Millions!

She could not afford even to dress warmly. There was absolutely nothing but fur that would keep out such penetrating wind and cold as this, and anything at all presentable was beyond her means.

"And they tell us, these smug, unctuous preachers warming their shins before their study fires, that living is a privilege, and we should be grateful to the Almighty for being allowed to go through things like this! I can't see it!" she declared to herself in angry rebellion. "I haven't one thing on earth to look forward to--unless--" her hand tightened on a letter inside her muff--"unless I take a way out which, in the end, might be worse."

Sprudell's note had come by special delivery from the Hotel Strathmore just as she was leaving the office, so she had not stopped to answer it. He had made several trips from Bartlesville since their first meeting, under the pretext of business, but it did not require any great acumen to discover that he came chiefly to see her.

Now, thinking that it might divert her mind from her misery, Helen turned her back to the wind and drew out his note for a second reading. One would scarcely have gathered from her expression as she turned the pages that she was reading a cordial dinner invitation.

Everything about it grated upon her--and the note was so eminently characteristic. She observed critically the "My dear Miss Dunbar," which he considered more intimate than "Dear Miss Dunbar." She disliked the round vowels formed with such care that they looked piffling, and the elaborately shaded consonants. The stiffness, the triteness of his phraseology, and his utter lack of humor, made his letters dull reading but most of all his inexact use of words irritated her--it made him seem so hopeless--far more so than bad spelling. She even detested the glazed note paper which she was sure was a "broken lot" bought at a bargain in a department store.