es and rumblings of the street.
Her week of idleness had brought home to her with exaggerated force these
small aggravations of the boarding-house world, and she yearned for that
other luxurious world, whose machinery is so carefully concealed that one
scene flows into another without perceptible agency.

At length she rose and dressed. Since she had left Mme. Regina's she had
spent her days in the streets, partly to escape from the uncongenial
promiscuities of the boarding-house, and partly in the hope that physical
fatigue would help her to sleep. But once out of the house, she could not
decide where to go; for she had avoided Gerty since her dismissal from
the milliner's, and she was not sure of a welcome anywhere else.

The morning was in harsh contrast to the previous day. A cold grey sky
threatened rain, and a high wind drove the dust in wild spirals up and
down the streets. Lily walked up Fifth Avenue toward the Park, hoping to
find a sheltered nook where she might sit; but the wind chilled her, and
after an hour's wandering under the tossing boughs she yielded to her
increasing weariness, and took refuge in a little restaurant in
Fifty-ninth Street. She was not hungry, and had meant to go without
luncheon; but she was too tired to return home, and the long perspective
of white tables showed alluringly through the windows.

The room was full of women and girls, all too much engaged in the rapid
absorption of tea and pie to remark her entrance. A hum of shrill voices
reverberated against the low ceiling, leaving Lily shut out in a little
circle of silence. She felt a sudden pang of profound loneliness. She had
lost the sense of time, and it seemed to her as though she had not spoken
to any one for days. Her eyes sought the faces about her, craving a
responsive glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble. But the
sallow preoccupied women, with their bags and note-books and rolls of
music, were all engrossed in their own affairs, and even those who sat by
themselves were busy running over proof-sheets or devouring magazines
between their hurried gulps of tea. Lily alone was stranded in a great
waste of disoccupation.

She drank several cups of the tea which was served with her portion of
stewed oysters, and her brain felt clearer and livelier when she emerged
once more into the street. She realized now that, as she sat in the
restaurant, she had unconsciously arrived at a final decision. The
discovery gave