s getting
more complicated every day."

It was in December, about the middle of the month, as I remember, that I
had a note one day from Mary Starkweather.

"The next time you go to town," it ran, "stop in and see me. I've made a
discovery."

With such a note as that us my hand it appeared imperative that I go to
town at once. I discovered, to Harriet's astonishment, that we were
running out of all sorts of necessaries.

"Now, David," she said, "you know perfectly well that you're just making
up to call on Mary Starkweather."

"That," I said, "relieves my conscience of a great burden."

As I went out of the door I heard her saying: "Why Mary Starkweather
should _care_ to live in her barn...."

It was a sparkling cold day, sun on the snow and the track crunching
under one's feet, and I walked swiftly and with a warm sense of coming
adventure.

To my surprise there was no smoke in the cottage chimney, and when I
reached the door I found a card pinned upon it:

PLEASE CALL AT THE HOUSE

Mary Starkweather herself opened the door--she had seen me coming--and
took me into the big comfortable old living-room, the big, cluttered,
overfurnished living-room, with the two worn upholstered chairs at the
fireplace, in which a bright log fire was now burning. There was a
pleasant litter of books and magazines, and a work basket on the table,
and in the bay window an ugly but cheerful green rubber plant in a tub.

"Well!" I exclaimed.

"Don't smile--not yet."

As I looked at her I felt not at all like smiling.

"I know," she was saying, "it does have a humorous side. I can see that.
Dick has seen it all along. Do you know, although Dick pretends to
pooh-pooh everything intellectual, he has a really penetrating mind."

I had a sudden vision of Dick in his old smoking jacket, standing in
the midst of the immaculate cottage that was once a barn, holding his
pipe with one finger crooked around the stem just in front of his nose
in the way he had, and smiling across at me.

"Have you deserted the cottage entirely?"

"Oh, we may possibly go back in the spring-----" She paused and looked
into the fire, her fine, strong face a little sad in composure, full of
thought.

"I am trying to be honest with myself David. Honest above everything
else. That's fundamental. It seems to me I have wanted most of all to
learn how to live my life more freely and finely.... I thought I was
getting myself free of things when, as a matte