She even found friends. Dear old Miss
Smith-Waters used to creep round by night, like Nicodemus--
respectability would not have allowed her to perform that Christian
act in open daylight,--and sit for an hour or two with her dear
misguided Herminia. Miss Smith-Waters prayed nightly for
Herminia's "conversion," yet not without an uncomfortable
suspicion, after all, that Herminia had very little indeed to be
"converted" from. Other people also got to know her by degrees; an
editor's wife; a kind literary hostess; some socialistic ladies who
liked to be "advanced;" a friendly family or two of the Bohemian
literary or artistic pattern. Among them Herminia learned to be as
happy in time as she could ever again be, now she had lost her
Alan. She was Mrs. Barton to them all; that lie she found it
practically impossible to fight against. Even the Bohemians
refused to let their children ask after Miss Barton's baby.
So wrapt in vile falsehoods and conventions are we. So far have we
travelled from the pristine realities of truth and purity.
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