"That's a big if--as you'll discover in a year or so."

"You'll see," said Mildred confidently. "Why, I've nothing else to do, and no other hope."

Mrs. Brindley's smile had a certain sadness in it. She said:

"It's the biggest if in all this world."

V

AT Mrs. Belloc's a telephone message from Jennings was awaiting her; he would call at a quarter-past eight and would detain Miss Stevens only a moment. And at eight fifteen exactly he rang the bell. This time Mildred was prepared; she refused to be disconcerted by his abrupt manner and by his long sharp nose that seemed to warn away, to threaten away, even to thrust away any glance seeking to investigate the rest of his face or his personality. She looked at him candidly, calmly, and seeingly. Seeingly. With eyes that saw as they had never seen before.

Perhaps from the death of her father, certainly from the beginning of Siddall's courtship, Mildred had been waking up. There is a part of our nature--the active and aggressive part--that sleeps all our lives long or becomes atrophied if we lead lives of ease and secure dependence. It is the important part of us, too--the part that determines character. The thing that completed the awakening of Mildred was her acquaintance with Mrs. Belloc. That positive and finely-poised lady fascinated her, influenced her powerfully--gave her just what she needed at the particular moment. The vital moments in life are not the crises over which shallow people linger, but are the moments where we met and absorbed the ideas that enabled us to weather these crises. The acquaintance with Mrs. Belloc was one of those vital moments; for, Mrs. Belloc's personality--her look and manner, what she said and the way she said it--was a proffer to Mildred of invaluable lessons which her awakening character eagerly absorbed. She saw Jennings as he was. She decided that he was of common origin, that his vanity was colossal and aquiver throughout with sensitiveness; that he belonged to the familiar type of New-Yorker who succeeds by bluffing.

Also, she saw or felt a certain s.e.xlessness or indifference to s.e.x--and this she later understood. Men whose occupation compels them constantly to deal with women go to one extreme or the other--either become acutely sensitive to women as women or become utterly indifferent, unless their highly discriminated taste is appealed to--which cannot happen often. Jennings, teaching only women because only women spending money they had not earned and could not earn would tolerate his terms and his methods, had, as much through necessity as through inclination, gone to the extreme of lack of interest in all matters of s.e.x. One look at him and the woman who had come with the idea of offering herself in full or part payment for lessons drooped in instinctive discouragement.

Jennings hastened to explain to Mildred that she need not hesitate about closing with Mrs. Brindley. "Your lessons are arranged for,"

said he. "There has been put in the Plaza Trust Company to your credit the sum of five thousand dollars. This gives you about a hundred dollars a week for your board and other personal expenses. If that is not enough, you will let me know. But I estimated that it would be enough. I do not think it wise for young women entering upon the preparation for a serious career to have too much money."

"It is more than enough," murmured the girl. "I know nothing about those things, but it seems to me--"

"You can use as little of it as you like," interrupted Jennings, rising.

Mildred felt as though she had been caught and exposed in a hypocritical protest. Jennings was holding out something toward her.

She took it, and he went on:

"That's your check-book. The bank will send you statements of your account, and will notify you when any further sums are added. Now, I have nothing more to do with your affairs--except, of course, the artistic side--your development as a singer. You've not forgotten your appointment?"

"No," said Mildred, like a primary school-child before a formidable teacher.

"Be prompt, please. I make no reduction for lessons wholly or partly missed. The half-hour I shall a.s.sign to you belongs to you. If you do not use it, that is your affair. At first you will probably be like all women--careless about your appointments, coming with lessons unprepared, telephoning excuses. But if you are serious you will soon fall into the routine." "I shall try to be regular," murmured Mildred.

Jennings apparently did not hear. "I'm on my way to the opera-house,"

said he. "One of my old pupils is appearing in a new role, and she is nervous. Good night."

Once more that swift, quiet exit, followed almost instantaneously by the sound of wheels rolling away. Never had she seen such rapidity of motion without loss of dignity. "Yes, he's a fraud," she said to herself, "but he's a good one."

The idea of a career had now become less indefinite. It was still without any attraction--not because of the toil it involved, for that made small impression upon her who had never worked and had never seen anyone work, but because a career meant cutting herself off from everything she had been brought up to regard as fit and proper for a lady. She was ashamed of this; she did not admit its existence even to herself, and in her talks with Baird about the career she had professed exactly the opposite view. Yet there it was--nor need she have been ashamed of a feeling that is instilled into women of her cla.s.s from babyhood as part of their ladylike education. The career had not become definite. She could not imagine herself out on a stage in some sort of a costume, with a painted face, singing before an audience.

Still, the career was less indefinite than when it had no existence beyond Stanley Baird's enthusiasm and her own whipped-up pretense of enthusiasm.

She shrank from the actual start, but at the same time was eager for it. Inaction began to fret her nerves, and she wished to be doing something to show her appreciation of Stanley Baird's generosity. She telephoned Mrs. Brindley that she would come in the morning, and then she told her landlady.

Mrs. Belloc was more than regretful; she was distressed. Said she: "I've taken a tremendous fancy to you, and I hate to give you up. I'd do most anything to keep you."

Mildred explained that her work compelled her to go.

"That's very interesting," said Mrs. Belloc. "If I were a few years younger, and hadn't spent all my energy in teaching school and putting through that marriage, I'd try to get on the stage, myself. I don't want to lose sight of you."

"Oh, I'll come to see you from time to time."

"No, you won't," said Mrs. Belloc practically. "No more than I'd come to see you. Our lives lie in different directions, and in New York that means we'll never have time to meet. But we may be thrown together again, some time. As I've got a twenty years' lease on this house, I guess you'll have no trouble in finding me. I suppose I could look you up through Professor Jennings?"

"Yes," said Mildred. Then impulsively, "Mrs. Belloc, there's a reason why I'd like to change without anyone's knowing what has become of me--I mean, anyone that might be--watching me."

"I understand perfectly," said Mrs. Belloc with a ready sympathy that made Mildred appreciate the advantages of the friendship of unconventional, knock-about people. "Nothing could be easier. You've got no luggage but that bag. I'll take it up to the Grand Central Station and check it, and bring the check back here. You can send for it when you please."

"But what about me?" said Mildred.

"I was coming to that. You walk out of here, say, about half an hour after I go in the taxi. You walk through to the corner of Lexington Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street--there aren't any cabs to be had there. I'll be waiting in the taxi, and we'll make a dash up the East Side and I can drop you at some quiet place in the park and go on--and you can walk to your new address. How does that strike you?"

Mildred expressed her admiration. The plan was carried out, as Mrs.

Belloc--a born genius at all forms of intrigue--had evolved it in perfection on the spur of the moment. As they went up the far East Side, Mrs. Belloc, looking back through the little rear window, saw a taxi a few blocks behind them. "We haven't given them the slip yet,"

said she, "but we will in the park." They entered the park at East Ninetieth Street, crossed to the West Drive. Acting on Mrs. Belloc's instructions, the motorman put on full speed--with due regard to the occasional policeman. At a sharp turning near the Mall, when the taxi could be seen from neither direction, he abruptly stopped. Out sprang Mildred and disappeared behind the bushes completely screening the walk from the drive. At once the taxi was under-way again. She, waiting where the screen of bushes was securely thick, saw the taxi that had followed them in the East Side flash by--in pursuit of Mrs. Belloc alone.

She was free--at least until some mischance uncovered her to the little general. At Mrs. Brindley's she found a note awaiting her--a note from Stanley Baird:

DEAR MILDRED:

I'm of for the Far West, and probably shall not be in town again until the early summer. The club forwards my mail and repeats telegrams as marked. Go in and win, and don't hesitate to call on me if you need me. No false pride, PLEASE! I'm getting out of the way because it's obviously best for the present.

STANLEY.

As she finished, her sense of freedom was complete. She had not realized how uneasy she was feeling about Stanley. She did not doubt his generosity, did not doubt that he genuinely intended to leave her free, and she believed that his delicacy was worthy of his generosity.

Still, she was constantly fearing lest circ.u.mstances should thrust them both--as much against his will as hers--into a position in which she would have to choose between seeming, not to say being, ungrateful, and playing the hypocrite, perhaps basely, with him. The little general eluded, Stanley voluntarily removed; she was indeed free. Now she could work with an untroubled mind, could show Mrs. Brindley that intelligent and persistent work--her "biggest if in all the world"--was in fact a very simple matter.

She had not been settled at Mrs. Brindley's many hours before she discovered that not only was she free from all hindrances, but was to have a positive and great help. Mrs. Brindley's talent for putting people at their ease was no mere drawing-room trick.

She made Mildred feel immediately at home, as she had not felt at home since her mother introduced James Presbury into their house at Hanging Rock. Mrs. Brindley was absolutely devoid of pretenses. When Mildred spoke to her of this quality in her she said:

"I owe that to my husband. I was brought up like everybody else--to be more or less of a poser and a hypocrite. In fact, I think there was almost nothing genuine about me. My husband taught me to be myself, to be afraid of n.o.body's opinion, to show myself just as I was and to let people seek or avoid me as they saw fit. He was that sort of man himself."

"He must have been a remarkable man," said Mildred.

"He was," replied Mrs. Brindley. "But not attractive--at least not to me. Our marriage was a mistake. We quarreled whenever we were not at work with the music. If he had not died, we should have been divorced." She smiled merrily. "Then he would have hired me as his musical secretary, and we'd have got on beautifully."

Mildred was still thinking of Mrs. Brindley's freedom from pretense.

"I've never dared be myself," confessed she. "I don't know what myself really is like. I was thinking the other day how for one reason and another I've been a hypocrite all my life. You see, I've always been a dependent--have always had to please someone in order to get what I wanted."

"You can never be yourself until you have an independent income, however small," said Mrs. Brindley. "I've had that joy only since my husband died. It's as well that I didn't have it sooner. One is the better for having served an apprenticeship at self-repression and at pretending to virtues one has not. Only those who earn their freedom know how to use it. If I had had it ten or fifteen years ago I'd have been an intolerable tyrant, making everyone around me unhappy and therefore myself. The ideal world would be one where everyone was born free and never knew anything else. Then, no one being afraid or having to serve, everyone would have to be considerate in order to get himself tolerated."

"I wonder if I really ever shall be able to earn a living?" sighed Mildred.

"You must decide that whatever you can make shall be for you a living,"

said the older woman. "I have lived on my fixed income, which is under two thousand a year. And I am ready to do it again rather than tolerate anything or anybody that does not suit me."

"I shall have to be extremely careful," laughed Mildred. "I shall be a dreadful hypocrite with you."

Mrs. Brindley smiled; but underneath, Mildred saw--or perhaps felt--that her new friend was indeed not one to be trifled with. She said: