Laura glanced wistfully at Blythe's riding clothes.

"I suppose you come here in that apparel to tantalize me, knowing that my odious, ogreish medical man has absolutely forbidden me to ride for the present," she said to him in mock reproach. "There is nothing in the least subtle about that doctor man. He wants to buy my horse. That's why he has forbidden me to ride. But I am going to thwart him by turning Scamp over to Louise. You ride, of course, dear?"

Louise smiled her gratitude. She had become a finished rider as a young girl during the periods when her mother would abandon her improvident life in the city and retire to the country to enable her income partially to catch up with her expenditures.

"I've been trying the most ambitious horse I ever saw," said Blythe, very much the wholesome, out-of-doors looking man, dropping into a chair. "If I buy him—and I'm going to think that over carefully—I think I shall call him The Climber. He was very keen to accompany me up in the elevator, but the man on guard at the door wouldn't have it. Would you have minded my fetching him up, Laura? He has the true artistic sense, too. He tried all he knew to climb that statue of Bobbie Burns in the Park. Wouldn't it have been a victory for Art if he had succeeded in demolishing that bronze libel on Burns? Then he wanted to walk—prance, I mean—into the car of some people I stopped to pass the time of day with. Curious psychological study, that horse. I can't imagine where he acquired his mounting social ambition, for he's about one-half wild horse of the pampas and the other half Wyoming cayuse."

"Louise," suggested Laura, who had been meditating during Blythe's raillery, "would you care for a ride now?" Blythe's eyes lighted up at the words. "I must have some excuse, you see, for driving the two of you away, for my dressmaker is moaning piteously over the 'phone for me to try some things on, and I'll have to go. Scamp has been eating his head off for a fortnight, but he'll behave, I'm sure. And my habit, boots, everything, will fit you perfectly."

Before Laura had finished Blythe was at the telephone, directing Laura's stableman to send Scamp around and Laura was guiding Louise to her dressing room to put her into the hands of her maid for the change into Laura's riding things. Half an hour later Louise, well-mounted on the breedy-looking, over-rested but tractable enough Scamp, was on the Park bridle-path alongside Blythe, who rode the mettlesome cob he had maligned with the stigma of cayuse.

The two horses, adaptable striders, trotted teamwise for a while, Louise and Blythe silently giving themselves over to the enjoyment of the eager, tingling air and the brilliant sunshine. They reined up to cross the carriage road and for a while after that, by a sort of tacit understanding, they reduced their horses' pace to a brisk walk.

It is a bromidic truism, but it is none the less true, that it is only possible for a woman to be wholly at her ease in the presence of the man in whom she is not "interested." Louise, as she rode at Blythe's side through the bright vistas of bare, interlacing branches, perhaps would have shrunk from being judged by the mildly accusatory terms of such an axiom; nevertheless, alone with this man, she was wonderingly conscious of being possessed by a speech-cancelling diffidence, a restraint not so much superimposed as involuntarily felt, that was wholly unusual with her in the presence of anyone else. She caught herself, not without flushing when she became aware of her own purpose, in the act of permitting her horse to drop a pace behind in order that she might be free to glance at Blythe's rugged profile and the shapeliness of his head for an instant; for she was beginning to discover that it was oddly difficult for her to meet his frank, direct, generally cheerful gaze. This was, of course, from no lack of candor, but, on the contrary, because she was beginning to fear betrayal through her excessive natural candor. It would have been impossible for her to name any other human being with whom she would have preferred to be riding through the sunny Park on this afternoon; yet this knowledge did not efface the other fact that she was not at her ease with him. She endeavored, in vaguely wondering about this, to assure herself that it was because of certain revelations which she intended to make to Blythe concerning happenings to herself since last she had seen him; but her inner frankness informed her that she was merely searching for a pretext for her slightly provoking diffidence.

Blythe was the first to break the silence.

"'On a hazy, brilliant afternoon in February, 1754, a solitary horseman might have been seen—'" he began to quote, smiling, in a sing-song way, as from the inevitable beginning of an antique novel. Louise laughed.

"Do you feel so lonesome as all that?" she asked him.

"Not precisely lonesome," said Blythe, "but—well, a little detached from the picture. Speaking of pictures, please try and steady yourself in the saddle for a moment while I say something pretty. I have been mentally browsing for a word to describe your profile. Now I have it. It is 'intaglio.' The beauty of that word is that I almost think I know what it means; and also it fits. The mountain has labored and brought forth a mouse. I think that is the first compliment I ever made in my life," and his reddening features testified to the truth of it.

"Then I shall not deny that it pleases me," replied Louise, able now to turn her head and look at him without the unwonted stealthiness which had been puzzling her. "It is what numismatists would call a 'first-minted' compliment, is it not?"

"Don't ask me to analyze it, Louise, or it might come apart in my hands and I shouldn't be able to put it together again, being so new at the craft," replied Blythe, whimsically. She found it very natural and agreeable that he should call her Louise; she had been conscious, in truth, of a deep-down little fear, now dissipated, that he might resume calling her Miss Treharne. She felt that she would not have cared for "Miss Treharne" any more—from him.

They fell silent again for a little while, during which Blythe, infected by the furtiveness which had actuated Louise a little while before, once slightly drew rein in order to steal an unobserved oblique glance at Louise's gleaming auburn hair, which refused to be confined under her three-cornered Continental hat of felt, but moved in rebellious, slipping coils under the impact of the occasional gusts of wind; and he wanted, too, to get the effect of her cameo face outlined against a patch of unusually dark shrubbery slightly ahead of them. His plotting, however, was a dead failure. She caught him in the very article of making this cribbed momentary inspection, and she laughed outright.

"Draw alongside, please," she commanded, and he noticed for the first time the all but indistinguishable slant of her full eyes when they were possessed by laughter. "You are not to criticize the fit of Laura's habit on me, as of course you were doing."

"Of course," said Blythe, more or less unconsciously delivering himself of a white one. "Additionally, I was wondering—" He paused a bit abruptly.

"Well?" inquired Louise.

"You won't be annoyed?" said Blythe. "I was wondering just what you used to think and do, and sing, and say, when, in your last-previous incarnation, Titian was spending all of his hours painting your face and hair."

"Now," replied Louise, smiling, "you are showing a suspicious proficiency for one who claims to have uttered his first compliment only three minutes ago. Annoyed? Why should I be? One might even become used, in the course of nineteen years, to the possession of green or blue or purple hair; so that I scarcely ever think of my ensanguined locks unless I am reminded of them."

"I think," said Blythe, musingly, "that you have the gift of cheerfulness."

"Oh," replied Louise, purposely misunderstanding him, "it doesn't take such an inordinate amount of resignation, really, to tolerate one's own red hair."

"I deny that it is red," said Blythe, assuming an impressive judicial air. "In fact, to employ a perfectly useless legal term, I note an exception to that statement. It isn't red. It's—it's the tint of an afterglow; an afterglow that never was on land or sea."

At that instant they emerged upon the open road, and a mounted policeman held up a detaining hand, holding up a huge yellow-bodied car to enable them to cross to where the bridle-path began again. Louise, crimsoning, saw her mother leaning back in the big car, Judd beside her. Blythe, too, saw Mrs. Treharne—and her companion—and lifted his hat. Louise had waved a hand at her mother; but it was a limp hand, and the sun had suddenly darkened for her. Blythe noticed her immediate abstraction. He understood. He rode a trifle closer to her, in silence, for a while. Louise was gazing at the pommel of her saddle, and he observed the tremulousness about her lips.

At a point where the path narrowed in passing a great boulder, Blythe reined yet closer, and, reaching out, pressed for an instant her gloved guiding hand.

"Don't worry, Louise—all of these things come right in time," he said in a subdued tone, and as if they had already been speaking of that which had caused her sudden distress. "Be sustained by that belief. Everything works out right in time. I venture to touch upon that which pains you, not because we are to have a mere legal relationship, but because I am hoping that you view me as a friend. Do you?"

"You must know that I do," said Louise, more moved than he could guess. The touch of his hand had strangely thrilled her. "If it were not for you and Laura—" She paused, turning her head.

"I know," said Blythe. "It is not a matter for volunteered advice. But perhaps you have thought of some way in which I—we—can help you; make the course smoother for you. Have you?"

"No," replied Louise, simply. "There were some occurrences—some things that happened last night—that I meant to tell you about. But I can't now. Laura will tell you. You must not be too angry when she tells you. The happenings were not the fault of my mother's; she——"

"I can easily surmise that," Blythe helped her. "But, Louise, if you had meant to tell me these things yourself, what has altered your determination? Perhaps, though," reflecting, "that isn't a fair question."

"The unfairness—perhaps I should call it weakness—is on my side," replied Louise. "I make very brave resolutions," smiling a little detachedly, "as to the candor I am going to reveal to you when I meet you; but when I am with you—" The sentence required no finishing.

"There is no weakness in that," said Blythe. "Or, if there is, then I think my own weakness must be far greater than yours. There are many things that I want to say to you and that I find it impossible to say when the opportunity comes. Several times, for example, I have fruitlessly struggled to say that I hope my guardianship over you will erect no barrier between us."

"How could it?" asked Louise, meeting his eye.

"It is just that," replied Blythe, "which I find it so difficult to express. I fear to venture too close to the quicksands. But I might as well take the risk. I did not exactly mean to use the word 'barrier.' You make quite another appeal to me than as a ward to a guardian. My imagination is far more involved than that. Perhaps I take a roundabout method, Louise, of saying that, in spite of my approaching guardianship, I sometimes find myself presuming to hope that a time might come when you would be willing to accept my devotion as a man."

"That time," quietly replied Louise, pretending to adjust her hat so as to screen her face with her arm, "has already come." She had no penchant for evasiveness, and coquetry was apart from her; she spoke words that her heart brimmed to her lips.

Blythe, his face transfigured, caught himself reeling a bit in his saddle. Her words, so quietly and frankly spoken, had suddenly cleared what he had not hoped would be anything but a pathway of brambles. He swayed so close to her that their faces almost touched, and for a mere instant he was conscious of the fragrance of her pure breath, aware to the core of him of an intoxicating propinquity of which he had not until that moment dreamed.

"Perhaps I misunderstood you, Louise," he said, hoarse of a sudden, reining out and settling himself sidewise in his saddle so that he could see her. "It is impossible that I did not misunderstand you."

Louise, gazing straight ahead, but with misty eyes, shook her head. She had no more words. And her silent negation told him, better than words, that he had not misunderstood her.

They rode without speaking for the remainder of the way back to Laura's. Just before they drew up to the curb, where he was to assist her to dismount, Blythe broke the long reverie that had pinioned them.

"I only came to know the meaning of what is called 'the joy of living' an hour ago, Louise," Blythe said to her then.

A moment later he was lifting her from her horse, and the sky swirled before his eyes as, for a rocketing instant, he held her in his strong arms and felt her warm breath (as of hyacinths, he thought) upon his face. He rode away leading her horse, and their parting was of the eyes only.

Louise, a happy brooding expression on her face, walked in upon Laura, who was deeply snuggled on a many-pillowed couch, and sat down, pre-occupiedly tapping a gloved palm with her riding-crop, without a word.

"Well, dear?" said Laura, glancing at her.

Louise continued to tap-tap her palm with the crop, but she was devoid of words, it appeared.

"Louise!" Laura suddenly sat up straight on the couch and directed a startled, accusatory, yet puzzledly-smiling gaze at the wistful, unseeing and silent girl in the riding habit.

Louise turned her abstracted gaze upon Laura.

"What is it, dear?" she asked. "You said something, didn't you?"

Laura gazed at her with an absorbed smile for nearly a minute. Then she settled back among the pillows.

"No, sweetheart, I haven't said anything," she replied.

Judd prowled about his club that night in the humor of a savage, barking at the club servants, growling at or turning his back upon cronies who addressed him civilly enough, and almost taking the head off one of them who, noticing the baleful Judd mood, cheerfully inquired: "What is it, old chap—gout, liver, the market, or all three?" The market was in part responsible; the entire "list" had gone against him persistently and diabolically from opening to close. But the raking which Mrs. Treharne had given him during their ride on account of his "daughtering" of Louise on the night before was mainly responsible for the bubbling rage which he was taking no pains to conceal and which he was adding to by extraordinarily short-intervalled stops at the club buffet.

And so he'd been hauled over the coals again on account of that high-and-mighty daughter of Tony's, had he? Judd reflected, his thoughts swirling in an alcoholic seethe of self-sympathy. Well, he was getting tired of that sort of thing—d——d tired of it. He hadn't had a minute's peace of his life on his visits at the house on the Drive since the arrival there of that toploftical, sulky, ridiculously haughty daughter of Tony's. Haughty about what? Haughty for what reason? What license had she to be haughty—especially with him, Judd? Wasn't she living in his house? What the d——, then, did she mean by flouting him? Yes, Jesse had been right; she had flouted him since the first day she'd met him. And that wasn't "coming to him;" he didn't deserve it.

Didn't he fairly shower money upon her mother? Didn't her mother have his signed blank checks to fill out at her own sweet will and option? Didn't he humor all of Tony's extravagances without ever a word of complaint? Well, then! What the devil did Tony mean by snarling at him all the time about this daughter of hers that had come along and messed everything up? Anyhow, why shouldn't he have called the young woman "daughter" if he felt like it? That wasn't going to kill her, was it? He had been drinking a little at the time, anyhow, and it was a slip of the tongue; but even if it hadn't been, what was the difference? What right did she have, anyhow, to look at him as if he were a woodtick? He couldn't understand what Jesse saw in her; she was good-looking, of course, but when that was said all was said; she had an unthawable disposition, hadn't she? And a porpoise's cold-bloodedness?

But Jesse was entitled to his idiotic fancies; he, Judd, wasn't going to interpose any obstacles in Jesse's way. She needed taming, and Jesse's reputation as a tamer was established. Leaving all that aside, though, she wasn't going to stay around his house creating discord and giving her mother cherished opportunities to "open up" on him whenever she felt like it. She would have to go somewhere else. He'd take care of her all right. He had no idea of absolutely turning her out; Tony wouldn't have that, and, besides, there wasn't anything mean about him. But he wasn't going to be flouted any longer; wouldn't have it; wouldn't endure it; wouldn't tolerate it. Fact was, he intended to have it out with Tony that very night. He'd go over to the house on the Drive and get the thing over with. No use in postponing it.

HE'D GO OVER TO THE HOUSE ON THE DRIVE AND GET THE THING OVER WITH.

Thus Judd, fuming, and already more than half drunk.

"Get me a taxicab," he ordered a club servant, and, with a final libation for the tightening of his resolution, he lumbered unsteadily into the taxicab and was catapulted to the house on Riverside Drive.

The butler admitted him and smirked behind his back with the derisiveness of English servants in American households when he saw Judd hold out a miscalculating hand for the banister post and miss it by a foot, thereby almost going to his knees on the stairs. But he recovered his equilibrium, growling, and made his way into Mrs. Treharne's sitting room. Heloise was there alone, reading a French comic weekly of extraordinary pictorial frankness with such gusto that she did not even rise when Judd partly fell into the room.

Judd glared at her out of red eyes.

"Why the devil don't you get to your feet when I come in here, you jabbering chimpanzee?" he inquired of the by no means flabbergasted Heloise. She had often seen Judd thus and she was used to his expletives and his fondness for comparing her to the simian species on account of her French tongue. "Where's your mistress?"

"Madame has gone to the theatre," said Heloise, giving Judd a view of a wide, unscreened French yawn.

"Oh, Madame has, has she?" said Judd, apeing the maid's tone with a drunken disregard for even the most ordinary dignity. "What theatre?"

Heloise shrugged.

"What theatre?" Judd bawled at her.

"How should one know?" inquired Heloise, disdainfully enough. "Madame did not say."

Judd plumped himself into a deep chair, cocked his evening hat at a little more acute angle over his left ear, fumblingly loosened the buttons of his overcoat, crossed his legs with grunting difficulty, removed his gloves, revealing the enormous diamond rings which he wore on the third finger of each freckled, pudgy hand; then glared at the unruffled Heloise again.

"Is anybody at home?" he asked her.

"Mademoiselle is here," replied Heloise. "But she is retiring and is not to be seen."

"Oh, she's not to be seen, hey?" snarled Judd. "Who says she isn't to be seen? You?"

Heloise shrugged again. She knew that her shrugs enraged him, but she was a dauntless maid of France.

"You tell her that I want to see her, understand?" ordered Judd, thickly. "Want to see her right here and right now."

"Mademoiselle sent her maid out for the evening and left word that she was not to be disturbed," protested Heloise.

"I don't care a continental hang what word she left!" raged Judd. "You tell her that I want to see her, here and now. You take that message to her or out you go, bag and baggage. I'm paying your wages."

Heloise, bestowing upon him a parting shrug which was artistically designed to inform him as to just how little she cared for him or his "wages," left the room and knocked upon Louise's sleeping-room door.

Louise, in a negligÉe and with her hair rippling silkily over her shoulders, was preparing for sleep. The afternoon's reverie still possessed her. Musing dreams lingered in her eyes.

She looked up, not surprised to see Heloise enter. The French maid, devoted to Louise from the beginning, often came in for a chat when her mistress was out, to the jealous concern of Louise's own maid. Now, however, Louise was struck with the light of wrath and disgust in Heloise's fire-darting, eloquent eyes.

"What is it, Heloise?" she asked.

Heloise broke into objurgation as to "zat Jood beast"—cochon rouge, she called him, explosively.

"He demands that you come," she said to Louise. "He is not himself; that is, he is himself; he is drunk."

"But what does he want with me?" asked Louise, apprehensively. Heloise could furnish her with no reply to that. "Of course I shall not see him."

Heloise, finger on lip, considered. She knew Judd exceedingly well, and she was acquainted with his violence when in his cups. She knew that he was quite capable of breaking in upon Louise's privacy if she did not respond to his summons—even if he had to put his shoulder to her door. After a moment's reflection, Heloise advised Louise to go to him. He could not harm her, except perhaps with his tongue, and he would do that anyhow if she refused to answer his summons; Heloise would be hovering near to see that he offered her no other harm. Louise, who had the gift of becoming deliberate and cool in emergent moments, decided to take the maid's advice. She dressed hastily and Heloise quickly tucked her hair up. She was very regal, very much in control of herself, when she swept swiftly into her mother's sitting room and confronted Judd.

Judd did not rise. Neither did he remove his rakishly-tilted hat. He still sat with crossed legs, and he was muttering hoarsely to himself when Louise entered. When he heard her rustled entrance he dovetailed his fingers on the lower portion of his evening shirt, twiddled his thumbs, and gazed at her through his red, drink-diminished eyes.

"Oh, so you came, eh?" he wheezed, drily, continuing to regard her with his bleary stare.

"What is it you wish of me?" Louise asked him, meeting his gaze, but continuing to stand.

"Oh, nothing in particular—nothing in particular," said Judd with the incoherency of intoxication. Quickly, though, he took a tone of brazenness. "You're going to sit down, ain't you? It doesn't cost any more to sit down."

"I shall stand," said Louise, immovable before him.

"Oh, you'll stand, hey?" sneered Judd. "All right, stand. I sent for you because, in the first place, I wanted to see if you'd come or not. And you're here, ain't you?" this with an air of drunken triumph. Louise made no reply.

"Secondly," went on Judd, scowling over the drink-magnified memory of his wrongs, "I sent for you to ask you what in blazes you mean by continually stirring up rows and rough-houses between your mother and me? Hey? What's the answer?"

There was no answer. Louise, literally numb from the vulgar violence of the man, was bereft of speech. She faced him with her fingers tightly laced behind her back, and her face had grown very pale.

"That's what I want to find out from you," went on Judd, uncrossing his legs so that he could lean forward in his chair and wag an emphasizing finger at her. "And there are some other things I want to find out from you. One of 'em is why the devil you think you're licensed to treat me—me!—as if I were a flunkey?"

Louise retained her frozen attitude. She had the feeling of one being blown upon by icy blasts. Even had there seemed to be any need for her to make reply, she could not have done so.

"You've got a tongue, haven't you?" demanded Judd, her silence adding to the rage into which he was deliberately lashing himself. "Don't you try your infernal haughty airs on me any more, young woman. I won't tolerate it. I don't have to tolerate it. Didn't they teach you manners at school? If they didn't, by God, I'll know the reason why! I paid 'em to teach you manners!"

Involuntarily Louise pressed her hands to her temples, for she felt suddenly faint. But she conquered the faintness. The utter incredibleness of his words seemed to nerve her.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked him, her voice sounding in her ears like that of someone else.

"Mean?" raged Judd, gripping the arms of his chair and half rising. "What do I mean? I mean what I say. I paid the people who educated you, or pretended to educate you, to drill some manners into you. And now I'm going to take a whole lot of pains to find out why they took my money under false pretenses!"

"Are you not beside yourself?" asked Louise quietly enough, though her thoughts were in a vortex. "Am I to understand that you really expect me to believe that you paid for my education?"

Judd flopped back into his chair and stared hard at her. Then he broke into a short, jarring laugh.

"Will you listen to that?" he croaked, looking around the room as if addressing an invisible jury. Then, lowering his head and glowering upon Louise, he went on: "Am I to understand that you are pretending that you don't know that I paid for your education?"

"I did not know it," said Louise in so low a tone that she could hardly hear herself.

"Am I to understand," brutally went on Judd, now entirely out of himself, "that you are pretending not to know that I've been shovelling out money for you for nearly five years—ever since you were in pigtails? D'ye mean to stand there, with your damned outlandish haughtiness, and tell me that you don't know that every hairpin, every pair of shoes, every frippery or furbelow that you've owned in that time, hasn't been settled for by me? That you don't know that the roof over your head and the bed you've slept in has been paid for by me? That you don't know that the clothes that you've got on your back right this minute were bought for you by me?"

It was the cruelest moment in the girl's life. Her senses were reeling. But, by an effort of pure will, of supreme concentration, she mustered her strength to withstand the shock.

"I did not know these things," she replied in a voice that sounded in her own ears like a mere distant echo. "They are true? I was not told. Until this moment I had always supposed that my education and maintenance were paid for out of funds from—" She could not mention the name of her father in the presence of this drink-inflamed brute;—"from other sources."

"Not by a damned sight," roared Judd, relentless, paying no attention to the girl's drawn features and trembling lips. "I know what you're getting at. But you're wrong. There haven't been any 'funds from other sources,' as you call it, disbursed for you for nearly five years. And that's easy to explain, too. I wouldn't have any 'funds from other sources' dribbling along to an establishment I was maintaining. That's why I chucked what you call the 'funds from other sources' back into the sender's teeth."

Louise, under the impact of that final cowardly blow, might have fallen prone had not her mother, eyes alight with mingled rage and compassion, swept into the room at that instant and gently pushed her daughter into a chair just as Louise felt that her knees were giving way beneath her. Mrs. Treharne, standing stunned in the hall upon coming in, had heard Judd's last few sentences; and she judged from them what he had been saying before her return.

Judd's jaw fell when he saw Mrs. Treharne, for the moment imperious in her anger and her solicitude for her daughter, sweep into the room in her trailing furs. But, after an instant, he brought his twisted teeth together with a snap and gazed at her with drunken dauntlessness. It was one of Judd's hours when he was too far gone to think of surrendering even to her.

"What have you done, you unspeakable brute?" Mrs. Treharne asked him, her voice trembling, as she stood facing him, one hand on Louise's shoulder.

Louise looked up at her mother.

"He has been telling me, mother, what I now believe to be the truth," she said; "that I am indebted to him for my schooling, my maintenance, my—" She could not go on.

Mrs. Treharne's eyes blazed.

"You low cad—you vulgar coward!" she fairly hissed at Judd.

But Judd, for once, would have none of that. He rose unsteadily to his feet and stood swaying before her.

"No more of that from you!" he thundered, the veins of his forehead standing out purplishly. "I know what I've said, and I stand for it! Don't you try to come that bullyragging business over me—I'm all through standing for that! You can do as you please, go as far as you like. But this is my house—don't you ever forget that! See that you remember it every minute from this time on, will you?" and with a parting glare he strode to the door, tramped down the stairs, and went out, pulling the door after him with a crash.

Mrs. Treharne, herself used to such scenes with Judd, but hideously conscious of what a horror this one must have been to an inexperienced girl less than three months away from the serene atmosphere of school, sat upon an arm of Louise's chair and began to stroke her daughter's hair.

"But why did you never tell me, mother?" asked Louise after a long silence.

"BUT, WHY DID YOU NEVER TELL ME, MOTHER?"

Mrs. Treharne, on the defensive, tried to devise excuses, but they were very feeble ones. She had not wanted to worry Louise by telling her; the girl had been too young to be told while at school, and, since her return, she had not had the courage to tell her; it would have done no good to tell her at any rate, would it? And so on.

After a while Louise rose.

"I can't stay here, mother," she said. "I am going at once."

"That is absurd," her mother replied, flutteringly. "It is after midnight. You must not be hasty, dear. He had been drinking. Men are beasts when they drink. It will all pass over," she added weakly.

"No, it cannot pass over," said Louise in a wearied tone. "I am going. I could not remain here another hour. You must not ask me to. It is impossible."

"But, my child," cried Mrs. Treharne, beginning to dab at her eyes, "it is out of the question—unheard of! There is no reason for it. These things happen everywhere. You must face life as it is, not as you have been dreaming it to be. Sleep with me tonight and think it over. You'll view it all differently in the morning."

"I am going now, mother," replied Louise, and her mother knew then that the girl's decision was unalterable.

"But where are you going at this hour of the night, child?" she asked, now weeping outright.

"To Laura's," said Louise. Saying it, she was swept by a sudden wave of feeling. "Mother," she went on in a broken voice, "come with me, won't you? Let us go together. I want to be with you all the time. I want to live with you only. I need you. We can be so happy together, just by ourselves! We can get a pretty little place somewhere and be happy together, just you and I. And I have been so unhappy, so miserable, here! Won't you come with me—come now?"

A beautiful hour had struck for that mother, had she but known it.

But she released herself from Louise's arms and shook her head, all the time dabbing, dabbing at her eyes with her little wad of a lace handkerchief.

"Don't ask me such an absurd thing, Louise," she replied. "Of course I can't do anything so outlandishly foolish."

"Then I must go alone, dear," said Louise, bitter disappointment placarded on her drawn face. "I wanted to be always with you. I never meant to leave you. But I can't stay now. Won't you come, mother?"

Mrs. Treharne shook her head and sobbed. Louise gazed commiseratingly at the weak, tempestuously-crying little woman, and then went to her rooms. She called Laura on the telephone.

"I am coming to you now, Laura," she said.

"You mean tonight, dear?" inquired Laura in her caressing contralto, refraining, with the wisdom of a woman of experience, from giving utterance to any astonishment.

"Yes, at once," said Laura. "I shall take a taxicab and be there within the half hour."

"I shall be waiting, dear," replied Laura.

Louise, in hat and coat, bent over her mother, who had thrown herself weeping on a couch, and sought to soothe her. But her mother had only wild, broken reproaches for her for going away "so foolishly, so unnecessarily," and Louise saw that her efforts to calm her were futile. So she bent over and kissed her mother's tear-wet face, then walked down the stairs and out of the house to the waiting taxicab. She never put foot in the house on the Drive again.