V + 

“Well⁠—I guess this is goodbye,” said Agnes. + 

“I hate to say it,” said Jane. + 

They were sitting on two high stools in a Broadway Huyler’s and had just finished a luncheon composed of a sandwich and a soda. Jane was going back to Chicago on the Twentieth Century Limited next day and that evening she and Flora and Mr. Furness were having a last whirl at the theatre. + 

Jane had had a gay week in New York. She had seen six plays in seven days and all the picture exhibitions up and down Fifth Avenue and had gone twice to the Metropolitan, and had bought a new dress at Hollander’s and a boxful of toys for the children at Schwartz’s, and had dined once again with Agnes and had had her and Jimmy to dine at the Belmont one evening before a symphony concert. + 

This, of course, was Agnes’s noon hour. She had to be back at Macy’s in ten minutes. Jane seized the soda check and slipped regretfully from her stool. + 

“It has certainly been great to see you,” she sighed. + 

“And you’ll take care of Jimmy in the corn belt,” said Agnes a little wistfully. + 

“Of course I will,” said Jane, pushing the check through the cashier’s cage. “I think he’s a darling. When will he show up?” + 

“Oh⁠—right away,” said Agnes. “He would have loved to go with you, Jane, but he has to pay his own expenses, so the Twentieth Century seemed foolish. He’ll loiter out on some milk train in a day or two and show up in Lakewood looking hungry for a square meal.” + 

“Well, he’ll get one!” Jane pocketed her change. + 

“And now, darling”⁠—Agnes looked steadily in Jane’s shining eyes⁠—“you are a darling, you know, Jane⁠—wish me luck on the play!” + 

“You know I do,” said Jane. “I hope it’s bad enough to run forever.” + 

“It won’t be my fault if it isn’t,” said Agnes. She put one arm around Jane’s waist. Jane looked tenderly at her funny freckled face. + 

“Agnes,” said Jane. “You’re the most gallant person I ever knew.” + 

Agnes smiled in defensive mockery. + 

“No,” said Agnes. “You’ve forgotten. Dido was that.” + 

“Dido?” questioned Jane. Then she remembered. The memory of Agnes’s little front porch, “west of Clark Street,” rose before her. The Aeneid and André and the Thomas Concert. + 

“No,” she said earnestly, “you beat Dido. I’m going to see that the Eroica Symphony is played at your funeral pyre.” + 

“Jimmy might whistle it,” suggested Agnes. Her lips met Jane’s cheek. + 

“Duty calls!” she said. “Goodbye, old speed!” Jane watched her solid, slightly shabby figure disappear in the Broadway traffic. To Jane it looked very heroic. She was conscious, curiously enough, of a slight sense of envy. Agnes’s life, at least, was still an adventure. She was fighting odds and overcoming difficulties. She was struggling with life and love. Goodness! Jane jumped⁠—that taxi had almost exterminated her! If it had, thought Jane, as she pushed her way through the hurrying crowd of Broadway pedestrians, Agnes would have rated that best of epitaphs⁠—“I have lived and accomplished the task that Destiny gave me, and now I shall pass beneath the earth no common shade.” + 