How It Happened

still open, then went over and closed it. Coming back to the table at which she had been writing, she sat down and took u

trangely on her mind, always he was in her heart, but thought of him was forced to be subconscious, for none other was allowed. Of late, however, crowd it back as she would, a haunting sense of his p

them she was making effort to escape when Carmencita burst in upon her. The latter was too excited, too full of some new adventure, to talk clearly or coherently. Always Carmencita was adventuring, but what could she mean by d

he desk-pad with her pen and made small dots in the large circles

herto avoided, and in this section they were chiefly what was found. Why should he have come to it? That he was selfish and absorbed in his own affairs, that he was conventional and tradi

impatient of restraint where her sense of freedom and independence of action were in question, still as self-willed? And was it true, what Car

ught her sharply to a realization of how little she was doing with the time that was hers, and she had been honest and sincere when she had come to Mother McNeil's and asked to be shown the side of life she had hitherto known but little-the sordid, sinful, struggling s

time and thought. If only people knew, if only people understood, the things that she now knew and had come to understand, the inequalities and inju

withdrawal from the old life, knew of a certain cynicism that was becoming settled; and a thousand times she had blamed herself for the unhappiness that was his as well as hers. She loved her work, w

let Carmencita go without finding from her how it happened that she had met Stephen Van Landing on Custer Street. She must go to Carmencita and ask her. If he wer

as standing in the hall, her head inside the room. All glow was g

t I did." The big blue eyes looked down on the floor and one foot twisted around t

could reach the hall Carmencita was down the steps and