o, when in rushed the Norton girls,
quite breathless. Sally greeted her with a jovial laugh.

"So you've dropped him! I told Ted, Milly would never stand for those
balcony seats!" She rippled with laughter at the humor of the situation.
Milly, revived by her attitude, related the cab and car incidents. "He
was--horrid."

"They're all like that, those New Englanders--afraid to spend their
money," Sally commented lightly.

Vivie took the sentimental view.

"Your heart was never in it, dear," she said consolingly.

"Of course it wasn't--I never pretended it was!"

"That sort of thing can't last."

Milly, now quite reassured, gave a drole imitation of Clarence Albert's
last remarks,--"She doesn't love me, Mrs. Ridge--Milly doesn't really
love me!"

She trilled the words mischievously. Sally roared with pleasure. Vivie
said, "Of course you couldn't marry him--not that!"

And Milly felt that she was right. No, she could not do _that_: she had
been true to herself, true to her feelings,--woman's first duty,--a
little late, to be sure.

* * * * *

But a full realization of her situation did not come until she appeared
in public. Then she began to understand what she had done in discarding
her suitable fiance. Nettie Gilbert hardly invited her to sit when she
called. She said severely:--

"Yes, Clarence told me all about it. He feels very badly. It was very
frivolous of you, Milly. I should not have _thought it possible_."

She treated Milly as the one soul saved who, after being redeemed, had
fled the flock. Milly protested meekly, "But I didn't care for him,
Nettie, not the least little bit."

Mrs. Gilbert, who remembered her Roy, replied severely, "At least you
ought to have known your own mind before this."

"He _is_ mean," Milly flared.

"And you are rather extravagant, I'm afraid, my dear!"

That relation ended there, at least its pleasant intimacy. And so it
went from house to house, especially among the settled married folk, who
regarded Milly as inconceivably foolish and silly. Who was she to be so
scrupulous about her precious heart? Even the younger, unmarried sort
had a knowing and disapproving look on their faces when she met them. As
for the stream of invitations, there was a sudden drought, as of a
parched desert, and the muteness of the telephone after its months of
perpetual twinkle was simply ghastly.

So Milly was learning that there is one worse experience