s homelessness.

"I don't quite see what you mean," she said, slowly.

"You couldn't see," Hilda told her, "and you will never see. Women
like you don't."

"We didn't get on very well together," Jean said, almost timidly, "but
that was because we were different."

"It wasn't because we were different that we didn't get on," Hilda
said. "It was because you were afraid of me. You knew your father
liked me."

With her usual frankness she spoke the truth as she saw it.

"I was not afraid," Jean faltered.

"You were. But we needn't talk about that. I am going to France."

"When?"

"As soon as I can get there. That's why I came here. To take away
some things I wanted."

"Oh--"

"And one of the things I wanted was the picture of your father which
hung in your room. I have taken that. You can get more of them. I
can't. So I have taken it."

They faced each other, this shining child and this dark woman.

"But--but it is mine--Hilda."

"It is mine now, and if I were you, I shouldn't make a fuss about it."

"Hilda, how dare you!" Jean began in the old indignant way, and
stopped. There was something so sinister about it all. She hated the
thought that she and Hilda were alone in the empty house--

"Hilda, if you go to France, shall you see Daddy?"

"I shall try. I had a letter from him the other day. He told me not
to come. But I am going. There is work to do, and I am going."

Jean had a stunned feeling, as if there was nothing left to say, as if
Hilda were indeed a rock, and words would rebound from her hard surface.

"But after all, you didn't really care for Daddy--"

"What makes you say that?"

"You were going to marry the General."

"Well, I wanted a home. I wanted some of the things you had always
had. I'm not old, and I am tired of being a machine."

For just one moment her anger blazed, then she laughed with something
of toleration.

"Oh, you'd never understand if I talked a year. So what's the use of
wasting breath?"

She said "Good-bye" after that, and Jean watched her go, hearing the
padded steps--until the front door shut and there was silence.

After that, with almost a sense of panic, she sped through the empty
rooms, finding the papers after a frantic search, and gaining the
street with a sense of escape.

Yet even then, it was sometime before her heart beat normally, and
always after that when she thought of Hilda, it was against the chill
and gloom of the emp