er able to keep his millers long. They
complained of the gloom of the house, and said they could not get
enough to eat. Mrs. Royce went every summer to a vegetarian
sanatorium in Michigan, where she learned to live on nuts and
toasted cereals. She gave her family nourishment, to be sure, but
there was never during the day a meal that a man could look
forward to with pleasure, or sit down to with satisfaction. Mr.
Royce usually dined at the hotel in town. Nevertheless, his wife
was distinguished for certain brilliant culinary accomplishments.
Her bread was faultless. When a church supper was toward, she was
always called upon for her wonderful mayonnaise dressing, or her
angel-food cake,--sure to be the lightest and spongiest in any
assemblage of cakes.

A deep preoccupation about her health made Mrs. Royce like a
woman who has a hidden grief, or is preyed upon by a consuming
regret. It wrapped her in a kind of insensibility. She lived
differently from other people, and that fact made her distrustful
and reserved. Only when she was at the sanatorium, under the care
of her idolized doctors, did she feel that she was understood and
surrounded by sympathy.

Her distrust had communicated itself to her daughters and in
countless little ways had coloured their feelings about life.
They grew up under the shadow of being "different," and formed no
close friendships. Gladys Farmer was the only Frankfort girl who
had ever gone much to the mill house. Nobody was surprised when
Caroline Royce, the older daughter, went out to China to be a
missionary, or that her mother let her go without a protest. The
Royce women were strange, anyhow, people said; with Carrie gone,
they hoped Enid would grow up to be more like other folk. She
dressed well, came to town often in her car, and was always ready
to work for the church or the public library.

Besides, in Frankfort, Enid was thought very pretty,--in itself a
humanizing attribute. She was slender, with a small, well-shaped
head, a smooth, pale skin, and large, dark, opaque eyes with
heavy lashes. The long line from the lobe of her ear to the tip
of her chin gave her face a certain rigidity, but to the old
ladies, who are the best critics in such matters, this meant
firmness and dignity. She moved quickly and gracefully, just
brushing things rather than touching them, so that there was a
suggestion of flight about her slim figure, of gliding away from
her surroundings. When the Sunday