but as
she passed in review what her mother had said and how she had said it
she saw that for all the protests and arguings her mother was more than
resigned to her departure. Mildred felt no bitterness; ever since she
could remember her mother had been a shifter of responsibility. Still,
to stare into the face of so disagreeable a fact as that one had no
place on earth to go to, no one on earth to turn to, not even one's own
mother--to stare on at that grimacing ugliness did not tend to
cheerfulness. Mildred tried to think of the future--but how could she
think of something that was nothing? She knew that she would go on,
somehow, in some direction, but by no effort of her imagination could
she picture it. She was so impressed by the necessity of considering
the future that, to rouse herself, she tried to frighten herself with
pictures of poverty and misery, of herself a derelict in the vast and
cold desert of New York--perhaps in rags, hungry, ill, but all in vain.
She did not believe it. Always she had had plenty to wear and to eat,
and comfortable surroundings. She could no more think of herself as
without those things than a living person can imagine himself dead.

"I'm a fool," she said to herself. "I'm certain to get into all sorts
of trouble. How can it be otherwise, when I've no money, no friends,
no experience, no way of making a living--no honest way--perhaps no way
of the other kind, either?" There are many women who ecstasize their
easily tickled vanities by fancying that if they were so disposed they
need only flutter an eyelid to have men by the legion striving for
their favors, each man with a bag of gold. Mildred, inexperienced as
she was, had no such delusions. Her mind happened not to be of that
chastely licentious caste which continually revolves and fantastically
exaggerates the things of the body.

She could not understand her own indifference about the future. She
did not realize that it was wholly due to Stanley Baird's offer. She
was imagining she was regarding that offer as something she might
possibly consider, but probably would not. She did not know that her
soul had seized upon it, had enfolded it and would on no account let it
go. It is the habit of our secret selves thus to make decisions and
await their own good time for making us acquainted with them.

With her bag on the seat beside her she set out to find a temporary
lodging. Not until several hotels had refused her