fancy she must have got a lot more bills this morning.
It seems to me," Mrs. Trenor feelingly concluded, "that most of her
alimony is paid by other women's husbands!"

Miss Bart, on her way to the station, had leisure to muse over her
friend's words, and their peculiar application to herself. Why should
she have to suffer for having once, for a few hours, borrowed money of an
elderly cousin, when a woman like Carry Fisher could make a living
unrebuked from the good-nature of her men friends and the tolerance of
their wives? It all turned on the tiresome distinction between what a
married woman might, and a girl might not, do. Of course it was shocking
for a married woman to borrow money--and Lily was expertly aware of the
implication involved--but still, it was the mere MALUM PROHIBITUM which
the world decries but condones, and which, though it may be punished by
private vengeance, does not provoke the collective disapprobation of
society. To Miss Bart, in short, no such opportunities were possible. She
could of course borrow from her women friends--a hundred here or there,
at the utmost--but they were more ready to give a gown or a trinket, and
looked a little askance when she hinted her preference for a cheque.
Women are not generous lenders, and those among whom her lot was cast
were either in the same case as herself, or else too far removed from it
to understand its necessities. The result of her meditations was the
decision to join her aunt at Richfield. She could not remain at Bellomont
without playing bridge, and being involved in other expenses; and to
continue her usual series of autumn visits would merely prolong the same
difficulties. She had reached a point where abrupt retrenchment was
necessary, and the only cheap life was a dull life. She would start the
next morning for Richfield.

At the station she thought Gus Trenor seemed surprised, and not wholly
unrelieved, to see her. She yielded up the reins of the light runabout in
which she had driven over, and as he climbed heavily to her side,
crushing her into a scant third of the seat, he said: "Halloo! It isn't
often you honour me. You must have been uncommonly hard up for something
to do."

The afternoon was warm, and propinquity made her more than usually
conscious that he was red and massive, and that beads of moisture had
caused the dust of the train to adhere unpleasantly to the broad expanse
of cheek and neck which he turned to her; but she was