little flats that were springing up, seemingly over
night, all through Chicago's South Side.

There was nothing domestic about Carrie. She had given up teaching two
years before, and had gone into Social Service work on the West Side.
She had what is known as a legal mind--hard, clear, orderly--and she
made a great success of it. Her dream was to live at the Settlement
House and give all her time to the work. Upon the little household she
bestowed a certain amount of grim, capable attention. It was the same
kind of attention she would have given a piece of machinery whose oiling
and running had been entrusted to her care. She hated it, and didn't
hesitate to say so.

Jo took to prowling about department store basements, and household
goods sections. He was always sending home a bargain in a ham, or a sack
of potatoes, or fifty pounds of sugar, or a window clamp, or a new kind
of paring knife. He was forever doing odd little jobs that the janitor
should have done. It was the domestic in him claiming its own.

Then, one night, Carrie came home with a dull glow in her leathery
cheeks, and her eyes alight with resolve. They had what she called a
plain talk.

"Listen, Jo. They've offered me the job of first assistant resident
worker. And I'm going to take it. Take it! I know fifty other girls
who'd give their ears for it. I go in next month."

They were at dinner. Jo looked up from his plate, dully. Then he glanced
around the little dining room, with its ugly tan walls and its heavy,
dark furniture (the Calumet Avenue pieces fitted cumbersomely into the
five-room flat).

"Away? Away from here, you mean--to live?" Carrie laid down her fork.
"Well, really, Jo! After all that explanation."

"But to go over there to live! Why, that neighbourhood's full of dirt,
and disease, and crime, and the Lord knows what all. I can't let you do
that, Carrie."

Carrie's chin came up. She laughed a short little laugh. "Let me!
That's eighteenth-century talk, Jo. My life's my own to live. I'm
going."

And she went.

Jo stayed on in the apartment until the lease was up. Then he sold what
furniture he could, stored or gave away the rest, and took a room on
Michigan Avenue in one of the old stone mansions whose decayed splendour
was being put to such purpose.

Jo Hertz was his own master. Free to marry. Free to come and go. And he
found he didn't even think of marrying. He didn't even want to come or
go, particularly. A rather frum