Lillian Underwood was my sworn friend.  With characteristic directness she had cut the Gordian knot of our misunderstanding by telling me, against Dicky’s protests, all about the old secret which her past and that of my husband shared.  After her story, with all that it revealed of her sacrifice and her fidelity to her own high ideals, there never again would be a doubt of her in my mind.  I was proud of her friendship, although, because of my mother-in-law’s prejudice against them, Dicky and I could not have the Underwoods at our home.

Our meetings, therefore, were few.  But I had an odd little feeling of safety and security whenever I thought of her.  I knew if any terrible trouble ever came to me I should fly to her as if she were my sister.

My work at the Lotus Study Club was going along smoothly.  At home Katie was so much more satisfactory than the maids I had seen in other establishments that I shut my eyes to many little things about which I knew my mother-in-law would have been most captious.

But my mother-in-law’s acerbity was softened by her weakness.  We grew quite companionable in the winter days when Dicky’s absence at the studio left us together.  Altogether I felt that life had been very good to me.

So the winter rolled away, and almost before we knew it the spring days came stealing in from the South, bringing to me their urgent call of brown earth and sprouting things.

I was not the only one who listened to the message of spring.  Mother Graham grew restless and used all of her meagre strength in drives to the parks and walks to a nearby square where the crocuses were just beginning to wave their brave greeting to the city.

The warmer days affected Dicky adversely.  He seemed a bit distrait, displayed a trifle of his earlier irritability, and complained a great deal about the warmth of the apartment.

“I tell you I can’t stand this any longer,” he said one particularly warm evening in April, as he sank into a chair, flinging his collar in one direction and his necktie in another.  “I’d rather be in the city in August than in these first warm days of spring.  What do you say to moving into the country for the summer?  Our month is up here the first, anyway, and I am perfectly willing to lose any part of the month’s rent if we only can get away.”

“But, Dicky,” I protested, “unless we board, which I don’t think any of us would like to do, how are we going to find a house, to say nothing of getting settled in so short a time?”

To my surprise, Dicky hesitated a moment before answering.  Then, flushing, he uttered the words which brought my little castle of contentment grumbling about me and warned me that my marital problems were not yet all solved.

“Why, you see, there won’t be any bother about a house.  Miss Draper has found a perfectly bully place not far from her sister’s home.”

“Miss Draper has found a house for us!”