When she had been growing tired for sixteen years she was in a dreary lodging, in a dingy street, toiling at a novel, between the fashion articles by which she earned her daily bread. Mr. Humphreys, in easy circumstances by this time, was in London too, though when memories awoke in her she pictured him in Manitoba. He was indulging in a trip, and had been in England three weeks. One afternoon, in the hall of the new and expensive hotel, he picked up a book and came upon her name among the publisher's advertisements. It was an advertisement of one of her shattered hopes, but Mr. Humphreys didn't know that--he merely saw her referred to as a "distinguished novelist." She was, at the moment, trudging from a modiste's to a milliner's, to gather something to say in her inevitable article. It was raining, and she had a headache, and she would have to hammer out a sprightly column about Paris models before she could lie down. His holiday was proving rather dull, and he wondered idly whether it would be a foolish impulse to recall himself to such a prominent woman. His formal note, re-directed by the publisher's clerk, and re-directed again, reached her some days later. "If you have not quite forgotten our old friendship, I should be glad of an opportunity to call and congratulate you on your triumphs." She read that line many times. Her face was white, and her eyes were wide. She looked again at the name of the expensive hotel, and stared at the sordid parlour in which she sat--the pitiable parlour with its atrocious oleographs on drab walls, and two mottled vases, from the tea-grocer's, on the dirty mantelpiece. He would be "glad to congratulate her"! She remembered the unaffected cheeriness of the previous congratulations, the letter that had shown her his love was dead. She had fancied that nothing could hurt more deeply than that letter, but she had been wrong--to expose her mistake to him would be bitterer still. The humiliation of it, the punishment! All the arrogance of her rejection, all the boasts of her girlhood thronged back upon her tauntingly. God! if she could have seen ahead--if only she could have her life again. She debated her reply. To say that she was leaving town would sound ungracious. The alternative was to receive him at the club. Almost for the first time she was devoutly thankful to be a member--the club would spare her the ignominy of revealing her parlour; the stationery would avert the need for betraying her address. On the imposing stationery she wrote that she would be "pleased to see him here on either Wednesday or Thursday next." Her clothes, she supposed, wouldn't give her away, as he was a man.