interfered with, and she had the satisfaction of reading in the
_Sentinel_ during the week an item calling gratified attention to the
change in its "What Women Wear" column, and indicating that it would
contain new features from week to week. It gave her a pleasant thrill to
see her name, "Selma White," signed at the end of the printed column,
and she set to work eagerly to carry out the editor's suggestions. At
the same time she tried her hand at a short story--the story of an
American girl who went to Paris to study art, refused to alter her mode
of life to suit foreign ideas of female propriety, displayed exceptional
talent as an artist, and finally married a fine-spirited young American,
to the utter discomfiture of a French member of the nobility, who had
begun by insulting her and ended with making her an offer of marriage.
This she sent to the _Eagle_, the other Benham newspaper, for its Sunday
edition.

It took her a month to compose this story, and after a week she received
it back with a memorandum to the effect that it was one-half too long,
but intimating that in a revised form it would be acceptable. This was a
little depressing, especially as it arrived at a time when the novelty
of her occupation had worn off and she was realizing the limitations of
her present life. She had begun to miss the advantages of a free purse
and the importance of a domestic establishment. She possessed her
liberty, and was fulfilling her mission as a social force, but her life
had been deprived of some of its savor, and, though she was thankful to
be rid of Babcock, she felt the lack of an element of personal devotion
to herself, an element which was not to be supplied by mere admiration
on the part of Mrs. Earle and the other members of the Institute. It did
not suit her not to be able to gratify her growing taste in clothes and
in other lines of expenditure, and there were moments when she
experienced the need of being petted and made much of by a man. She was