follow her lover to the city and try
if her presence would not win back his affections.

Alice did not blame Ned Currie for what had happened in
the moonlight in the field, but felt that she could
never marry another man. To her the thought of giving
to another what she still felt could belong only to Ned
seemed monstrous. When other young men tried to attract
her attention she would have nothing to do with them.
"I am his wife and shall remain his wife whether he
comes back or not," she whispered to herself, and for
all of her willingness to support herself could not
have understood the growing modern idea of a woman's
owning herself and giving and taking for her own ends
in life.

Alice worked in the dry goods store from eight in the
morning until six at night and on three evenings a week
went back to the store to stay from seven until nine.
As time passed and she became more and more lonely she
began to practice the devices common to lonely people.
When at night she went upstairs into her own room she
knelt on the floor to pray and in her prayers whispered
things she wanted to say to her lover. She became
attached to inanimate objects, and because it was her
own, could not bare to have anyone touch the furniture
of her room. The trick of saving money, begun for a
purpose, was carried on after the scheme of going to
the city to find Ned Currie had been given up. It
became a fixed habit, and when she needed new clothes
she did not get them. Sometimes on rainy afternoons in
the store she got out her bank book and, letting it lie
open before her, spent hours dreaming impossible dreams
of saving money enough so that the interest would
support both herself and her future husband.

"Ned always liked to travel about," she thought. "I'll
give him the chance. Some day when we are married and I
can save both his money and my own, we will be rich.
Then we can travel together all over the world."

In the dry goods store weeks ran into months and months
into years as Alice waited and dreamed of her lover's
return. Her employer, a grey old man with false teeth
and a thin grey mustache that drooped down over his
mouth, was not given to conversation, and sometimes, on
rainy days and in the winter when a storm raged in Main
Street, long hours passed when no customers came in.
Alice arranged and rearranged the stock. She stood near
the front window where she could look down the deserted
street and thought of the evenings