had no time for, and why must there always be
explanations and reasons and justifications for one's acts? The
daily realization each morning, on awaking, that the day is mine,
that there are no customs with which to comply, no regulations to
follow, no conventions to be conformed to, at the end of two weeks
still stirs and thrills and awes me a little, and I am constantly
afraid it is not true that I am here to stay. And then again with
something of fear and shrinking and uncertainty I realize my bridges
are burned and I must stay.

"It's pleased you are with your rooms, I hope, Miss Dandridge?"
Hands on her hips, Mrs. Mundy had looked somewhat anxiously at me
before going out. "If it's a home-looking place you're after, you've
got it, but when you first come down to Scarborough Square it made me
feel queer inside to think of your living here, really living. If
you think you can be satisfied--"

"I am sure I can be satisfied. Why not?" I smiled and, going over
to the window, straightened the curtain which had caught and twisted
a fern-leaf growing in its box. "I am a perfectly unincumbered human
being who--"

"But an unincumbered woman ain't much of a human being." Mrs. Mundy
dropped the afternoon paper she had brought up and stooped to get it.
"I mean a woman is made for incumbrances, and if she don't have
any--" She hesitated, and looked around the room with its simple
furnishings, its firelight and lamplight, its many books and few
pictures, its rugs and desk and tables, the gifts of other days, and
presently she spoke again. "Being you like so to look out the
windows, it's well this house has two front rooms opening into each
other. If it's comfortable and convenient that you want to be,
you're certainly that, but comforts and conveniences don't keep you
company exactly."

"I don't want company yet. You and Bettina are all I need. I
haven't said I was to live here a thousand years, or that I wouldn't
get tired of myself in less time, but until I do--"

There was a ring at the front-door bell and Mrs. Mundy went to answer
it. The puzzled look I often saw in her eyes when talking to me
still filled them, but she said nothing more except good night, and
when I heard her footsteps in the hall below I went to the door and
locked it. This new privacy, this sense of freedom from unescapable
interruption, was still so precious, that though an unnecessary
precaution, I turned the key that I might feel