nge contrast as they stood on that new street, with its
new vitrified brick paving and white stone curbs, and new little trees
set out in front of new little houses: Mrs. Mayo (for such, Honora's cook
had informed her, was her name) in a housekeeper's apron and a
shirtwaist, and Honora, almost a head taller, in a walking costume of
dark grey that would have done justice to Fifth Avenue. The admiration in
the little woman's eyes was undisguised.

"You're getting a bill, I hear," she said, after a moment.

"A bill?" repeated Honora.

"A bill of divorce," explained Mrs. Mayo.

Honora was conscious of conflicting emotions: astonishment, resentment,
and--most curiously--of relief that the little woman knew it.

"Yes," she answered.

But Mrs. Mayo did not appear to notice or resent her brevity.

"I took a fancy to you the minute I saw you," she said. "I can't say as
much for the other Easterner that was here last year. But I made up my
mind that it must be a mighty mean man who would treat you badly."

Honora stood as though rooted to the pavement. She found a reply
impossible.

"When I think of my luck," her neighbour continued, "I'm almost ashamed.
We were married on fifteen dollars a week. Of course there have been
trials, we must always expect that; and we've had to work hard, but--it
hasn't hurt us." She paused and looked up at Honora, and added
contritely: "There! I shouldn't have said anything. It's mean of me to
talk of my happiness. I'll drop in some afternoon--if you'll let me
--when I get through my work," said the little woman.

"I wish you would," replied Honora.

She had much to think of on her walk that morning, and new resolutions to
make. Here was happiness growing and thriving, so far as she could see,
without any of that rarer nourishment she had once thought so necessary.
And she had come two thousand miles to behold it.

She walked many miles, as a part of the regimen and discipline to which
she had set herself. Her haunting horror in this place, as she thought of
the colony of which Mr. Beckwith had spoken and of Mrs. Boutwell's row of
French novels, was degeneration. She was resolved to return to Chiltern a
better and a wiser and a truer woman, unstained by the ordeal. At the
outskirts of the town she halted by the river's bank, breathing deeply of
the pure air of the vast plains that surrounded her.

She was seated that afternoon at her desk in the sitting-room upstairs
when she heard th