She had a house, but she had no home.  Again and again the thought came to her that in a million homes that morning the air was full of music—­hearty greetings between parents and children, sweet prattle from lips unstained, merry laughter from bosoms without a care.  With a heart full of tender regrets for the mistakes and errors of the past, with unspeakable contempt for the life she was living, and with vain yearnings for something better, she rose and determined to join the throngs that were pressing into the churches.  Hastily prepared for the street, she went out, and soon, her heart responding to the Christmas music, and her voice to the Christmas utterances from the altar, she strove to lift her heart in devotion.  She felt the better for it.  It was an old habit, and the spasm was over.  Having done a good thing, she turned her ear away from the suggestions of her good angel, and, in turning away, encountered the suggestions of worldliness from the other side, which came back to her with their old music.  She came out of the church as one comes out of a theater, where for hours he has sat absorbed in the fictitious passion of a play, to the grateful rush and roar of Broadway, the flashing of the lights, and the shouting of the voices of the real world.

Mr. Belcher called that evening, and she was glad to see him.  Arrayed in all her loveliness, sparkling with vivacity and radiant with health, she sat and wove her toils about him.  She had never seemed lovelier in his eyes, and, as he thought of the unresponsive and quiet woman he had left behind him, he felt that his home was not on Fifth Avenue, but in the house where he then sat.  Somehow—­he could not tell how—­she had always kept him at a distance.  He had not dared to be familiar with her.  Up to a certain point he could carry his gallantries, but no further.  Then the drift of conversation would change.  Then something called her away.  He grew mad with the desire to hold her hand, to touch her, to unburden his heart of its passion for her, to breathe his hope of future possession; but always, when the convenient moment came, he was gently repelled, tenderly hushed, adroitly diverted.  He knew the devil was in her; he believed that she was fond of him, and thus knowing and believing, he was at his wit’s end to guess why she should be so persistently perverse.  He had drank that day, and was not so easily managed as usual, and she had a hard task to hold him to his proprieties.  There was only one way to do this, and that was to assume the pathetic.

Then she told him of her lonely day, her lack of employment, her wish that she could be of some use in the world, and, finally, she wondered whether Mrs. Belcher would like to have her, Mrs. Dillingham, receive with her on New Year’s Day.  If that lady would not consider it an intrusion, she should be happy to shut her own house, and thus be able to present all the gentlemen of the city worth knowing, not only to Mrs. Belcher, but to her husband.