blossom into personages, to sink into nonentities, but their news-nose remained a part of them, and the inky, smoky, stuffy smell of a newspaper office was ever sweet in their nostrils.” 

 But, “Not yet,” Von Gerhard had said, “It unless you want to have again this miserable business of the sick nerfs. Wait yet a few months.” 

 And so I have waited, saying nothing to Norah and Max. But I want to be in the midst of things. I miss the sensation of having my fingers at the pulse of the big old world. I’m lonely for the noise and the rush and the hard work; for a glimpse of the busy local room just before press time, when the lights are swimming in a smoky haze, and the big presses downstairs are thundering their warning to hurry, and the men are breezing in from their runs with the grist of news that will be ground finer and finer as it passes through the mill of copy-readers’ and editors’ hands. I want to be there in the thick of the confusion that is, after all, so orderly. I want to be there when the telephone bells are zinging, and the typewriters are snapping, and the messenger boys are shuffling in and out, and the office kids are scuffling in a corner, and the big city editor, collar off, sleeves rolled up from his great arms, hair bristling wildly above his green eye-shade, is swearing gently and smoking cigarette after cigarette, lighting each fresh one at the dying glow of the last. I would give a year of my life to hear him say: 

 “I don’t mind tellin’ you, Beatrice Fairfax, that that was a darn good story you got on the Millhaupt divorce. The other fellows haven’t a word that isn’t re-hash.” 

 All of which is most unwomanly; for is not marriage woman’s highest aim, and home her true sphere? Haven’t I tried both? I ought to know. I merely have been miscast in this life’s drama. My part should have been that of one who makes her way alone. Peter, with his thin, cruel lips, and his shaking hands, and his haggard face and his smoldering eyes, is a shadow forever blotting out the sunny places in my path. I was meant to be an old maid, like the terrible old Kitty O’Hara. Not one of the tatting-and-tea kind, but an impressive, bustling old girl, with a double chin. The sharp-tongued Kitty O’Hara used to say that being an old maid was a great deal like death by drowning—a really delightful sensation when you ceased struggling. 

 Norah has pleaded with me to be more like other women of my age, and for her sake I’ve tried. She has led me about to bridge parties and tea fights, and I have tried to act as though I 

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