we arrived in the Rue du Val de Grace, having traversed twothirds of Paris. My two witnesses were not yet there, but they appeared almost immediately, with a promptness worthy of all praise. We lost no time in compliments. We longed to know what sort of man this Castéran was, and if, as I hoped, he would dismiss us after a reprimand more or less disagreeable. I entered the house first, followed by my troop. The three cabs waited at the gate-a small gate closed by a bar, breast-high, and leading into a garden. We might have thought ourselves at a distance of twenty-five leagues from Paris.

"Can I see M. Castéran?" I asked of a woman who seemed to have just risen from her bed, judging by the state of her toilet.

"There is no such person in the house," was her rather tart reply.

I insisted and showed my letter, but to no purpose. Castéran was unknown at No. 9. Probably the number might be badly written. We tried No. 7, then No. 5-nobody. We returned to No. 9. At the gate the concierge was talking to his fellow, my concierge, with an almanac in his hand.

'Monsieur, perhaps, did not notice," they said, both speaking at once, "that to-day is the First of April!"

A WOMAN OF TO-MORROW*

BY ELLEN GLASGOW

P

ATRICIA paused.

Sharply defined she stood against the sodden sky, a strong, straight figure with superb head erect.

Beyond her the neutral sweep of a chain of hills broke the gray horizon with jagged lines as though penciled by a child's uncertain hand. And, here and there, where a hollow rose and fell, faint azure peaks were visible, standing but half revealed in the hazy distance like dim ghosts of dimmer realities.

Over gray landscape and gray sky evening was falling. The prospect was sombre and remote. Hill and plain showed bare and unlovely as a chill study in crayon; all the warm tones of day were blotted out.

Occasionally, with an all but futile effort, a single ray of sunshine burst the woof of cloud, stretching across the gloom like a luminous search-light thrown from a lantern above-stretching across ragged hill and ragged meadow until, reaching the creek below the road, it lost itself in the sluggish water.

On either side, wide unplowed fields swept far into the distance. Long ago the land had gone to waste. Good Virginia soil it had been once-some years before the war-yielding many a crop of sun-dried tobacco and fine red wheat; but its returns had gradually diminished, and, at last, it had been left to run wild in golden-rod and sassafras bushes, its productions consisting in some bushels of sour blackberries, which bloomed, ripened and rotted without the aid of man.

The fields were skirted by rail fences upon which the wind and rain of many years had beaten with merciless force. In some places the rails had rotted and fallen to the ground, leaving wide spaces through which a stray cow or so roamed at her will. * Written for Short Stories-Copyrighted.

Upon the rotten rails trumpet-vines fed with rank luxuriance, festooning themselves along the broken fence in great gorgeous clusters of scarlet bloom.

Patricia listened.

Across the tangled meadow, over broom-sedge and brush, came the faint low note of a catbird, and fainter still, like the breathless minor-tone of an unspoken thought, the music of a cow-bell rose softly from the glade below, sometimes losing itself against the hillside and again swelling clearly upon the rising air. Nearer still, in the turnpike just beyond, fell the heavy tread of oxen and the roll of a covered wagon as it lurched from side to side. She heard the crack of the long whip and the slow drawl of the driver. Then the wagon passed and all was still.

Patricia leaned upon the low rail-fence, her strong white fingers interlaced, her troubled gaze just touching the landscape and then branching off into a futurity of space. Some long brown grasses growing beside the fence brushed her dress lightly and then, with a sensitive movement, swayed aside, their slender spirals silhouetted against the gradual distance. In the path in which she stood a yellow lovevine grew in a delicate web.

Patricia had trampled it under foot until it was bruised and broken.

Still sharply defined, she stood against the sodden sky, her superb head erect.

Upon an adjacent hill a group of hayricks stood out forlornly in the landscape. A pale ray of sunshine shifted uneasily over them, casting violet-toned shadows at their feet and touching their yellow crests with the promise of a benediction that could never be fulfilled. Among the dried stubble a tender growth of white clover showed in emerald patches—a healing balm after the blade of the reaper.

Without, all was rest and age. It was the peaceful repose of a land that had yielded much and been of much service.

It seemed to Patricia, standing there, that she herself, with her young strength and troubled eyes, belonged to another scene, another age. Upon the fence beside her a whippoorwill alighted, watching her with shrewd, suspicious eyes. Yes, she belonged elsewhere-she, a woman of the twentieth century. Even nature seemed distrustful of her here-here where she was encircled by phantoms of the past.

In a tumultuous wave thought swept over her, brushing aside all sense of the present.

The quiet, restful air grew restless. Across the tangled field the note of the catbird still sounded. The cow-bells grew clearer as the cattle were driven home along the winding path.

Patricia thought.

Up to to-day life had all seemed a straight road to her-so straight, her strong young eyes had seen no stumbling-stones in her way. A year ago she had cast her first vote, and from that day she had been free-capable and free.

All the lingering remnants of nineteenth century prejudices she had defied. They had ceased to exist for her. She had begun to believe that they had ceased to exist for every one until, drifting by chance into this out-of-the-way corner of Virginia, they had arisen and stared her in the face. Here, for the first time, her fresh young force, her splendid development had met with no approbation; here, where the women shrank from contact with her rude health and unbroken spirit; where the men could not be taught that she needed no protecting hand, no arm to lean upon. Half scornfully to herself she acknowledged that it touched her—that it aroused in her something besides the old cynical amusement. She remembered so well the indignation that had tinged that amusement when Aunt Jane had said to her

once :

"Yes, you'd best not work that buttonhole. You're not smart about such things yet, but you'll learn in time, I reckon." Learn in time! Patricia fancied Aunt Jane asking a man who had carried off the honors at Yale to work a buttonhole!

Well, she had been a success at college, if not with her needle. Six weeks ago, with many honors, more flowers and most congratulations, she had received her degree with becoming indifference.

Six weeks more, minus the honors, flowers and congratulations, she would face an inquiring public as

"PATRICIA YORKE,

It had a beautiful sound.

Attorney-at-Law."

She had written it at least a thou

sand times during her two years' study. It was so suggestive in its simplicity. It spoke of hard work and ambition and a public.

Yes, a public! There were many scores to be settled between Patricia and that public, and she had little doubt as to which would be the victor,

She was always victorious.

She had met with no force yet

capable of defying her strong young spirit.

Resistance only stimulated her. She was not afraid. The public might resist, but she, Patricia Yorke, she, the embodiment of freedom and the twentieth century, would carve her name, an indelible mark, upon its constitutional history.

Yes, she was to become a power in the nation. She would grasp with firm hands at control, and the country should feel the strength of her hold. She would look with firm eyes into the public institutions, tear the dirty bandages from their cankerous sores and heal them with the surgeon's knife.

Standing there with the sombre sky about her and the sombre mere around her, she threw back her young head with a swift, courageous gesture. A great responsibility seemed to have fallen upon her. It was as though she carried the fate of womankind upon her broad shoulders.

It is a mission!" she had once said to Uncle John. "It is hypertrophy of the conscience!" said Uncle John to her. Uncle John was simple-distinctly a product of the nineteenth century. Patricia knew it. Patricia was not simple, but sometimes simple people tell the truth when wise ones don't. Wise ones know better. But Patricia was honest, even though she wasn't a fool. "It isn't unselfishness, after all," she had said to herself. "It is ambition," and, she added, "Why shouldn't it be ambition ?"

Why, indeed!

Her gaze passed lightly over the meadow and rested upon a clump of trees beyond. Above the trees the gabled roof of a house was visible, and from one of the blackened chimneys a thin line of smoke arose, creeping in slow, serpent-like circles against the sodden sky, and, at last, melting like a gray cloud upon the mountain height.

The house was Fairfax Place. Patricia knew it well. Too well, she had almost said. She had taken tea there the night before. She had taken tea there very often within the last four weeks. She knew the dining-room by heart-with its worn leather chairs, its faded portraits and its silver tea-urn, whose battered sides still bore the Fairfax crest.

Behind the tea-urn Patricia seemed to see the gentle hostess, looking as faded and dainty as the thread lace above her smooth white hair. She knew the cracked china cups with their washedout pattern of blue willow. It was genteel poverty; but Patricia