Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/42

34 were concerts in the Music Hall, the insistent cry of music set broken chords to vibrating and destroyed her hard-won calm.

Mrs. Kent had come to the city, she told herself, to forget her sorrow in caring for the poor. There were no claims upon her now. But she had not come to forget. She had come to remember. She wanted solitude, where the sound of familiar voices would not break the silence of her grief. Throughout the meaningless future she would keep fast hold of the meaning of the past.

Six months of work in the Charity Building; endless reports; endless committee meetings on spring afternoons and hot summer mornings; then suddenly the monotony was broken by the sight of a new face across the table. Anne Bradford had begun to take her dinners at the house where Mrs. Kent lived.

They were friends now. They had walked together, and had talked of many things. There was something contagious in Anne's interest in life and in people.