guide, but she often found herself thinking of those days with a
sort of wistful pain at her heart. Life had had a flavour then
that it somehow lacked now. She had been tired, she had been too
busy. But what richness the memories had; memories of three small
heads about a kitchen table, memories of limp little socks and
crumpled little garments left like dropped petals in Mother's lap,
at the end of the long day.

"Are we the same people?" mused Nancy. "Have I really my car and
my man; is it the same old Bert whose buckskin pumps and whose
silk handkerchiefs are imitated by all these rich men? No wonder
we've lost our bearings a little, we've gone ahead--if it IS
ahead--too fast!"

They were getting from life, she mused, just what everyone wanted
to get from life; home, friends, children, amusement. They lived
near the greatest city, they could have anything that art and
science provided, for the mere buying, no king could sleep in a
softer bed, or eat more delicious fare. When Mary Ingram asked
Nancy to go to the opera matinee with her, Nancy met women whose
names had been only a joke to her, a few years ago. She found them
rather like other persons, simple, friendly, interested in their
nurseries and their gardens and anxious to reach their own
firesides for tea. When Nancy and Bert went out with the Fieldings
they had a different experience; they had dinners that were works
of art, the finest box in the theatre, and wines that came
cobwebbed and dusty to the table.

So that there was no height left to scale; "if we could only
afford it," mused Nancy. Belle Fielding could afford it, of