about to-night. Now run home, child, and go to bed."

"But we have n't decided about me. What must I do?"

He was silent for a moment and then he said,

"A long time ago, grannie told me what to do. She said, 'Do the thing you think God wishes you to do.""

"But I don't know anything about God."

"Nor I, playmate. But I think very often about what grannie said." "Have you tried to do it?"

"I have kept it in my mind."

It was her turn to brood in silence. Then she said to him,

"It does n't seem to mean anything to you, that thing - I told you." "Everything you tell me means more than anything else in the world."

"But about Tom Fulton. I was not married to him. I lied about it. It is n't possible that I seem the same you."

to

"You would always seem the same to me," he answered, - and she found herself smiling at the beauty of his voice. "How could you be different? These things are just things that happen to you. Should I like you less if you were caught in the rain, or got your pretty dress muddy?"

"How do you know it is a pretty dress?" she asked irrepressibly.

"Because it's your dress. Run home, now, and brush your hair."

She went at once, and, in spite of her doubts, lightheartedly. He made her feel, as the night did, that here in this present life, as in the outer universe, are great spaces still unexplored. Everything had possibilities. Sprinkle new pollen on a flower, and its fruit would take on other forms. Stretch out a hand and you might be led into unguessed delights, even after you were dulled with pain. Sleeping in the air even were forces to nourish and revive, dormant only because we do not call upon them. She smiled into the night, and her heart called believingly.

XIX

Madam Fulton sat on the veranda, in the shade of the vines. It was rather early in the morning, and Electra was about her methodical tasks. Billy Stark sat reading the paper, but nevertheless not failing, from time to time, to look up and give his old friend a smile. Madam Fulton could not answer it. She felt estranged in a world where she had failed to learn the values. "Billy," she said, at length, "do you think she is right?"

"Who?"

I got

"Electra. She says the money out of that pesky book is tainted money. Is it?"

Billy folded his paper and hung it over the veranda rail. His face began to pucker into a smile, but, gazing at Madam Fulton, it became apparent to him that she was really troubled. She even looked as if she had not slept. Her faint pinkness was overlaid by a jaded ivory. Her eyes interrogated him with a forlorn pleading. All his chivalry rose in arms.

"Hang the book, Florrie!" he said. "Forget it. You've had your fling with it. You wanted fun and you got it. Stop thinking about it."

"But," she persisted, "is it really true? Have I done a shocking thing, and is it monstrous to use the money?

"You've been exceedingly naughty," said Billy. He eyed her with anxiety. "You ought to have your hands slapped, of course. Electra's done it, so far as I can see. So now let's get over crying and go out and jump rope."

"It is n't so much the book nor the money nor Electra. It's because I can't help wondering whether I'm a moral idiot. Do you think I am, Billy?"

"I think you're the gamest old girl that ever was, if you want to know. Let me have the horse put into the phaeton, Florrie, and we'll go out and jog awhile."

But she was musing. Suddenly he saw how old she looked.

"It's always been so, Billy. I never

1

was able to see things as other people saw them. These rules they make such a pother about never seemed so vital to me. It's all a part of life, seems to me. Go ahead and live, that's what we're in for. Growing things just grow, don't they? They don't stop and take photographs of themselves on the twenty-third day of every month. Now, do they?"

"Florrie," said her old friend, still watching her, "I'll tell you what you do. You just run away with me and come to London. We've got fifteen good years before us yet, if we take 'em soberly."

She seemed to be considering. Her face lighted.

"I could almost do it," she owned. "Electra's having me here helps out a lot, but I could almost do it on my polluted gains."

She laughed a little. It was sadly done, but the pink came back into her cheeks. "As true as I am a living sinner, Billy," she said, "I'd do it, if I were half sure how we were coming out." "Coming out?"

"Yes. If I thought I should be pretty vigorous up to the end, and then die in my chair, like a lady. Yes, I'd do it, and thank ye, too. But a million things might happen to me. I might be palsied and helpless on your hands, head nodding, deaf as a post-damn, Billy! I could swear."

"I might give out myself," he said generously. "You might be the one to tote the burden."

The old lady laughed again.

"The amount of it is, Billy, we're afraid. Own up. Now are n't we?"

Billy thought it over.

"I'm not so sure of that," he said contentiously. "I'm not prepared to say I'm afraid. Nor you either, Florrie. Come on, old girl. Chance it."

"I'll think it over," said Madam Fulton. The brightness had come back to her eye. So much was gained, at any rate, Billy told himself. "There's that handsome girl coming, Tom's widow. Electra!"

Electra's scales were beginning, with a serious emphasis.

"I love to see them together," Madam Fulton said. "She makes Electra mad as hops."

Rose was coming very fast. She had the walk of women well trained, for the stage perhaps, the spring and rhythm of art superadded to nature's willingness. She wore no hat, and the sun made her bright hair brighter and brought out the tragic meaning in her face. She had been thinking in the night, and this morning forbade herself to falter. All through her fluctuating moods there had been a division of joy and dread. The perplexing questions of her past lay heavily upon her, but when she thought of Osmond, she was light as air. He made everything easy, his simplicity, his implied truth. She felt a great loyalty to what seemed good to him. Her conscious life throughout the night and morning became a reaching out of hands to him in the passionate asseveration that she would be true.

Electra came, in answer to Madam Fulton's call. She, too, was grave, but with a hint of expectation on her face. She had been looking for MacLeod. Since their meeting, she had done nothing but wait for him again. Rose was running up the steps. She glanced from one to another of them with a recognizing swiftness, and when Billy Stark rose and placed a chair for her, she thanked him with a word, and took her place behind it, her hands upon it, so that she faced them all. There was a momentary hush. Madam Fulton put up

her eyeglasses and gazed at her curiously, as if she were a species of tableau arranged for notice. Billy Stark felt uneasily as if this were one of the occasions for him to take himself away. Rose spoke rapidly, in her beautifully modulated voice, but without emotion.

"I want to tell you something. I was not his wife."

Electra was the one to show dramatic feeling. She threw her hands up slightly.

"I knew it." Her lips formed the words. Her triumphant glance went from one to another saying, "I told you so.'

Rose stood there with perfect selfpossession, very white now and with the chilled look that accompanies difficult resolution. She glanced at Madam Fulton, and the old lady met her gaze eagerly with an unbelieving query.

"For heaven's sake!” she ejaculated, "Electra, why don't you speak?"

"I lived with Tom Fulton as his wife," said Rose, in the same moving voice. She might have been engaged in the rehearsal of a difficult part. No one looking at her could have said whether she duly weighed what she was announcing. "I called myself his wife because I thought I had a right to. Other people would have called me a disgraced woman."

Billy Stark now, without waiting to find the step, walked off the edge of the veranda and was presently to be seen, if any one had had eyes for him, lighting a cigar in the peaceful garden. Madam Fulton had spoken on the heels of these last words. She brightened into the most cordial animation.

"This is the most extraordinary story I ever heard in my life," she commented, with relish. "Sit down, my dear, and tell us all about it."

"There is nothing more to tell," said Rose. Her eyes traveled to Electra's face, and stayed there, though the unfriendly triumph of it shook her resolution. "I had to say this because I must say, too, that I do not want money and I will not take it. I do not want to be

known as Tom Fulton's wife. I was not his wife."

"You wanted it a week ago," said Electra involuntarily. She had made up her mind not to speak, not to be severe, not to be anything that would destroy the picture Markham MacLeod must have of her in his own mind; but the words escaped her.

"That was before "Rose stopped. She had almost said it was before her father came, but it was borne floodingly in upon her that this was not alone the reason. It was before she had felt this great allegiance to Osmond Grant.

"Your father confirms you," said Electra, yielding to her overpowering curiosity. "He says you were my brother's wife."

"My father "Rose held her head higher-"I have nothing to do with that," she concluded. "It is the truth that I was never married."

Electra turned away and went into the house. They heard her step in the neighboring room. She had paused there by the piano, considering, in her desire to be mistress of herself, whether she should not go on with her music as if nothing had happened. But the thought of Rose and her mastery of the keys forbade that, as display, and she turned away and went upstairs, with great dignity, though there was no one by to consider the fashion of it. There she sat down by the window, to watch for Markham MacLeod. Madam Fulton had been regarding Rose with an exceedingly friendly smile. The girl looked tired, though her muscles had relaxed with Electra's going.

"Come here, my dear, and sit down," said the old lady, indicating a chair. Rose shook her head. Then, as she found herself trembling, she did sit down, and Madam Fulton laid a hand upon her knee. "You are a very interesting child," she said, with an approving emphasis. "Now what in the world made you fall in love with Tom Fulton? Did he seem very nice to you?"

"I can't talk about him," said Rose.

"Of course he's dead. It was the best thing he could do. Well, well, my dear! What made you come over here and play this little comedy for us?"

The girl's eyes had filled with tears.

"I can't tell you," she answered. It was easy to defend her cause to Osmond; not to this eager creature who wanted to read her like a curious book. But Madam Fulton was almost whispering. She looked as if she had something of the utmost importance to communicate.

"I ask you, my dear, because I am thoroughly bad myself, and it's beyond me to understand why it's so important whether we are bad or good. And I thought maybe if you could tell me did you know you were bad before you came and Electra found you out?"

Rose was looking kindly into the vivid face.

"No," she said, "I did n't think I was bad."

"That's it!" cried the old lady, in high triumph. "We don't any of us know it till they find us out. My dear, it's the most awful system-now, is n't it? You go on as innocent as you please, and suddenly they tell you you're a criminal. It's as if you made up your mouth to whistle, walking along the road, and somebody pounces on you and tells you whistling's against the law and claps you into jail."

Rose was smiling at her now, forgetful, for the moment, of her own coil, Madam Fulton seemed to her so pathetically young and innocent of everything save untamed desires.

"What under heavens does it mean?" Madam Fulton was insisting, with the greatest irritation.

"I must go now," said Rose. "I had to tell you."

Madam Fulton kept the detaining hand upon her knee.

"But where are you going?" she insisted. "Back to France?"

"No, I shall stay in America. I shall sing."

"Do you think anybody 'll want to hear you?"

"They'll love to hear me!"

Madam Fulton eyed her smilingly. "You're a brazen hussy," she said. "But of all things, why did you come here with your little comedy in your hand, if you did n't mean to play it out?" "I did mean to play it," said Rose, laying her head back against the high rail of the chair. She closed her eyes, for again she felt the tears coming. "But I got sick of it."

Madam Fulton nodded confirmingly. "That's precisely it," she agreed. "We do get sick of it. We get sick of conduct, good or bad. They don't, the good ones. They go on clambering, one step after another, up that pyramid, and peering over the edge to see us playing in the sand, and occasionally, if they can get a brick, they heave it at us.”

"Who are the good ones?" Rose asked languidly. "Electra ?"

"Electra? She's neither hot nor cold. But she's of the kind that made the system in the first place."

"Grannie is good," said Rose absently.

"Bessie Grant? Yes, she's God's anointed, if there is a God. My dear, I love to talk with you, almost as much as with Billy Stark. You come and stay with me next winter."

Rose smiled.

"There's Electra," she reminded her. "Bless you, Electra and I don't live together! I only visit her here half the year, to save my pocket-book. That's another proof of my general unworthiness. I flout her and mad her all the time. She would n't do that to me, but she'd drive me to drink trying not to. No, I've got a little apartment in town, like a hollow tree, and I crawl into it in the winter. You come, too, and I'll introduce you to all the people I know, and you can make 'em listen while you sing."