lub, her grown children, her household gods of thirty
years' accumulation, that "Frank" might catch up with his profession.

She had explained it rather tremulously at home.

"Father wants to go," she said. "You children are big enough now to be
left. He's always wanted to do it, but we couldn't go while you were
little."

"But, mother!" expostulated the oldest girl. "When you are so afraid of
the ocean! And a year!"

"What is to be will be," she had replied. "If I'm going to be drowned
I'll be drowned, whether it's in the sea or in a bathtub. And I'll not
let father go alone."

Fatalism being their mother's last argument and always final, the
children gave up. They let her go. More, they prepared for her so
elaborate a wardrobe that the poor soul had had no excuse to purchase
anything abroad. She had gone through Paris looking straight ahead lest
her eyes lead her into the temptation of the shops. In Vienna she wore
her home-town outfit with determination, vaguely conscious that the
women about her had more style, were different. She priced unsuitable
garments wistfully, and went home to her trunks full of best materials
that would never wear out. The children, knowing her, had bought the
best.

To this couple, then, Stewart had rented his apartment. It is hard to
say by what psychology he found their respectability so satisfactory. It
was as though his own status gained by it. He had much the same feeling
about the order and decency with which Marie managed the apartment, as
if irregularity were thus regularized.

Marie had met him once for a walk along the Graben. She had worn an
experimental touch of rouge under a veil, and fine lines were drawn
under her blue eyes, darkening them. She had looked very pretty, rather
frightened. Stewart had sent her home and had sulked for an entire
evening.

So curious a thing is the mind masculine, such an order of disorder, so
conventional its defiance of convention. Stewart breaking the law and
trying to keep the letter!

On the day they left for Semmering Marie was up at dawn. There was
much to do. The house must be left clean and shining. There must be no
feminine gewgaws to reveal to the Frau Doktor that it was not a purely
masculine establishment. At the last moment, so late that it sent her
heart into her mouth, she happened on the box of rouge hidden from
Stewart's watchful eyes. She gave it to the milk girl.

Finally she folded her meager wardrobe and placed i