self to dwell on the significance of the step she had taken. Keble's generous acquiescence in her plan merely underlined the little question that kept irritating her conscience. For all her skill she hadn't known how to assure Keble that she wasn't turning her back on him; for all her love she couldn't have admitted to him that she was setting out for a sanatorium, to undergo treatment for social ignorances in the hope of returning to him more fit than ever. With the train now bolting east, she had the nervous dread of a prospective patient.
Yet as province after province rolled by, and the dreary prairie began to be broken first by lakes and woods, then by larger and larger communities, graduating her approach into civilization, her natural optimism asserted itself in a typically vehement reaction. Now that there was no turning back, the obvious thing to do was to wring every possibility out of the experience to which she was committed. Nothing should be too superficial for her attention. To Miriam's relief her despondency gave place to a feverish activity of observation. She began to notice her fellow-travelers and to tick them off mercilessly, one by one, with all their worths and blemishes.
"Let's leave no stone unturned, Miriam," she said, imperatively, as they neared their first halting place. "I won't go home till I've done and seen and had one of everything. Then for the next eighty years I
