I did not sleep that night. Dawn and her grandma had given me too much food for cogitation. I felt I had incurred a responsibility in regard to the former, upon which I chewed tough cud at the expense of sleep.

While there was hard common-sense in the old grandmother's point of view, it was also easy to be at one with the girl's desire for something brighter and more stirring than old Noonoon afforded. The fertile valley was beautiful in all truth, but with the beauty that appeals only to the storm-wrecked mariner, worn with a glut of human strife and glad to be at anchor for a time rebuilding a jaded constitution.

Upon a first impression this girl did not seem abnormally anxious for the mere plaudits or the notoriety part of the stage-struck's fever, nor was she alight with that fire called genius which will burn a hole through all obstacles till it reaches its goal; she appeared rather to regard the stage as a means to an end—a pleasant easy way, in the notion of the inexperienced, of obtaining the fine linen and silver spoon she desired. Had she been a boy, doubtless she would have set out to work for her ambition, but being a girl she sought to climb by the most approved and usual ladder within reach—the stage; for actresses all married the lovely, rich (often titled) young gentlemen who sat in rows in the front seats and admired the high-class "stars" and worshipped the ballerinas and chorus girls, or so at least a great many people believed, being led astray by certain columns in gossip newspapers, which doubtless have a colouring of truth inasmuch that the women of the stage are idealised creatures—idealised by limelight, and advertised by a pushing management for the benefit of the box-office.

Now Dawn had ample ability and appearance for success on the stage if her parents had been there before her, so that she could have grown up in touch with it, but whether she had sufficient iron and salt to push her way against the barriers in her pathway I doubted. Only sheer genius can get to the front in any line of art with which it is not in touch, and even giant talent is often so mangled in the struggle that when it wrests recognition it is too spent to maintain the altitude it has attained at the expense of heart-sweat and blood.

The girl worried me, and it worried me more to think that after all my experience I was so foolish and sentimental that I could be worried regarding her. She had a comfortable home, a loving guardian, youth, health, good appearance, and, to a certain extent, fitted her surroundings. There was nothing of the ethereally Æsthetic about her, and no stretch of sickly imagination could picture her as pining to be understood. Notwithstanding this, there was I longing to help her so much that, in spite of my health and an acquaintance that was only twelve hours old, I was contemplating entering society for her sweet sake. The fact was, this little orphan girl who had taken up the life her mother had laid down at dawn of day nineteen years ago, had collected my scalp, and was at leave to string it on her belt as that of an ardent faithful lover who never entertained one unworthy thought of her, or wavered in affection from the hour she first flashed upon her.

I desired to save her from such savage disappointment as had blighted my life, not that she would ever have the capacity to feel my frenzy of griefs, but remembering my own experience, I was ever anxious to save other youngsters from the possibilities of a similar fate.

The best disposal to be made of Dawn was to settle her in marriage with some decent and well-to-do man on the sunny side of thirty; but where was such an one?

Thus I lay awake, and heard the hours chime and the trains go roaring by, till all the household but Miss Flipp had returned. She entered from the outside, did not come in till after midnight, and was not alone. Her uncle accompanied her. My room had French lights opening into the garden in the same way as Miss Flipp's, and as my ailment was a heart affection it was sometimes necessary for me to go outside to get sufficient air, and in this instance I had the door-windows wide open and the bed pulled almost to the opening. Miss Flipp apparently had her window open too, for despite the conversation in her room being in subdued tones, I heard it where I lay.

It contained startling disclosures anent these two persons' relations and characters, and when Mr Pornsch went his way with the uneven footsteps of the overfed and of accumulating years, he left me in a painful state of perturbation.

What course should I pursue?

Casting on a pair of slippers and a heavy cloak, I took a little path leading from my window through the garden to the pier where the boats were moored, and here I sat down to consider. Experience had taught me to be chary of entering matters that did not concern me, but it had not made me sufficiently callous to preserve my equanimity in face of a discovery so serious as this.

Miss Flipp had sinned the sin which, if discovered, put a great gulf 'twixt her and Grandma Clay, Dawn, Carry, and myself, but which would not prevent her fellow-sinner from associating with us on more than terms of equality. Should Grandma Clay become aware of what I knew, she certainly would bundle the girl out neck and crop, as she would be justified in doing. But the girl was in a ghastly predicament, and more sinned against than sinning, when one heard her grief and remembered the age of her betrayer, which should have made him the protector instead of the seducer of young women.

Times out of number the dramatic critics have termed me an artist of the first rank, and it is this temperament which furnishes the faculty of regarding all shades and consequences of life's issues unabashed, and with the power to distil knowledge from good and bad and use it experimentally, rather than, as a judge, condemnatory.

I determined to keep the girl's secret, and show myself sympathetically friendly otherwise, hoping she would extend me her confidence, so that in a humble way I might be privileged to stand between her and perdition.

It was a beautiful night, one of those when the moon relinquishes her court to the little stars. Vehicular traffic had ceased, and the only sound breaking the stillness of the great frostless, silver-spangled darkness was the panting of the steam-engines and the murmur of the river where half a mile down it took a slight fall over boulders. The electric lights of the town twinkled in the near distance, and farther east was a faint glow beyond the horizon, rightly or wrongly attributed to the lights of the metropolis. After a time it grew chilly, and I was glad to return to my bed. Dawn was separated from me by a thin wooden partition, and her strong healthy breathing was plainly discernible as she lay like an opening rose in maiden slumber, but there was now no sound from the room of the other poor girl—a rose devoured by the worm in its core.

Next morning, however, she appeared at breakfast, for Clay's was not a house wherein one felt encouraged to coddle themselves without exceptional reason, and to all but a suspicious or hypercritical observer she seemed as usual.

Carry was going to church.

"I haven't been able to go this three weeks because my dress wasn't finished, and next Sunday will be my week in the kitchen, so if I don't go now I won't be able to show it for a fortnight," she announced.

"Well, I ain't going," said grandma. "Gimme back your porridge, I forgot to dose it"—this to Andrew, on whose oatmeal she had omitted to put sugar and milk. "I've always found church is a good deal of bother when you have any important work. I contribute to the stipend; that ought to be enough for 'em. If one spent all their time running to church they would have no money to give to it, an' I never yet see praying make a living for any one but the parsons."

Thus, Dawn being engaged in the kitchen, and her Uncle Jake keeping her company there while he perused the 'Noonoon Advertiser,' which descended to him on Sunday morning, Andrew having gone away with Jack Bray, and Miss Flipp being invisible, grandma and I were left together to enjoy a small fire in the dining-room, so I took this opportunity of inquiring how Jim Clay had managed to capture her. This sort of thing interested me; I liked life in the actuality where there was no counterfeit or make-believe to offend the sense of just proportions. Not that I do not love books and pictures, but they have to be so very very good before they can in any way appease one, while the meanest life is absorbingly interesting, invested as it must ever be with the dignity of reality.