u mustn't encourage me to
be a coward and to shirk. That's why I'm coming here."

"I understand," said Mrs. Belloc. "I've got the New England streak of
hardness in me, though I believe that masseuse has almost ironed it out
of my face. Do I look like a New England schoolmarm?"

Mildred could truthfully answer that there wasn't a trace of it.

When she returned to Mrs. Brindley's--already she had ceased to think
of it as home--she announced her new plans. Mrs. Brindley said
nothing, but Mildred understood the quick tightening of the lines round
her mouth and the shifting of the eyes. She hastened to explain that
Mrs. Belloc was no longer the sort of woman or the sort of landlady she
had been a few months before. Mrs. Brindley of the older New York,
could neither understand nor believe in the people of the new and real
New York whom it molds for better or for worse so rapidly--and even
remolds again and again. But Mildred was able to satisfy her that the
house was at least not suspicious.

"It doesn't matter where you're going," said Mrs. Brindley. "It's that
you are going. I can't bear giving you up. I had hoped that our lives
would flow on and on together." She was with difficulty controlling
her emotions. "It's these separations that age one, that take one's
life. I almost wish I hadn't met you."

Mildred was moved, herself. Not so much as Mrs. Brindley because she
had the necessities of her career gripping her and claiming the
strongest feelings there were in her. Also, she was much the younger,
not merely in years but in experience. And separations have no real
poignancy in them for youth.

"Yes, I know you love me," said Cyrilla, "but love doesn't mean to you
what it means to me. I'm in that middle period of life where
everything has its fullest meaning. In youth we're easily consoled and
distracted because life seems so full of possibilities, and we can't
believe friendship and love are rare, and still more rarely worth
while. In old age, when the arteries harden and the blood flows slow
and cold, we become indifferent. But between thirty-five and fifty-five
how the heart can ache!" She smiled, with trembling lips. "And how it
can rejoice!" she cried bravely. "I must not forget to mention that.
Ah, my dear, you must learn to live intensely. If I had had your
chance!"

"Ridiculous!" laughed Mildred. "You talk like an old woman. And I
never think of you as older than myself."

"I AM a