Two newly purchased lengths of spotted net veiling were lying at the top of her lightly packed trunk partly folded in uncrumpled tissue paper. She took the crisp dye-scented net very gently into her hands, getting, sitting alone on the floor by her trunk, the full satisfaction that had failed her in the shop with Harriett’s surprise at her sudden desire flowing over the counter and infecting the charm of baskets full of cheap stockings and common bright-bordered handkerchiefs some of which had borders so narrow and faint as really hardly to show when they were scrumpled up. “Veiling, moddom? Yes, moddom,” the assistant had retorted when she had asked for a veil. “Wot on _earth_ fower?” ... Without answering Harriett she had bought two. There was no need to have bought two. One could go back in the trunk as a store. They would be the beginning of gradually getting a ‘suitable outfit,’ ‘things convenient for you.’ She got up to put a veil in the little top drawer very carefully; trying it across her face first. It almost obliterated her features in the dim candle-light. It would be the greatest comfort on winter walks, warm and like a rampart. ‘You’ve no idea how warm it keeps you,’ she could say if anybody said anything. She arranged her clothes very slowly and exactly in her half of the chest of drawers. “My appointments ought to be an influence in the room--until all my things are perfectly refined I shan’t be able to influence the girls as I ought. I must begin it from now. At the end of the term I shall be stronger. From strength to strength.” She wished she could go to bed at once and prepare for to-morrow lying alone in the dark with the trams going up and down outside as they would do night by night for the rest of her life. 3 The nine o’clock post brought a letter from Harriett. Miriam carried it upstairs after supper. Placing it unopened on a chair by the head of her bed under the gas bracket she tried to put away the warm dizzy feeling it brought her in an elaborate toilet that included the placing in readiness of everything she would need for the morning. When all was complete she was filled with a peace that promised to remain indefinitely as long as everything she had to do should be carried out with unhurried exactitude. It could be made to become the atmosphere of her life. It would come nearer and nearer and she would live more and more richly into it until she had grown like those women who were called blessed.... She looked about her. The plain room gave her encouragement. It became the scene of adventure. She tip-toed about it in her night-gown. All the world would come to her there. Flora knew. Flora was the same, sweeping the floors and going to bed in an ugly room with two other servants; but she was in it alone sometimes and knew....