ce
had been in him; not with _her_ face,--that doubtless had already faded
from his mind. But no other one had he fixed eternally by his art as he
had hers. Of that she was sure. "Farewell."

It was cold; it was cruel. And it must have burned the artist like acid
on his wound. The letters should have gone with him to his grave....

With a sense of finality,--that this was the real end, the end of her
marriage,--Milly did up the letters carefully and folded the piece of
old silk about the portrait. They must be returned to the Baroness
Saratoff. And now for the first time since they had met and married,
everything seemed clear and settled between her and her husband. She was
left with her little girl "to face life," as the saying is.

And Milly bravely turned her face towards life.

VII

BEING A WIDOW

Many times during the ensuing months Milly had occasion to recall the
remark of a clever woman she had once heard. "There's no place in modern
society for the widow." She came to believe that the Suttee custom was a
frank and on the whole a merciful recognition of the situation. Every
one was kind to her,--unexpectedly, almost embarrassingly kind, as is
the way with humanity. But Milly knew well enough that no one can live
for any considerable period on sympathy and the kindness of friends. The
provoking cause for any emotion must be renewed constantly.

It would have been much easier, of course, if her husband had left her
and his child "comfortably off," or even with a tiny income. Instead,
there were the bills, which seemed to shower down like autumn leaves
from every quarter. The kindly brother-in-law, who undertook to
straighten out affairs, became impatient, then severe towards the end.
What had they done with their money? For Bragdon until the last weeks
had been earning a very fair income. Nothing seemed paid. On the
apartment only the first thousand dollars had been paid, and all the
rest was mortgage and loan from him. Even the housekeeping bills for the
year before had not been fully settled. (It seemed that one had merely
to live with a false appearance of prosperity to secure easy credit, in
a social system that compels only the very poor to pay on the nail.)

Milly could not explain the condition of their affairs. She had no idea
they were "so far behind." She was sure that she had given Jack most of
the bills and supposed that he had taken care of them. She protested
that she had always been