manuscripts at my side grows painfully page by page; or when, peering out
of the fort-like embrasure, I can see the sun drenched in smoke and mist
and the "sky-scrapers" gleam like the walls of a Colorado canon. I have
enough to buy me existence, and at thirty I still find peepholes into
hopes.

Are these enough facts for you? Shall I send you an inventory of my room,
of my days, of my mental furniture? Some long afternoon I will spirit you
up here in that little steel cage, and you shall peer out of my window,
tapping your restless feet, while you sniff at the squalor below. You will
move softly about, questioning the watercolors, the bits of bric-a-brac,
the dusty manuscripts, the dull red hangings, not quite understanding the
fox in his hole. You will gratefully catch the sounds from the mound below
our feet, and when you say good-by and drop swiftly down those long
stories you will gasp a little sigh of relief. You will pull down your
veil and drive off to an afternoon tea, feeling that things as they are
are very nice, and that a little Chicago mud is worth all the clay of the
studios. And I? I shall take the roses out of the vase and throw them
away. I shall say, "Enough!" But somehow you will have left a suggestion
of love about the place. I shall fancy that I still hear your voice, which
will be so far away dealing out banalities. I shall treasure the words you
let wander heedlessly out of the window. I shall open my book and write,
"To-day she came--_beatissima hora_."



NO. VII. OF THE NATURE OF A CONFESSION.

(_Miss Armstrong is nearing the close of her fifth season. Prospect and
retrospect are equally uninviting. She wills to escape_.)