Mrs. Monroe had been filling lamps, and her thin dark hands were oily and streaked with soot, but she had been sympathetic about the kitten, and on her advice the invalid had been wrapped in a clean cloth, and laid tenderly on the heaps of soft, sweet, dying grass that had been raked to one side of the lawn.  Here kindly death had found the kitten a little later, and Martie, cat and all, had climbed into her mother’s lap and cried.  But she was not a little girl any longer—­ she would never feel her mother’s arms about her again.

The next day she received a box of roses, not remarkable roses, inasmuch as they were rather small, of a solid red, and wired heavily from the end of their sterns to the very flower.  But the enclosed note in which John Dryden said that he knew how hard it was for her, and was as sorry as he could be, touched Martie.  A far more beautiful gift would not have gone to her heart quite so deeply as did this cheap box and the damp card with its message smudged and blurred.

Through the long icy winter she began to feel, with a sense of vague pain, that life was passing, that if she and Wallace were ever to have that big, shadowy studio, that long-awaited time of informal hospitality and financial ease, it must come soon.  Her marriage was already measured by years; yet she was still a child in Wallace’s hands.  He could leave her thus bound and thus free; she was helpless, and she began to chafe against the injustice of it.  One day she found, and rewrote her old article, filled with her own resentful theories of a girl’s need of commercial fitness.  She sent it to a magazine; it was almost immediately returned.

But the episode bore fruit, none the less.  For, discussing it with John, as she discussed everything with John, she was led to accept his advice as to the appearance of the closely written sheets.  It would have a much better chance if it were typewritten, he assured her.  He carried it off to his stenographer.

This was in April, and as, with characteristic forgetfulness, he failed to bring it back, Martie, chancing to pass his office one day, determined to go in and get it for herself.  She had never been in John’s place of business before.  She went from the spring warmth and dazzle of the street into the pleasant dimness of the big store that smelled pleasantly of reedy things, wickerwork and carpets.

Three or four salesmen “swam out like trout” from the shadows to meet her, she told John presently, evoking one of his bursts of laughter.  One of them called him, and Martie had a sensation of real affection as he came down, his eager, faunlike face one radiant smile.  She spoke of the manuscript, but he hardly heard her.  Where could they talk?—­he said concernedly.  He glanced about; his face brightened.

“I know!  There’s a set of five rooms just finished by our decorator on the fourth floor; we’ll go there!”

“But, John—­truly I haven’t but a minute!” Martie protested.