! She owed it no allegiance. Her very
soul rebelled at the thought, and cried out that she was made for
something better, something higher than the life she had been leading.
She would permit no one forcibly to restrict her horizon.

Just where and how this higher and better life was to be found Honora did
not know; but the belief of her childhood--that it existed somewhere--was
still intact. Her powers of analysis, we see, are only just budding, and
she did not and could not define the ideal existence which she so
unflaggingly sought. Of two of its attributes only she was sure--that it
was to be free from restraint and from odious comparisons. Honora's
development, it may be remarked, proceeds by the action of irritants, and
of late her protest against Quicksands and what it represented had driven
her to other books besides the treatise on bridge. The library she had
collected at Rivington she had brought with her, and was adding to it
from time to time. Its volumes are neither sufficiently extensive or
profound to enumerate.

Those who are more or less skilled in psychology may attempt to establish
a sequence between the events and reflections just related and the fact
that, one morning a fortnight later, Honora found herself driving
northward on Fifth Avenue in a hansom cab. She was in a pleasurable state
of adventurous excitement, comparable to that Columbus must have felt
when the shores of the Old World had disappeared below the horizon.
During the fortnight we have skipped Honora had been to town several
times, and had driven and walked through certain streets: inspiration,
courage, and decision had all arrived at once this morning, when at the
ferry she had given the cabman this particular address on Fifth Avenue.

The cab, with the jerking and thumping peculiar to hansoms, made a circle
and drew up at the curb. But even then a moment of irresolution
intervened, and she sat staring through the little side window at the
sign, T. Gerald Shorter, Real Estate, in neat gold letters over the
basement floor of the building.

"Here y'are, Miss," said the cabman through the hole in the roof.

Honora descended, and was almost at the flight of steps leading down to
the office door when a familiar figure appeared coming out of it. It was
that of Mr. Toots Cuthbert, arrayed in a faultless morning suit, his tie
delicately suggestive of falling leaves; and there dangled over his arm
the slenderest of walking sticks.

"Mr