For a mistake of her youth, for the giving of her heart when only her body had been coveted, she had paid the price of menial position, of isolation, of spiritual degradation. She realized that speedily she must face the town asking work with which to keep up her long-time pretense of being self-supporting. Her stomach reminded her that she must have food, or very speedily, torturing headache would ensue. Marcia sat down on the mattress, took her head between her hands, and for the first time in eighteen years thought about herself instead of Martin Moreland. Suddenly there came to her the sickening realization that she was no longer young. Looking her mental problem in the face, she admitted that she was thirty-six. As youth was reckoned in her day, a woman was considered reasonably aged at forty. No doubt this was Martin Moreland’s first step in letting her know that her reign was over. In retrospect, what a sorry reign it had been!—veiled suspicion, mental humiliation, isolating employment, heart-hunger for freedom to lift up her head and walk abroad with pride. She felt reasonably certain that the problem facing her now was not one of further concealment, but the necessity of being equal to taking over the entire care of herself and making provision for hopeless old age. Under the urge of hunger, she arose, found her hat, straightened her clothing as best she could, and hunted her mirror. Setting it up, she studied herself, not the self that Jason had known for nearly sixteen years, but the secret self which was her real self—Marcia Peters without the disfiguration of unbecomingly dressed hair and concealing clothing. Every fibre of womanhood in her being rebelled against a return to the disguise in which she had faced Jason and Ashwater all her life with Martin Moreland. In starting a new life, in strange environment, whether as formerly or alone, why should she not appear before the people as she was? Why should she not seek occupation less humiliating than that of washing the dirty clothes of another village? Staring into the mirror and thinking, Marcia began pulling out drawers from her dresser, and when she emerged from the house presently and locked its door behind her, she was not a figure that Jason would have recognized before his night of illumination.