at
her own reflection.

"One cannot have everything, and you might have stayed there and
reveled in civilization if you had liked," she said.

Crossing to the door of the portico she stood a moment with fingers on
its handle, and once more looked about her. The car was very cosy, and
Maud Barrington had all the average young woman's appreciation of the
smoother side of life, although she had also the capacity, which is by
no means so common, for extracting the most it had to give from the
opposite one. Still, it was with a faint regret she prepared to
complete what had been a deed of renunciation. Montreal, with its
gayeties and luxuries, had not seemed so very far away while she was
carried west amid all the comforts artisans who were also artists could
provide for the traveler, but once that door closed behind her she
would be cut adrift from it all, and left face to face with the simple,
strenuous life of the prairie.

Maud Barrington had, however, made her mind up some weeks ago, and when
the lock closed with a little crack that seemed to emphasize the fact
that the door was shut, she had shaken the memories from her, and was
quietly prepared to look forward instead of back. It also needed some
little courage, for, as she stood with the furs fluttering about her on
the lurching platform, the cold went through her like a knife, and the
roofs of a little prairie town rose up above the willows the train was
now crawling through. The odors that greeted her nostrils were the
reverse of pleasant, and glancing down with the faintest shiver of
disgust, her eyes rested on the litter of empty cans, discarded
garments, and other even more unsightly things which are usually dumped
in the handiest bluff by the citizens of a springing Western town.
They have, for the most part, but little appreciation of the
picturesque, and it would take a good deal to affect their health.

Then the dwarfed trees opened out, and flanked by two huge wheat
elevators and a great water tank, the prairie city stood revealed. It
was crude and repellant, devoid of anything that could please the most
lenient eye, for the bare frame houses rose, with their rough boarding
weathered and cracked by frost and sun, hideous almost in their
simplicity, from the white prairie. Paint was apparently an unknown
luxury, and pavement there was none, though a rude plank platform
straggled some distance above the ground down either side of the
street, so t