It was not a large room, this private parlor on an upper story of the immense hotel; and its decorations, its ornaments, its furniture, its carpets, had the characterless commonplace befitting an apartment which might have a score of occupants in a single month. Yet she had spent the most of the winter in it; those were her pretty cushions (on the hard sofa), and that was her tea equipage on the low table by the fireplace (with its gas-log). The photographs in their silver frames were hers also, and so were the violets that filled a Rookwood bowl on the top of the writing-desk near the window. But as she glanced about in search of something that might make her feel at home, she found nothing to satisfy her longing. The room was a room in a hotel, after all; and she had failed wholly to impress her own individuality upon it. To recall her vain efforts only intensified her loneliness. The hotel was full, so they said, and it held a thousand souls and more; and as she walked aimlessly to and fro within her narrow space, she wondered whether any one of the thousand felt as detached and as solitary as she did then--as she had felt so often during the long winter. She paused at the window again, and gazed at the houses far down below her on the other side of the narrow street; they were at least homes, and the women who dwelt there had husbands or sons or fathers--had each of them a man of some sort for her to lean on, for her to cling to, for her to love, for her to devote herself to, and for her to sacrifice herself for. Sometimes she had delighted in the loftiness of her position, lifted high in air; she had fancied almost that she was on another plane from the people in the thick of the struggle down below. Now as she pressed her forehead against the chill pane and peered down to watch the umbrellas that crawled here and there on the sidewalk, more than a hundred feet beneath her, she had a fleeting vision of her own mangled body lying down there on the stones, if she should ever yield to the temptation that came to her in these moments of depression. She shuddered at the sight, and turned away impetuously, while the rain again rattled against the window, as though demanding instant admission. An observer would have declared that this woman, weary as she might be with solitude, was far too young for life already to have lost its savor. Her figure was slight and girlish yet. Her walk was brisk and youthful. Her thick, brown hair was abundant, and untouched by gray. Her dark-brown eyes kept their freshness still, although they were older than they might seem at first. She was perhaps a scant thirty years of age, although it might well be that she was three or four years younger. No doubt the observer would have found her ill at ease and restless, as though making ready for an ordeal that she was anxious to pass through as soon as possible.