Pauline was glad, too, of the opportunity really to know a countrywoman of a type so different from her own friends.  She, like Wilbur, had heard all her life of these interesting and inspiring beings; intense, marvellously capable, peerless, free-born creatures panoplied in chastity and endowed with congenital mental power and bodily charms, who were able to cook, educate children, control society and write literature in the course of the day’s employment.  The newspapers and popular opinion had given her to understand that these were the true Americans, and caused her to ask herself whether the circle to which she herself belonged was not retrograde from a nobler ideal.  In what way she did not precisely understand, except that she and her friends did not altogether disdain nice social usages and conventional womanly ways.  But, nevertheless, the impression had remained in her mind that she must be at fault somehow, and it interested her that she would now be able to understand wherein she was inferior.

She went to see Selma as often as she could, and encouraged her to call at her lodgings on the mornings when she was at home, expecting that it might please her sister-in-law to become familiar with the budding educational enterprises, and that thus a fresh bond of sympathy would be established between them.  Selma presented herself three or four times in the course of the next three months, and on the first occasion expressed gratifying appreciation of the cosiness of the new lodgings.

“I almost envy you,” she said, “your freedom to live your own life and do just what you like.  It must be delightful away up here where you can see over the tops of the houses and almost touch the sky, and there is no one to disturb the current of your thoughts.  It must be a glorious place to work and write.  I shall ask you to let me come up here sometimes when I wish to be alone with my own ideas.”

“As often as you like.  You shall have a pass key.”

“I should think,” said Selma, continuing to gaze, with her far away look, over the vista of roofs which the top story of the apartment house commanded, “that you would be a great deal happier than if you had married him.”

The pause which ensued caused her to look round, and add jauntily, “I have heard, you know, about Dr. Page.”

A wave of crimson spread over Pauline’s face—­the crimson of wounded surprise, which froze Selma’s genial intentions to the core.

“I didn’t think you’d mind talking about it,” she said stiffly.

“There’s nothing to talk about.  Since you have mentioned it, Dr. Page is a dear friend of mine, and will always continue to be, I hope.”

“Oh, I knew you were nothing but friends now,” Selma answered.  She felt wounded in her turn.  She had come with the wish to be gracious and companionable, and it had seemed to her a happy thought to congratulate Pauline on the wisdom of her decision.  She did not like people who were not ready to be communicative and discuss their intimate concerns.