tween the two characters was delusive and vain.
She was seeing her, and she had quite the deepest
moment of her life in now obeying the instinct to
conceal the vision. She couldn't explain it no one
would understand. They would say clever Boston
things Mrs. Stringham was from Burlington, Ver
mont, which she boldly upheld as the real heart of
New England, Boston being " too far south " but
they would only darken counsel.

There could be no better proof, than this quick
intellectual split, of the impression made on our
friend, who shone, herself, she was well aware, with
but the reflected light of the admirable city. She
too had had her discipline, but it had not made
her striking; it had been prosaically usual, though
doubtless a decent dose; and had only made her
usual to match it usual, that is, as Boston went.
She had lost first her husband, and then her mother,
with whom, on her husband's death, she had lived
again; so that now, childless, she was but more
sharply single than before. But she sat rather
coldly light, having, as she called it, enough to live
on so far, that is, as she lived by bread alone:
how little indeed she was regularly content with that
diet appeared from the name she had made Susan
Shepherd Stringham as a contributor to the best
magazines. She wrote short stories, and she fondly
believed she had her " note," the art of showing
New England without showing it wholly in the
kitchen. She had not herself been brought up in

[[119]]

p118 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p119w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p120

v?