at Allan Harrington's attitude of absolute
detachment made the whole affair seem much easier for her. And when Mrs.
Harrington slipped a solitaire diamond into her hand as she went,
instead of disliking it she enjoyed its feel on her finger, and the
flash of it in the light. She thanked Mrs. Harrington for it with real
gratitude. But it made her feel more than ever engaged to marry her
mother-in-law.

She walked home rather silently with Mrs. De Guenther. Only at the foot
of the De Guenther steps, she made one absent remark.

"He must have been delightful," she said, "when he was alive!"

VI

After a week of the old bustling, dusty hard work, the Liberry Teacher's
visit to the De Guenthers' and the subsequent one at the Harringtons',
and even her sparkling white ring, seemed part of a queer story she had
finished and put back on the shelf. The ring was the most real thing,
because it was something of a worry. She didn't dare leave it at home,
nor did she want to wear it. She finally sewed it in a chamois bag that
she safety-pinned under her shirt-waist. Then she dismissed it from her
mind also. There is very little time in a Liberry Teacher's life for
meditation. Only once in a while would come to her the vision of the
wistful Harrington wolfhound following his inadequate patch of sunlight,
or of the dusky room where Allan Harrington lay inert and white, and
looking like a wonderful carved statue on a tomb.

She began to do a little to her clothes, but not very much, because she
had neither time nor money. Mr. De Guenther had wanted her to take some
money in advance, but she had refused. She did not want it till she had
earned it, and, anyway, it would have made the whole thing so real, she
knew, that she would have backed out.

"And it isn't as if I were going to a lover," she defended herself to
Mrs. De Guenther with a little wistful smile. "Nobody will know what I
have on, any more than they do now."

Mrs. De Guenther gave a scandalized little cry. Her attitude was
determinedly that it was just an ordinary marriage, as good an excuse
for sentiment and pretty frocks as any other.

"My dear child," she replied firmly, "you are going to have one pretty
frock and one really good street-suit _now_, or I will know why! The
rest you may get yourself after the wedding, but you must obey me in
this. Nonsense!--you can get a half-day, as you call it, perfectly well!
What's Albert in politics for, if he can't g