ent to bed, calmer and more at peace
with herself than for some time. The inevitable does that for us. "I
can't live with a man I don't love--it isn't right," she thought, and
gradually a glow of self-appreciation for her courage in refusing, even
at the ninth hour, to make the woman's terrible sacrifice of her sacred
self came to her rescue. Her sentimental education, with its woman's
creed of the omnipotence of love, had reasserted itself.

"I tried," she said in her heart, "but I couldn't--it wasn't the real,
right thing."

Of course she had known this all along, but she treated it now as a new
discovery. And she went to sleep, sooner than one might expect under the
circumstances.

VI

THE DEPTHS

But the next day, as the French say, it was to pay. When Milly kissed
her father at the breakfast table, his mournful eyes and drooping mouth
showed plainly that he knew the disaster.

"I couldn't, father," she murmured weepily.

"It's all right, daughter," the little man responded bravely, fumbling
with his fork and knife.

But her grandmother did not mince matters. It was all well enough for a
girl to have her own way as Milly had had hers, but now she had made a
nice mess of things,--put them all in a ridiculous position. Who was she
to be so particular, to consider herself such a queen? etc., etc. Milly
took it all in silence. She knew that she deserved it in part.

At last Horatio intervened. He didn't want his daughter to feel forced
to marry a man she couldn't be happy with, not for all Danner's
millions. Business was bad, to be sure, but he was a man yet and could
find something to do to support his daughter.

"I hope it ends all this society business for good," Mrs. Ridge put in
with a hard little laugh. "If you don't want to marry, you can go to
work."

"I will," said Milly, humbly.

"Don't be hard on her, mother," Horatio whispered into the old lady's
ear. "It don't do no good now."

But after he had left, Mrs. Ridge turned on Milly again.

"I don't suppose you know the trouble your father is in."

"We're always hard up.... Anything new?"

She had been so fully preoccupied with her own affairs these past months
she had not realized that the tea and coffee business was getting into
worse straits than ever. Everything, she had optimistically reckoned,
would be smoothed out by her marriage.

"Bankruptcy--that's what's coming," her grandmother informed her, with
an acid satisfaction in