Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/24

 best cook in Peoria. I could die eating her corn-pone and I probably will some day."

"That'll be fine," declared Louella. "I mean about Mandy cooking for me, because I hate restaurants."

That afternoon she paid their bill at the Niagra. As she had no suitcase to move, she decided she'd better buy one so that there would be no occasion for gossip.

She spent the rest of the day purchasing a few necessary dresses, underwear, handkerchiefs, stockings and toilet articles.

"I'm almost as short of possessions," she said, "as I was on the day I was born. But I have more money."

That night for the first time in weeks she slept alone. And her rest was not disturbed by dreams. She was entering on a new life. The contemplation of it fascinated her.

five years Louella devoted to studying people. She was taking a post-graduate course in humanity. Men, men, men, they filled her life. But there were none that found a way to her heart. She was cold and merciless, a scheming, designing woman. She made a great deal of money and saved it. She was charitable when once her sympathy was aroused but she did not squander money.

She drank moderately, and smoked cigarettes at a time when cigarettes were still a novelty for women. She never permitted herself to get drunk because she always wanted to be in complete control of her faculties. She had once been sold into bondage and she did not wish it to happen again. Men were all right as long as you didn't trust them or marry them.

In her girlhood she had not studied much, but now she read everything. She wanted to be equally as well-educated as any woman she might encounter, as well-educated as most men, so that when she decided to climb back again into a decent life she would not find it beyond her capacities.