ALICE heard of the separation of David and Fidelia six weeks after it happened; and the news reached Alice in the cruel, circuitous fashion in which such information often travels to the person most concerned.
She was attending a luncheon which the Tau Gamma Alumnae in Chicago gave monthly at Field's Tea Room. This was the December meeting and twenty girls were at the table. Most of them knew each other intimately from having been members of local Tau Gamma chapters when in college but there were always girls from distant chapters who had moved to Chicago and who attended the luncheons to meet the Chicago girls. To-day there was a young married woman who recently had arrived from Minneapolis and she said to the Northwestern group in general, "You all know Fidelia Netley, of course."
"We certainly do," some one replied.
"Do you happen to know what her present move is?"
"Why, she's been married to a man named Herrick for over three years," a friend of Mice's explained. "They're living up on the north shore."
"Oh, I knew that in Minneapolis," the stranger said. "I meant, what's she doing since they separated?"
"Separated!" cried a dozen girls at once; and Mice sat stiffened with fiery blood racing in her.
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