Enters the Valley of Humiliation
III. Proves a Great City to Be a Great Solitude
IV. Shows That True Love Is True Service
V. Between Laura and Gerty
VI. Renewal

PART I

IMPULSE

CHAPTER I

IN WHICH THE ROMANTIC HERO IS CONSPICUOUS BY HIS ABSENCE

As the light fell on her face Gerty Bridewell awoke, stifled a yawn with
her pillow, and remembered that she had been very unhappy when she went
to bed. That was only six hours ago, and yet she felt now that her
unhappiness and the object of it, which was her husband, were of less
disturbing importance to her than the fact that she must get up and
stand for three minutes under the shower bath in her dressing-room. With
a sigh she pressed the pillow more firmly under her cheek, and lay
looking a little wistfully at her maid, who, having drawn back the
curtains at the window, stood now regarding her with the discreet and
confidential smile which drew from her a protesting frown of irritation.

"Well, I can't get up until I've had my coffee," she said in a voice
which produced an effect of mournful brightness rather than of anger, "I
haven't the strength to put so much as my foot out of bed."

Her eyes followed the woman across the room and through the door, and
then, turning instinctively to the broad mirror above her dressing
table, hung critically upon the brilliant red and white reflection in
the glass. It was her comforting assurance that every woman looked her
best in bed; and as she lay now, following the lines of her charming
figure beneath the satin coverlet, she found herself wondering, not
without resentment, why the possession of a beauty so conspicuous should
afford her only a slight and temporary satisfaction. Last week a woman
whom she knew had had her nose broken in an automobile accident, and as
she remembered this it seemed to her that the mere fact of her
undisfigured features was sufficient to be the cause of joyful
gratitude. But this, she knew, was not so, for her face was perfectly
unharmed; and yet she felt that she could hardly have been more
miserable, even with a broken nose.

Here she paused for an instant in order to establish herself securely in
her argument, for, though she could by no stretch of the imagination
regard her mind as of a meditative cast, there are hours when even to
the most flippant experience wears the borrowed mantle of philosophy.
Abstract theories of conduct diverted her but little; what she w