ue, and lights pricked against it as against a scarf of
gauze.

Oh, it was sickening--it was sickening--to think that life was so grim
and hard for the thousands, and so unnecessarily, so superlatively
beautiful for the few! What had Mary Bishop and Katrina ever done, that
they should travel in private cars, fling aside furs that had cost as
much as many a man's yearly salary, chatter of the plantation near the
beach at Hawaii, or of reaching Saint James's for the January
Drawing-Room!

Norma stopped to give twenty-five cents to an old Italian organ grinder,
and worked him into her theme as she went on. Why _should_ he look so
grateful for her casual charity, he, seventy years old, Katrina and Mary
averaging less than twenty!

She reached Aunt Kate's flat in a thorough temper, angry, headachy,
almost feverish after the rich scones and the rich tea, and the even
less wholesome talk. The apartment house seemed, as indeed it was, grimy
and odorous almost to squalor, and Aunt Kate almost hateful in her
cheerfulness and energy. This was Wednesday, and on Wednesday evenings
she was always happy, for then Wolf and Norma came to dinner with her.
To-night, busily manipulating pans and pots, she told Norma that she had
rented the two extra bedrooms of the apartment to three young trained
nurses, ideal tenants in every way.

"They'll get their breakfasts here, and--if I'm away--there's no reason
why they shouldn't cook themselves a little dinner now and then," said
Aunt Kate, in her rich, motherly voice. "They were tickled to death to
get the two rooms for twenty dollars, and that makes my own rent only
seventeen more. I asked them if that was too much, and they said, no,
they'd expected to pay at least ten apiece."

Norma listened, unsympathetic and gloomy. It was all so petty and so
poor--trained nurses, and apple pie, and Aunt Kate renting rooms, and
Wolf eager to be promoted to factory manager.

She wanted to go back--back to the life in which Annie really noticed
her, gave her luncheons, included her. She wanted to count for something
with Mary and Katrina and Leslie; she wanted to talk to Chris about his
possible ambassadorship; she wanted them all to agree that Norma's wit
and charm more than made up for Norma's lack of fortune. While she
brushed her hair, in the room that would shortly accommodate two of the
three little nurses, she indulged in an unsatisfying dream in which she
went to London with Alice--and that a