elapsed since our parting. She spoke to me shyly, as though aware of my
hurried calculation, and conscious that in five years she ought not to
have altered so much as to upset my notion of time. Then she seemed to set
it down to her dress, for she nervously gathered her cloak over a gown
that asked only to be concealed, and shrank into a seat behind the line of
prehensile bipeds blocking the aisle of the car.

It was perhaps because she so obviously avoided me that I felt for the
first time that I might be of use to her; and when she left the car I made
no excuse for following her.

She said nothing of needing advice and did not ask me to walk home with
her, concealing, as we talked, her transparent preoccupations under the
guise of a sudden interest in all I had been doing since she had last seen
me. Of what concerned her, I learned only that Lancelot was well and that
for the present she was not lecturing--she was tired and her doctor had
ordered her to rest. On the doorstep of a shabby house she paused and held
out her hand. She had been so glad to see me and perhaps if I were in
Boston again--the tired dimple, as it were, bowed me out and closed the
door on the conclusion of the phrase.

Two or three weeks later, at my club in New York, I found a letter from
her. In it she owned that she was troubled, that of late she had been
unsuccessful, and that, if I chanced to be coming back to Boston, and
could spare her a little of that invaluable advice which--. A few days
later the advice was at her disposal. She told me frankly what had
happened. Her public had grown tired of her. She had seen it coming on for
some time, and was shrewd enough in detecting the causes. She had more
rivals than formerly--younger women, she admitted, with a smile that could
still afford to be generous--and then her audiences had grown more