hattering women were Sally's world, these
problems of school and rent and food were Sally's problems.

But Martie knew now that she was not of Monroe, that she must go back.
She was not Sally, she was not Rose; she had earned her entry into a
higher school. Those Eastern years were not wasted, she must go on now,
she must go on--to what?--to what?

And with New York her thoughts were suddenly with John, and Sally,
glancing anxiously at her, saw that she was smiling. Martie did not
notice the look: she was far away. She saw the Christmas tree, and the
surging children, through a haze of dreams.

Mysterious, enviable, unattainable--thought the Sodality girls, eying
the black-clad figure, with its immaculate touches of white at wrists
and throat. Mrs. Bannister had run away with an actor and had lived in
New York, and was a widow, they reminded each other, and thrilled. She
never dreamed that they made her a heroine and a model, quoted her,
loitered into the Library to be enslaved afresh by her kind, unsmiling
advice. She felt herself far from the earliest beginnings of real
achievement: to them, as to herself ten years ago, she was a person
romantic and exceptional--a somebody in Monroe!

Somebody brought her Jim, sweet and sleepy, and he subsided in her lap.
Len's wife sank into a neighbouring chair, to express worried hopes
that the March baby would be a boy, a male in the Monroe line at last.
Rose fluttered near, with pleasant plans for a dinner party. Martie's
thought were with a slim, dark-blue book, safe in her bureau drawer.

She wrote John immediately. There was no answer, but she realized that
the weeks that went on so quietly in Monroe were bringing him rapidly
to fame and fortune.

"Mary Beatrice" was an instantaneous success. It was not quite poetry,
not quite drama, not quite history. But its combination of the three
took the fancy, first of the critics, then of the public. It was read,
quoted, and discussed more than any other book of the year. Martie
found John's photograph in all the literary magazines, and saw his name
everywhere. Interviews with him frequently stared at her from
unexpected places, and flattering prophecies of his future work were
sounded from all sides. Three special performances of "Mary Beatrice,"
and then three more, and three after that, were given in New York, and
literary clubs everywhere took up the book seriously for study.

Well, Martie thought, reviewing the matter, it w