occurred to her to bother further. To do so would have seemed to savor of undue worldliness. Now how far away appeared that time of joyful ignorance, and how foreign to her present sophistication its artless outlook. She had deemed herself cultivated then, and later, in the stress of her misfortunes, had cherished thoughtful simplicity as the essence of personal refinement, the life-buoy to which she clung amid the waste of waters. By the light of experience it was plain that she had starved herself and eschewed as effete or unimportant that which was wholesome and stimulating. The same impulse led her to take a new interest in her own personal appearance, to arrange her hair tastefully, to consider a little what colors suited her best, and in various simple ways to make the most of her own personal advantages for the first time in her life. Not in the spirit of vanity, but in acknowledgment that she had too much neglected the temple of the body. And not only in respect to beauty in the outward manifestations of everyday life did she feel that she had been blind to what existence offered, but where art touched religion. She was able to approach faith from a new point of view; to wrap her naked intellectual communion with the garment of the church properties--to