t artist's stroke, and
as she spread them out on the bed the scenes in which they had been worn
rose vividly before her. An association lurked in every fold: each fall
of lace and gleam of embroidery was like a letter in the record of her
past. She was startled to find how the atmosphere of her old life
enveloped her. But, after all, it was the life she had been made for:
every dawning tendency in her had been carefully directed toward it, all
her interests and activities had been taught to centre around it. She
was like some rare flower grown for exhibition, a flower from which every
bud had been nipped except the crowning blossom of her beauty.

Last of all, she drew forth from the bottom of her trunk a heap of white
drapery which fell shapelessly across her arm. It was the Reynolds dress
she had worn in the Bry TABLEAUX. It had been impossible for her to give
it away, but she had never seen it since that night, and the long
flexible folds, as she shook them out, gave forth an odour of violets
which came to her like a breath from the flower-edged fountain where she
had stood with Lawrence Selden and disowned her fate. She put back the
dresses one by one, laying away with each some gleam of light, some note
of laughter, some stray waft from the rosy shores of pleasure. She was
still in a state of highly-wrought impressionability, and every hint of
the past sent a lingering tremor along her nerves.

She had just closed her trunk on the white folds of the Reynolds dress
when she heard a tap at her door, and the red fist of the Irish
maid-servant thrust in a belated letter. Carrying it to the light, Lily
read with surprise the address stamped on the upper corner of the
envelope. It was a business communication from the office of her aunt's
executors, and she wondered what unexpected development had caused them
to break silence before the appointed time. She opened the envelope and a
cheque fluttered to the floor. As she stooped to pick it up the blood
rushed to her face. The cheque represented the full amount of Mrs.
Peniston's legacy, and the letter accompanying it explained that the
executors, having adjusted the business of the estate with less delay
than they had expected, had decided to anticipate the date fixed for the
payment of the bequests.

Lily sat down beside the desk at the foot of her bed, and spreading out
the cheque, read over and over the TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS written across it
in a steely business han