That afternoon Eden Bower was lying on the couch in her music room, her
face turned to the window, watching the pigeons. Reclining thus she could
see none of the neighbouring roofs, only the sky itself and the birds
that crossed and recrossed her field of vision, white as scraps of paper
blowing in the wind. She was thinking that she was young and handsome and
had had a good lunch, that a very easy-going, light-hearted city lay in
the streets below her; and she was wondering why she found this queer
painter chap, with his lean, bluish cheeks and heavy black eyebrows, more
interesting than the smart young men she met at her teacher's studio.

Eden Bower was, at twenty, very much the same person that we all know her
to be at forty, except that she knew a great deal less. But one thing she
knew: that she was to be Eden Bower. She was like some one standing
before a great show window full of beautiful and costly things, deciding
which she will order. She understands that they will not all be delivered
immediately, but one by one they will arrive at her door. She already
knew some of the many things that were to happen to her; for instance,
that the Chicago millionaire who was going to take her abroad with his
sister as chaperone, would eventually press his claim in quite another
manner. He was the most circumspect of bachelors, afraid of everything
obvious, even of women who were too flagrantly handsome. He was a nervous
collector of pictures and furniture, a nervous patron of music, and a
nervous host; very cautious about his health, and about any course of
conduct that might make him ridiculous. But she knew that he would at
last throw all his precautions to the winds.

People like Eden Bower are inexplicable. Her father sold farming
machinery in Huntington, Illinois, and she had grown up with no
acquaintances or experiences outside of that prairie town. Yet from her
earliest childhood she had not one conviction or opinion in common with