per every
day."

"Sinking, my good Michael? If you'll read this week's _Variety_ you'll
find there are those who talk about my phenomenal rise! I loathe saying
things like that about myself, but you make me do it, in decent
self-defense. It's simply that you don't understand these things--that
you're looking at them from the wrong angle." She talked on, angrily,
defensively, but inwardly she was feeling attacked and abused and
crushed. There had been nothing but praise and congratulation and
rejoicing now for ten months, and this shabby settlement worker
dared--"I'm sure you mean to be very kind," her voice was ice and
velvet, "but I'm afraid you've got rather in the way of lecturing young
women, haven't you? And I really think you might save your admonitions
and exhortations for those who need and want them. Personally, I'm
entirely satisfied with the way I'm getting on."

"'Getting on,' yes, God forgive you," he said mournfully, "and that's all
you're doing, Jane Vail!"

"I consider you incapable of judging a matter like this," said Jane with
cool disdain. "You see life always through a stained-glass window and it
gives you distorted values. What do you mean,--only 'getting on'?"

"Wasn't it yourself told me what you said to your friend back in the
village--that you were 'going on'? Woman dear," the purling brogue
dropped an octave, "there's the wide world of difference between the two!
'Getting on' you are surely, the way your name screams from the
billboards and your bank balance fattens like a stalled ox, but are you
'going on,' Jane Vail? Are you 'going on'? Woman, dear," the purling
brogue--"the rare, high places you can climb if you will? Or will you
stop content with the pavement, the likes of you that was made for the
mountain peaks? Are you going on, I say? Answer me, Jane Vail!"

But instead, with flashing eyes and scorching cheeks she took leave of
him, requesting him curtly not to follow, and walked alone to the Drive
and hailed a bus, and sat staring darkly ahead of her as it jolted and
swayed down the long blocks to Washington Square.

When Michael Daragh came down to breakfast next day he found the dining
room in a state of excited conjecture. Miss Vail, dressed for a journey,
had roused Mrs. Hills at six in the morning to say that she was going out
of town for several weeks, and had immediately driven off in a taxi with
her handbag and suitcase, her steamer trunk and her typewriter.