ity in the yards.

Her business was finished within a few hours and when she made her
adieu, Kate looked for Bowers to tell him that she was leaving for
Prouty on a night train, presuming that he would wish to do likewise.
But Bowers appeared to have vanished as entirely as though he had been
shanghaied and was a hundred miles at sea. It was singular that he had
not first learned her plans before leaving the stockyards.

The omission hurt Kate, for they had talked much of what they would do
and see when they reached Omaha. Bowers, with his superior knowledge of
city life, was to show her about; they were to dine together in one of
the best restaurants, to see a play and look in the shops. Kate never
had been on a street car or in a "machine," so she had counted on him to
pilot her from South Omaha to the city proper. Disappointed and hurt by
Bowers's neglect, she wandered aimlessly about the streets in the
vicinity of her hotel, stopping occasionally to look at the cheap wares
displayed in the windows of the small shops of South Omaha.

The hurrying passersby slackened their steps to stare at her in candid
interest, and she wondered if it were possible that her conspicuousness
had anything to do with Bowers's mysterious disappearance. It seemed an
ungenerous thought, but how else account for it, knowing as she did that
he had no friends, no business in Omaha, and in the past there never had
been a time when he had not preferred her society to that of everyone
else?

The elation consequent upon her day of triumph gradually oozed out, to
be replaced by the sense of dreariness that comes from being alone in a
crowd. Then, too, she had a feeling of contempt for herself for the
swift dreams of something different aroused by the day's events.
Optimism had come to be synonymous with weakness to Kate. Now, as she
stared indifferently at a display of tawdry blouses, she was asking
herself if she had not yet learned her lesson, but that upon the
strength of a little ephemeral happiness she must needs begin and build
air castles again.

The waning day was cloudy, the crossings deep with slush, the pavements
damp, and the chill of her wet soles made her shiver, adding the last
touch to her forlornness and the depression which Bowers's desertion had
induced. She dreaded returning to her cheerless room, but she could not
walk the streets indefinitely, so she bought a magazine to read until it
was time to dine alone in some one o