ong the straight and narrow way,
sometimes, it is true, jostling circumstances and sometimes being
jostled by them, yet keeping to the path. Now she had turned her feet
into that broad way wherein there is room for the utmost self which
is in us all. Henceforth husband and wife would walk apart in a
spiritual sense, unless there should come a revolution in the
character of the wife, who was the stepper aside.

Margaret seated comfortably on the ferry boat, her little feet
crossed so discreetly that only a glimpse of the yellow fluff beneath
was visible, was conscious of a not unpleasurable exhilaration. She
might and she might not be about to do something which would place
her distinctly outside the pale which had henceforth enclosed her
little pleasance of life. Were she to cross that pale, she felt that
it might be distinctly amusing. Margaret was not a wicked woman, but
virtue, not virtue in the ordinary sense of the word, but straight
walking ahead according to the ideas of Fairbridge, had come to drive
her at times to the verge of madness. Then, too, there was always
that secret terrible self-love and ambition of hers, never satisfied,
always defeated by petty weapons. Margaret, sitting as gracefully as
a beautiful cat, on the ferry boat that morning realised the
vindictive working of her claws, and her impulse to strike at her
odds of life, and she derived therefrom an unholy exhilaration.

She got her taxicab on the other side and leaned back, catching
frequent glances of admiration, and rode pleasurably to the regal
up-town hotel which was the home of Miss Martha Wallingford, while in
the city. She, upon her arrival, entered the hotel with an air which
caused a stir among bell boys. Then she entered a reception room and
sat down, disposing herself with slow grace. Margaret gazed about her
and waited. There were only three people in the room, one man and two
ladies, one quite young--a mere girl--the other from the resemblance
and superior age, evidently her mother. The man was young and almost
vulgarly well-groomed. He had given a glance at Margaret as she
entered, a glance of admiration tempered with the consideration that
in spite of her grace and beauty, she was probably older than
himself. Then he continued to gaze furtively at the young girl who
sat demurely, with eyes downcast beneath a soft, wild tangle of dark
hair, against which some pink roses and a blue feather on her hat
showed fetchingly. She was v