the long-locked drawers of that piece of furniture, and looked over the
ledgers; trusts, monopolies, systems came out of their cyclone cellars;
turf associations dredged the dump-docks for charters, whither a feminine
municipal administration had consigned them; all-night cafes,
dance-halls, gambling houses reopened, and the electric lights sparkled
once more on painted cheeks and tinted lips.

The good old days of yore were returning fast on the heels of the retreat
of woman; capital shook hands with privilege; the prices of staples
soared; joints, dives, and hospitals were fast filling up; jails and
prisons and asylums looked forward to full houses. It was the same old
world again--the same dear old interesting, exciting, grafting,
murdering, diseased planet, spinning along through space--just as far as
usual from other worlds and probably so arranged in order that other
worlds might not suffer from its aroma.

And over it its special, man-designed god was expected to keep watch and
deal out hell or paradise as the man-made regulations which governed the
deity and his abode required.

So once again the golden days of yore began; congregations worshipped in
Fifth Avenue churches and children starved on Avenue A; splendid
hospitals were erected, palatial villas were built in the country; and
department stores paid Mamie and Maud seven dollars a week--but competed
in vain, sometimes, with smiling and considerate individuals who offered
them more, including enough to eat.

The world's god was back in his heaven; the world would, therefore, go
very well; and woman, at last, was returning to her own sphere to mind
her own business--and a gifted husband, especially created as her
physical and mental lord and master by a deity universally regarded as
masculine in sex.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

LEFT OVER

XXIV

SHE knew so little about the metropolis that, on her first visit, a year
before, she had asked the driver of the taxicab to recommend a
respectable hotel for a lady travelling alone; and he had driven her to
the Hotel Aurora Borealis--that great, gay palace of Indiana limestone
and plate glass towering above the maelstrom of Long Acre.

When, her business transacted, she returned to the Westchester farm,
still timid, perplexed, and partly stunned by the glitter and noise of
her recent metropolitan abode, she determined never again to stop at
that hotel.

But when the time came for her to go