That evening Pearl had the satisfaction of writing Mr. Wood that Durland had stopped smoking. She gave the whole scene on the beach. Never before in all her life had she been amused at writing a letter; she had looked upon them as a duty to be paid to friendship. But to this man whom she had never seen she enjoyed writing. It was like patting Alfred—you could express your friendly emotion without fear of rousing any response whatsoever. Almost every day she had some progress to report—Mrs. Conway had consented to keep her jewelry in the safe in her bedroom provided for the purpose. At first she had positively refused, asserting that as she could never remember the combination her jewels remained locked up until an expert was sent down from town to open the safe; and that for her part she would as lief a thief had them, who might get some fun out of them, as that they stayed locked up in her safe for the rest of time. But Pearl very competently offered to make the combination and remember it, and come every morning and get them out at any hour Mrs. Conway chose. A rumor of burglaries in the neighborhood induced Edna to yield.

Then before a week was over algebra became to Durland an illumined subject, a study of mystic beauty and romantic association. He not only mastered it in the proud determination to prove that men were not fools but he invented clever discussions to lengthen his brief hour into an hour and a half; while Antonia, wondering at his industry, kept insisting that it was time to go to the public beach.

All this Pearl wrote, day by day. But she could not write the thing which of all others she knew Mr. Wood wanted to hear—that Antonia was dressed like a nice little girl. The best she could say was that the child was not actually dirty. Nor could she say that she had gained Mrs. Conway's friendship. That lady remained aloof, a little malicious, always in the opposition, treating Pearl's triumphs as petty tyrannies over the children's free spirits, treating Pearl's failures as splendid triumphs in the field of human freedom.

When Pearl appealed to her with "I don't think Antonia ought to wear that torn dress to Olive's for tea, Mrs. Conway," Edna would smile and answer, "You know, Miss Exeter, I can't think those things a matter of life and death the way you do. I own I should be sorry if at eleven she thought of nothing but dress."

"Like Dolly," said Antonia.

That, Pearl discovered, was the secret of Antonia's dislike of neatness. She was afraid of being like Dolly—Dolly, who represented simply everything of which Antonia disapproved.

All this Pearl wrote to Anthony; long, long letters composed after the rest of the household were in bed. "It is long after midnight, and I should be in bed instead of writing——"

She paused. The well-known illustrator who had done her picture for the cleaning-fluid firm had told her—and the illustrator was herself a beautiful woman, experienced in the ways of the world—that all love letters from unmarried girls ended with the words, "But it is after midnight, and I ought to be in bed instead," whether they were written at noon or at night.

Love letters! How absurd!

Letters which amuse the writer to write rarely fail to amuse the recipient to read. Pearl's letters, arriving as they did in bunches, amused him not only on account of their dashing style but on account of the contrast between this style and the pale demure little person he remembered. Anything written day by day gains a serial interest; and Anthony, without newspapers, waited for Pearl's letters as the great interest of life. He had never felt so intimate with his family as through her careful description of them. His sister, though a fairly regular correspondent, had to perfection the art of covering the paper with sentences which by the time they reached her correspondent meant nothing. "I did so wonder whether the preserved ginger I ordered for you had caught your steamer of if the man had mistaken the line—he seemed so stupid——" Pages like this, when he wanted to hear of the contemporary life of the children.

Yet this time the first sentence of his sister's letter interested him:

She arrived the day before yesterday—your priceless pearl—Antonia's idea of Helen of Troy. But do you think Helen would have made a comfortable sort of governess? This young woman is entirely untrained—turns handsprings on the beach and goes shouting about the tennis courts in a loud Western voice that I do hope the children won't learn to copy. Dolly, who is, as you know, the most sensitively refined being that was ever made, is quite shocked by her. The two younger ones like her well enough, but I can't imagine her ever having any control over them. I always think one must be a little disciplined oneself in order to exercise control over others. I must confess, Anthony, that I should pack your selection off tomorrow if I had not given you my word to keep her. Cora quite agrees with me that Miss Exeter would do better on the variety stage than as a governess. I don't think there is any news. Durland has entirely given up smoking, as I always said he would—entirely of his own accord. You don't believe me, but a mother has a sort of psychic understanding of her children.

How could he help being on the other side? Yet the letter gave him something to think about. Helen of Troy—that pale, thin girl! Well, he should never understand women's estimates of other women's looks. He laughed aloud over the note about Durland's smoking, Edna and her psychic understanding!

But thinking of psychic things—and far away in the folds of that bare Mexican valley Anthony had time to think—something psychic came from Miss Exeter's letters which he had not felt in her personality. He could not call it exactly conceit, but it was like a conviction of beauty. He did not know how to describe it, but it made him think of an essay by a novelist which he had read, when or where he could not remember—was it by Stevenson?—in which the writer had spoken of the uncontrollable way in which heroines whom you constantly described as lovely kept turning plain and uninteresting on your hands; and the other way round—how heroines, with just a few words of friendly description, suddenly walked through your pages as tremendous beauties, with no assistance from you. Clara Middleton, in the Egoist, had been cited as one of the latter class. Well, it seemed to him that this girl was like that. He had seen her—a nice-looking young woman, but her letters were the letters of a beauty. Probably it was the profound subconscious egotism of the woman coming out. The point was that she was getting away with it. He wrote and asked Durland to send him a photograph of her. But it did not need much diplomacy on the part of Pearl to prevent its ever being dispatched.

As a matter of fact, she did not dread discovery very much. It seemed to her it would be nothing more than an awkward moment—after all, he already knew her better than he had ever known Augusta—only before he came back she must have worked all the desired miracles. Far from dreading his return, she looked forward to it with veiled excitement—great fun, like taking off your masks at a fancy ball.

She had been with the Conway family almost a month when she witnessed the first trial of strength between the hostile factions—Dolly against Antonia. There was only one spare room in the cottage since the governess had come. Dolly announced at luncheon, very casually, that she had invited Allen Williams to spend the following Sunday with them. Antonia broke out at once with the passionate sense of defeat that betrays the young. She had invited her best, indeed her only, friend Olive, who was to be abandoned by her family, for the coming Sunday.

"You said I could ask her, mother. I did ask her—you let me ask her. I asked her first—before Dolly asked Allen—you said I could"—over and over again; but Dolly's flashing silence was more impressive. Pearl knew that it was not so much a question of justice as of trial by torture. Mrs. Conway would yield to whichever of her children could inflict the most pain upon her, and that, of course, was Dolly. Dolly did not reiterate her position like Antonia. Now and then she dropped a frigid sentence that revealed her argument. Her mother had always told her she might ask anyone she liked for week ends. She had asked Allen and he had accepted. As for Olive, she lived in Southampton—why shouldn't she stay in her own house? It was just as an excuse for little girls to sit up talking all night and steal food out of the pantry and get the whole household upset.

This was shrewd. The last time Olive had come to stay it had resulted in the loss of a cook. Mrs. Conway remembered this as Dolly spoke. Her position was painful. She had promised Antonia she could have her friend this Sunday, when Olive's parents were away. But then on the other hand she had also encouraged Dolly to ask anyone she liked to the house. Yet she disliked young Williams and feared Dolly's growing devotion to him. Somebody had already said to her that it was a pity for Dolly to make herself so conspicuous with him—he was no good, that young man. But part of her tragedy as a mother was that she sympathized with her children when thwarted in something in which she knew they ought to be thwarted. She knew now that Dolly's hold on young William's interest was of the slightest; she knew that the girl had obtained this promise of a week end visit with difficulty—perhaps even it was mere convenience—he wanted to go to some party, or to see some other woman. Mrs. Conway knew that if she decided in favor of Antonia, as perhaps strict justice would demand, there never would be any other week end for Williams. Dolly would lose him; and though this was exactly what she desired, she could not be so cruel as to bring it about. So she decided in favor of her elder daughter, and managed as usual to anger both of them.

"I'm afraid, my dear," she said to Antonia, as if she were being particularly impartial, "that this is one of those terrible occasions on which you are called upon to be unselfish and noble and all that. I own I don't care for this young man who says bur-r-rud and wor-ruld, and seems to me to be quite the dullest person I ever met; but Dolly is older than you, you know, and must be allowed to have her playmates first. When you are a big girl and want to have beautiful young morons to stay——"

"I hope I shan't ride roughshod over other people's rights," said Antonia with snapping eyes.

"I'm sorry my friends must be insulted, mother, just because I have ventured to invite them to your house. Believe me, if I had a house of my own I would not trouble you either with my friends or myself."

Tears rose to Mrs. Conway's eyes. She was so deeply hurt she could not even pretend that she wasn't; so hurt that she spoke naturally to the governess when for a second after luncheon, owing to the withdrawal in opposite directions of her two daughters, she found herself alone with the interloper.

"Young people are so cruel," she said. "What more could I do for Dolly? I sacrifice poor little Antonia, I make the house hers—and she tells me practically she only stays with me because she has to."

As Pearl went upstairs Dolly called her into her room—the first time she had ever done such a thing. But after all the woman with all her faults had the virtue of not being a member of the family.

"You see what I mean, Miss Exeter," she said, looking up from polishing her nails with a feverish rapidity. "Everything in this house is done for Antonia—or would be if I did not fight for my rights. Nobody likes to make a scene, but to ask a man like Mr. Williams—you don't know, but women—older women—married women—like Mrs. Temple—so silly—it just bores Allen; but he feels he ought to go there, and when he said he would come here instead, fancy my having to put him off because Antonia wanted that fat Olive to come, when Olive lives here anyhow."

Pearl's limpid gray eyes gazed at her sympathetically. It was her nature to be sympathetic, and presently Dolly was telling her how she had, first met Allen, how he had danced and how wonderfully their steps went together. It seemed as if she had remembered every syllable that had ever fallen from his lips, and loved to repeat them, though they were of a conspicuously commonplace character. Then she confided a secret—he had asked himself. She would never have dared to ask him.

"Dared!" said Pearl, every inch the feminist.

"Oh, well," Dolly retreated rapidly, "this house is so full of uninteresting children like Antonia and Durland—under your feet all day long; but when Allen said himself, telling how he didn't want to go to the Temples, 'Why don't you ask me?'——"

Her voice softened over the remembered tones; of course she had asked him.

Pearl's heart sank at this news. She wondered if she were vain to attach a dread significance to his initiative. She remembered that peculiar fierce stare from those pale eyes. Well, she wouldn't speak to him—that was all there was to that.

Presently she left Dolly and went to knock on Antonia's door, which was suspiciously shut; usually Antonia lived and dressed open to corridors.

Yes, as Pearl feared, Antonia was lying on her bed, crumpled as to clothes and damp about the cheeks. Miss Exeter could see now, she said; she was treated like a step-child. Her mother didn't love her as she loved Dolly, and how could anyone love Dolly?—that's what she couldn't understand.

Pearl had not thought it worth while to try to argue Antonia's case with Dolly, but the child was so clear-minded she did try to put Dolly's side of the case to her. Antonia admitted it all, but impatiently.

"And why is he willing to come," she said—"a man like him? He's just making a convenience of Dolly, or something. He doesn't think anything about her at all."

It was exactly Pearl's own impression. Then why was he coming?

He came on Friday afternoon by the fast train, and Dolly in her new pink hat and her white motoring coat—just back from the cleaner and smelling a little bit of gasoline, but so much more becoming than her gray one—went to meet him. She and Allen and Mrs. Conway were all dining out that evening, and Pearl had organized a picnic for herself and Antonia and Durland, far up the beach, with the moon and a fire of driftwood and a great deal of excellent food. They did not see the house guest that evening.

The next morning at half past nine Pearl was obliged to go to the garage to find Antonia; she was studying the oiling system of the green car. There was nothing unfriendly in her attitude to study; she was perfectly willing to learn, if she could only manage to remember that lesson time had come.

They had lessons on the piazza. Pearl, looking out over the dazzling sea and thinking how pleasant a swim was going to be, had said "How do you spell 'separate,' Antonia?" and Antonia, twining her bare toes about the calf of the other leg, had got as far as "Well, I know it's an e where you expect an a or just the other way," when Williams, bending his head slightly under the curtains, stepped from the dining room upon the piazza.

He looked extremely polished and soaped. He had on white trousers, a gray coat, a blue tie. Antonia, who had never seen him so near before, stared at him, forgetting even to say good morning. He bowed rather formally to the governess, but to Antonia he said, "Where were you last evening? I was watching for you and you didn't appear."

He sat down and drew her toward him with an immaculate brown hand.

Pearl had never seen Antonia embarrassed before. The child kept glancing up at Williams as if fascinated, and glancing quickly away again as if dazzled. Then she turned both knees inward, seemed to dig her toes into the boards and answered in a low, husky voice that they had been out on a picnic.

"I think you might have asked me," said Williams.

He spoke in that tone of false comedy—as if anything you said to a child must be ridiculous—that was peculiarly annoying to Pearl.

Antonia bent her head and muttered that she had not thought he would have enjoyed it.

"I should have enjoyed it," he said, and drew Antonia closer, so that over her head he could give Pearl a hard, significant look.

Pearl rose to her feet. This was a situation she understood thoroughly. She was not going to lose another job on account of a man—a boy rather, younger than herself. In spite of Williams' protests and teasing efforts to retain the child, she swept her up to her bedroom to finish her lessons. But she no longer had Antonia's full attention.

When asked again to spell "separate," Antonia answered, "He is handsome, isn't he?"

"Not to my mind," Pearl answered firmly. "He's clean and healthy looking."

"He's beautifully clean," said Antonia. "Think of going about with someone like that!" The measure of her collapse might be taken when a few minutes later she dashed to the window to watch him drive away with her sister, and turning back she exclaimed sadly, "Gee, I never thought I'd wish I was Dolly!"

Pearl thought to herself that there was no great difficulty in seeing through this young man's plans. He wasn't the kind who wept on the desk like the third vice president of the Encyclopedia company. No, he was going to use Antonia's open admiration as an avenue to the governess. Well, the situation could not prolong itself. This was Saturday, and he would be going early Monday morning. There oughtn't to be much trouble in keeping out of his way. She could count on Dolly's coÖperation. She sighed, wishing that Mrs. Conway were more friendly. Dolly would keep him playing golf as late as possible; they would not meet again until luncheon, and that was perfectly safe.

She miscalculated. Williams' will was stronger than Dolly's. It was a day of long, regular waves, high but without force, turned back from the shore by a northerly wind. Antonia was standing near shore diving them, wave after wave, and shaking her short hair out of her eyes after each one passed over her head. Pearl had swum out beyond the line of breakers and was sitting on a barrel, enjoying the sensation of being pulled gently in and out as each swell rolled past her. Suddenly on the shore she saw Williams and Dolly appear in their bathing things. She understood it all. Dolly had been lured to the beach at this early hour by the idea of an undisturbed tÊte-À-tÊte. The girl sat down, as if confident that Williams was going to do the same, but he stood gazing out to sea. Pearl felt his eyes reach her, and then he dived into one of the great crested billows and she saw that he was making straight for her barrel. He was coming fast, but he was coming under water. When he reached the barrel Pearl was not there. Looking back, he saw her almost at the shore.

He was, however, the kind of man in whom opposition rouses a sort of malignant persistence. All through luncheon she kept catching his pale eye. She thought Durland noticed it, and hoped that Dolly didn't. Antonia hardly moved her eyes from his face.

After lunch, when they were all in the sitting room, Antonia ran away to get him a match before anyone else had noticed he needed one. Dolly smiled.

"What's this, Allen?" she said. "Is Antonia another of your victims?"

Williams frowned, not because he was in the least annoyed but to indicate that he was a man impervious to flattery. Pearl had one of her inspirations.

"If it's true," she said, "Mr. Williams has it in his power to do us all a great favor. Do ask him, Dolly, to say to Antonia that he likes to see a little girl neatly dressed like other little girls."

"That would, indeed, be a miracle," said Dolly, not wanting anything Allen might accomplish to be underestimated.

"Certainly, if I can," said Allen, looking at the governess.

Pearl was standing turning over the papers on the table, ready for flight, although with Durland and Dolly both in the room she felt perfectly secure. She was delighted with her idea.

"It would be a great help in my life," she said, "if you would." And she looked straight at him and smiled as if she saw before her a combination of a god and a saint. It was a look that went straight to his rather stupid head, through which all sorts of ideas began to dance brightly.

"And what do I get out of it?" he asked.

Dolly laughed. "Oh, Allen," she said, "you must not be so mercenary."

And Pearl, avoiding his hard, demanding eyes, slipped quietly out of the room just as Antonia returned with the matches.

Pearl had not been in her room more than five minutes when a knock came at the door, instantly followed by the entrance of Antonia. The first impression was that the child was in physical pain. Her whole face was trembling, her hand was clasped over her mouth, and the instant the door was shut behind her she burst out crying.

Mr. Williams had said she was dirty!

Pearl, full of pity and feeling horribly guilty, denouncing Williams in her heart as a heavy-handed idiot, could not but marvel over the power of romantic love. Everyone, even the adored Durland, had been saying for years that Antonia was dirty, and eliciting nothing from her but pitying smiles; and now this agony of shame and remorse was occasioned by the same words from a total stranger.

Suffering like this, Pearl knew, could be allayed only by action. She invented action. Antonia should appear for church the next morning, clean, faultless, perfect in every detail. Antonia shook her head dumbly—she had nothing—it was Saturday and all her white dresses were in the wash—her light-blue crÊpe de chine had raspberry-ice stains on it—and she had hidden it away; her green linen was covered with motor oil. Mrs. Conway's maid had long ago refused to take any responsibility for Antonia's wardrobe, and Pearl could not blame her.

But the value of the plan was its difficulty. Antonia's agony would not have been soothed by anything easy, and this was not easy. It took all afternoon and most of the evening. Under some crab nets a pair of gray suÈde slippers were found, which Pearl cleaned with gasoline and a little powder; stuffed into the crown of a riding hat to make it smaller was a pair of fine gray silk stockings; her best black hat, worn only once, had fallen into the water and was a ruin; but retrimmed with a pink rose from an evening dress of Pearl's, it looked better than before. At last a crumpled pink linen dress was discovered wrapped about some precious phonograph records. Pearl borrowed the maid's electric iron and went to work at this. She was so tired when she had finished that she omitted, for the first time, her daily letter to Anthony.

Dressing Antonia the next morning was an excitement. The child's spirits had revived so that she could look at the situation with her customary detachment.

"I'm like that thing in the Bible," she said. "I've put away childish things."

"It will be great fun, you'll find, being as nice-looking as you can be," said Pearl.

Antonia nodded.

"But the other was fun too," she said.

Everything turned out exactly as Pearl had intended. Dolly did not come down to breakfast, and Williams did. So, by a miracle, did Mrs. Conway. Antonia's entrance created a sensation—her carefully curled hair, her spotless linen, her long slim legs in their gray silk stockings. Not only Williams but even Durland administered honeyed words of praise. Mrs. Conway approved of her child, but allowed no credit to Miss Exeter.

"It's so silly to worry about those things," she said. "I always knew that she would eventually begin to take care of her appearance. I shall write Anthony that feminine vanity has asserted itself just as I knew it would."

Mrs. Conway and Pearl and Durland and Antonia went to church, accompanied, as Pearl knew they would be accompanied, by Williams. He said it was entirely on account of Antonia—was a privilege to go to church with a little girl who looked as pretty as she did. Although he spoke in an irritating tone, as if you could make fun of a child without a child suspecting it, Pearl saw that Antonia was flattered at receiving any of his priceless attention.

In the few weeks of Pearl's stay she had become attached to the little wooden church on the dunes. She always sat so that she could look out through the door of the south transept, the upper half of which was usually open, and see the ocean; when it was rough it seemed to roll out a deeper accompaniment than the organ's to:

There was a tradition that this was always sung.

Sometimes an impatient dog would stand on its hind legs and look in, seeking a praying master; and once a wolfhound had bounded over the half door of one transept and, not finding his owner, had bounded out at the other.

During the sermon Pearl, it must be confessed, was engaged in composing her daily report to Anthony. At last she had accomplished the great achievement—at last she could tell him the thing he most wanted to hear. She made up her mind that she would begin: "All through church I looked at Antonia's pretty little profile under a black hat trimmed with pink roses——" Life presented itself to her in the form of her letters to Wood, thus offsetting the sense of loneliness that Mrs. Conway's mocking aloofness caused her. She was still composing when, after church was over, they walked—Mrs. Conway and Williams ahead and Pearl with Durland on one side and Antonia on the other—the few yards that separated the church from the public beach. Antonia's appearance was much noticed.

Pearl heard an elderly gentleman murmur to Mrs. Conway, "Your little daughter is lovely—lovely. Is beauty contagious?" And he gave a glance at Pearl, who was looking perfectly unconscious but caught Mrs. Conway's bitter reply: "Thank you; I see you feel she was never exposed to it before."

For the first time in her life Antonia was the center of a group of boys—many of them in their first long trousers; all with stiff turned-down collars, white against the sunburn and freckles of their summer complexions. They were telling her, with the perfect candor of youth, that she might have been the recipient of their attentions long before this if she had been dressed as she was dressed today.

"How could I go round the links with a girl without shoes?" one conservative had wailed, revealing a hidden struggle. And Bill Temple, Caroline's elder brother, a year older than Durland, and likely to be junior tennis champion, had said loudly in passing, "Gee, the kid certainly looks great in that get-up!" If he had composed "Helen, thy beauty is to me——" all in her honor he could not have given her a fuller joy.

Pearl was so happy that she allowed her generous nature to lead her into making an acknowledgment to Williams. She had just heard him agree to motor to New York after dinner that evening—his stay was a question of only a few hours now, and on the crowded beach——

She looked up at him and said, waves of gratitude and friendliness rolling toward him like a perfume, "We owe all this to you."

He answered without the least change of expression and in a tone that did not carry an inch beyond Pearl's left ear, "Have you any idea what you do to men?—drive them mad——"

She did not answer at all, but stepped back and allowed other people to come between them; and presently, knowing that the Conway car would be crowded, she invited the willing Durland to walk home with her along the beach.

There were a good many outsiders at luncheon, and though Williams followed her closely into the dining room she slipped into a chair between the two children, and all through the meal was aware of Williams' steady, rather sulky stare from across the table.

After luncheon was over she disappeared. She had the afternoon to herself, for Antonia was going out with her mother. Pearl took a parasol and went and sat on the beach, concealed by the jutting of a dune. She took a book with her, but hardly read. She sat there for an hour, and about four, knowing that Dolly and Williams had arranged to play golf and that she would now have the house to herself, she went back, thinking about the Sunday papers. Almost the only hardship she felt in her position was that her rights to the newspapers were not properly respected—the butler, who was a baseball enthusiast, regularly removing the papers to the pantry as soon as Mrs. Conway had read the headlines.

The sitting room was deserted and the newspapers strewn about the table—a condition which should have suggested to Pearl that the room had been too recently occupied for the servants to have had time to come in and put it to rights. But she didn't think of that. She took up the first sheet that came to hand and saw a long illustrated article about the turquoise mines of Mexico, into which she plunged with a thrill of interest. She was standing with both arms outstretched, her gold-colored head a little bent.

Suddenly she felt two hard, masculine arms go round her, a kiss on the back of her neck, another on her reluctantly turned cheek. It happened in a second. As she struggled ungracefully, angrily, she saw over Williams' shoulder the figure of Durland rising from the hammock on the piazza.

If Wood had received that batch of Sunday letters at the mine he would have torn open Pearl's first—as likely to promise the most amusement. But he got them at his hotel in Mexico City, and conscious of great leisure—for he was staying there a week or so on his way home while he dickered over taxes with a governmental department—he adopted a different method. He ranged them before him inversely in the order of interest. They came—first Durland's. He wondered what Durland wanted, for his nephew was never moved to the momentous effort of writing except under the stress of great financial necessity; second, Edna's; third, that of Miss Wellington, who did not write often; and last Pearl's thick typewritten budget.

Dear Uncle Anthony: I know mother is writing her point of view about this, and I want you to know the truth. I was there and mother was not. Miss Exeter could not have helped what happened. If it was any of our faults it was Dolly's—not only for having that kind of a thug to stay but for being as usual an hour late in getting off, so that Miss Exeter thought they had gone. You can imagine how I felt in seeing a great beast like Williams coming up behind her and grabbing her like that. I let him know what I thought, but I would like to have pasted him one on the jaw. I wish you had been here. Mother is all wrong—a dreadful injustice is being done a very wonderful woman. She is patient, but I don't suppose she will stand much more. I wouldn't if I were her.

Your affectionate nephew,
Durland Conway

Wood tore open his sister's letter. His thought was, "Impossible!"

Dear Anthony: I am sorry, after the trouble you took ["A lot you are," he thought] that your priceless pearl will really have to go. It has been an impossible situation from the first, but I have loyally tried to carry it through for your sake—you seemed to care so much about it. I have never liked the girl. She has a sort of breezy aggressiveness that I can't stand, and Cora Wellington felt just the same. I did not write you, but that first evening Cora said to me, "Where is Anthony's judgment—sending you a girl like that?" I do not like the effect she has had on the children—taking all the spirit out of poor Durland, and Antonia appeared dressed for church this morning like a little French doll.

However, when Durland discovered her this afternoon clasped in the arms of a detestable young man by the name of Williams—Allen Williams, whom Dolly, poor child, has had spending Sunday, much against my inclination—I did feel that things had reached a point when even you would hardly blame me for getting rid of her. I sent for the girl and told her she must go. I was surprised and, I own, hurt, Anthony, when she answered that you had extracted a secret promise from her not to go until you released her.

I hope you see what a disagreeable and humiliating position you have put me in. I think I should have ignored both her promise and my own, except that the girl has acquired such a hold over Durland and Antonia that they go on like little maniacs about the injustice I am doing her. Dolly and Cora entirely agree with me. However, I have consented to keep her until I get a telegram from you releasing us both. I do hope you will immediately send it on the receipt of this letter.

Wood laid the letter down with a feeling of the most intense surprise. Allen Williams—a young man unfavorably known to him as an admirer of the most conspicuous of the year's Broadway beauties—that man spontaneously interested in a girl like Miss Exeter—a ruthless, stupid young animal like Williams attracted by that pale, honest, intellectual, badly dressed girl—without an effort on her part. No, that was too much to ask him to believe.

He opened Cora's letter. Cora wrote a large, sprawling hand, and her only rule was never to write upon the next consecutive page, so that her correspondent went hopelessly turning her letters round and about to find the end of a sentence. Wood caught "——getting herself kissed in poor Edna's blameless sitting room in broad daylight, and thus getting rid of her and an undesirable suitor of Dolly's at one fell——"

He twisted the letter about, trying to find the end of this, but coming only upon a description of moonlight on the ocean, he tossed it aside and opened that of the culprit herself.

I regret to say, [it began in vein that struck Wood as none too serious] that I have caused a scandal. A young man called Williams tried to kiss me—in fact he did—when I was reading the paper and didn't even know he was in the house. I should have dealt with him; but Durland, who saw it all, was so cunning and manly, and ordered him out of the house. Your sister is naturally annoyed with both of us and won't believe I was not to blame. She keeps quoting something you once said to Dolly under circumstances described as similar—that no man kisses a girl if he knows it's really against her will. If you did say that, Mr. Wood, you're wrong. If a man wants to kiss a girl something in his psychology makes him feel sure she wants him to. But the loathsome creepiness a girl feels at having a man whom she doesn't like touching her is something no man can possibly understand.

Williams has behaved technically correctly and actually horridly—saying sourly enough that it was entirely his fault, that he alone was to blame, but letting everyone see that he feels I led him on—only that, of course, a gentleman's lips are sealed. However, he was instantly shipped back to New York on a slow train that stops at every station.

As soon as he was gone Mrs. Conway and I had rather a scene. She wanted me to go at once. I said I could not go without your permission. She finally agreed to let me wait until you had been heard from. I need not say I shall do exactly as you wish. It will not be particularly easy to stay after this, but I will do it if you wish—or go—just as you telegraph.

Whatever Anthony Wood's faults might be, lack of decision was not usually one of them. He folded the letters neatly on his table, took his panama hat from the peg, went to the telegraph office and sent his sister the following message:

Letters received. Please keep Miss Exeter until my return. Should be back within two weeks.

And then, rapid decisions being at times dangerously like impulses, he sent a second one to Miss Exeter herself, which read:

Wish to express my complete confidence in you.

The days before those two messages came were trying ones in the Conway household, which was now divided into two hostile parties—Pearl, Durland and Antonia on one hand; Mrs. Conway and Dolly, occasionally reenforced by Miss Wellington, on the other. Miss Wellington did not make matters any easier by suggesting to Edna that something similar must have taken place in the case of Anthony himself—just what you'd expect from that sort of girl—that hair, that great curved red mouth. She understood from dear little Dolly that Williams had told her—as much as a man could tell such a thing—that he could hardly have done anything else.

What Williams had really said, for few men are as bad as their adoring women represent them, was that her mother was taking the incident too seriously.

Pearl could not have borne life if it had not been for her daily letter, which she continued to write. Mrs. Conway hardly spoke to her; and if she did, she spoke slowly, enunciating every word carefully as if Pearl's moral obliquity had somehow made her idiotic. Durland, loyal to the death, was not much help, because he merely hated his family and scowled through every meal. Antonia, on the other hand, was one of those rare natures who could be an ally without being a partisan.

"Of course," she would say calmly to anyone who would listen to her, "Allen only came here at all in the hope of seeing Miss Exeter, but you can't expect Dolly to understand that."

Anthony's two telegrams arrived one evening at dinnertime and were handed by the butler, one to Mrs. Conway and one to the governess. Pearl's heart sank on seeing there were two. She thought it must mean he was deciding against her; and though she found her present position unpleasant, she did not want Mr. Wood to decide against her. She opened hers and read its few words at one glance. It was not her habit to blush, but she blushed now with a deep emotion—of gratitude and admiration. Not many men would have stood by her, she thought, in a situation like this. She knew where Antonia got her sense of justice. Or, she thought with something very like jealousy, was it really Augusta in whom he was expressing his confidence, not in her at all? Yes, of course, anyone who had once seen Augusta would feel confidence in her.

The next day she settled back to the routine—lessons with Antonia and then with Durland—the public beach—a silent luncheon—then sometimes a little feeble tennis with Antonia; but more often now her mother took the child out with her, as if Pearl were not a proper person to be given charge of a pure young child. Left alone, Pearl would take her book and parasol and retire to the Conway's beach. She seldom read, for, to be candid, she was not a great reader; but she would sit and stare at the empty sea—empty at least if the wind were from the south; but when it turned and blew from the north, then the whole ocean would be dotted with fishing boats out of Gardiner's Bay; and Pearl, lying there idly, would watch the rowboats putting out and taking in the nets. Sometimes Antonia was permitted to be her companion, and then she read aloud to the child. Antonia was in the stage of development when she loved poetry, but poetry of a stirring, narrative quality—The Ballad of East and West, The Revenge, The Burial of Moses. She would lie with her head in Miss Exeter's lap, gazing up into the unquenchable blue of the sky, and say "I'm going to learn that one by heart," and would get as far as the second verse when it was time to go in and dress. After dinner Pearl and Durland would play Russian bank, which he had proudly and lovingly taught her; and Dolly and Mrs. Conway would run over to Miss Wellington's, where they could abuse the governess to their heart's content.

One night—just between night and day—Pearl woke with an overmastering sense of dread. She had been dreaming that the sea, a perpendicular wall miles and miles high, was coming over the dunes. After two or three days of damp heat the waves had been rising; local weather prophets were talking about the August twister. Now, as she sat up in bed, listening and looking into the dark, she became aware that the wind had risen; the wooden house was creaking and trembling like a ship.

She was frightened, as an animal must be frightened without reason and out of all proportion. In the medley of little sounds she thought she detected the sound of something hostile. The pearls—she thought of the pearls.

It would have been easy to lock her door—no, not easy, for as she sat rigid in her bed she found the idea of motion terrifying; but she could have summoned courage to cross the floor and lock the door. Only, Pearl was afflicted by a sense of responsibility.

She turned on her light—that helped her. She was no longer terrified like an animal; she was merely frightened like a human being. She got up, put on her dressing gown and, crossing the hall by a supreme effort of courage, entered Mrs. Conway's darkened room. Perfectly gentle, regular breathing greeted her ear. She knew where the switch was and turned on the light.

Mrs. Conway sat up in bed and said, "Is anything wrong—the children?"

Pearl's fears melted in the face of human companionship. She felt calm again and rather foolish as she explained that she had felt alarmed for no special reason—had thought about the pearls. Mrs. Conway glanced at the closed safe.

"I thought," she said, "that the argument for keeping valuables in the safe was that we could sleep calmly. The safe can't be opened unless you give the combination."

"It was childish of me," said Pearl. "I was frightened."

Mrs. Conway smiled at her more kindly than she had ever done. It was one of the contradictions in her nature that she was physically brave—a fact obscured to most observers on account of her moral cowardice. Like most brave people, she was kind to the timid.

"It's the storm," she said. "It gets on some people's nerves. I hope the roof isn't leaking; it nearly always does in one of these storms. What were you afraid of?"

"I don't exactly know," said Pearl.

"Would you like me to go back to your room with you? Would you like to sleep on my sofa?" Edna asked.

But that was too ignominious. A faint wild dawn was breaking, and Pearl knew that with the night her terror had gone. She went back to bed.

The next morning the wind was still blowing like a hurricane from the south, though the rain had stopped. Great waves were running up the beach, in some places as far as the sand hills, and forming a long, narrow pool at the base of the dunes. As soon as lessons were over Antonia dragged Miss Exeter to the beach—it was no easy matter, for the wind blew the sand stingingly against face and hands. There was no use in going to the public beach that morning, for the bathing apparatus of barrels and life lines had been washed away, the bathhouses were threatened, and there was a rumor that the sea was washing into Lake Agawam.

Pearl and Antonia sat on their own dunes, watching the wild scene, and suddenly Antonia said, "Look here, Miss Exeter, I want to ask you something. Perhaps I oughtn't to."

Pearl had so completely lost any sense of having a guilty secret that she answered tranquilly, "Go ahead."

"Is Uncle Anthony in love with you—like Mr. Williams?"

Ah, Pearl knew what that meant: Antonia had taken a long drive with her mother and Miss Wellington the day before! She picked her words carefully.

"I only saw your uncle once," she said.

"But Allen only saw you once or twice—and look at the darn thing!"

"Mr. Williams is not in the least in love with me."

"Miss Wellington said that some women have the power of rousing——"

"Antonia, I don't want to hear what she said."

"You don't like her, do you?"

"No."

"Shake," said Antonia heartily. "I don't like her, though she's very kind to me; but it doesn't seem to me"—Antonia's voice took on the flavor of meditation—"that she quite tells the truth. For instance, just before Uncle Anthony went away, she telephoned to him one morning and asked him to come over. He was playing a game of parcheesi with me—I'd teased him a good deal to play—and he said he couldn't come, and she—well, I couldn't hear what she was saying, but at last he said, rather ungraciously, 'All right then, I'll come.' And he went, and he took me with him. And we only stayed about ten minutes, although she wanted us to stay longer. And then later at the bathing beach I heard her telling someone that she was late—she was sorry—she couldn't help it, because Anthony Wood came in just as she was starting—of course she adored having him run in like that, but it did take a good deal of one's time—'one's time'—that's what she said. I call that a lie, don't you?"

"I certainly do," said Pearl.

"That's what I like about you, Miss Exeter; you say right out what you think—even to a child." Antonia looked thoughtful. "It's a great mistake not to tell children the truth; it makes it so hard for them to know what to do. For instance, we have an aunt—a great aunt—Aunt Sophia. She's awful, or as you would say, just terrible, but it seems she's going to leave us all her money. Now if mother would tell us that, it would be simple; but she doesn't. She says to be nice to Aunt Sophia because she's such a dear. She isn't a bit a dear. So I had to find out all by myself why mother, who's so awful to most of her relations, is so nice to Aunt Sophia. I did. And it's the same thing about my father. He tried to kidnap me once—at least he met me on my way to school and asked me to take a drive with him. I wouldn't do it. Mother said it was lucky I didn't. But it wasn't luck. It was good judgment. Grown-up people are queer about that. When they do something wise they say it was wise. But when a child does something wise they say it was lucky. Children have more sense than people think; they have to have."

"You have," said Pearl, who had never thought of all this before.

"Now this morning, do you know why mother wanted to get us all out of the house?" Antonia continued.

Pearl felt tempted to say that Mrs. Conway always wanted to get her out of the house, but she merely shook her head, and Antonia went on, "Because she is going to have an interview with my father."

"With your father?" Pearl sprang to her feet. "Are you sure?"

Antonia nodded.

"When mother is going to see father she looks the way I feel as if I looked when I'm going to the dentist—don't you know, you say to yourself, 'I wouldn't think twice about this if I were brave'—and then you think about it all the time. You know, mother doesn't think she tells us everything, but she really does, except about my father. And so, you see, if it's something about my father I always know, because mother's worried without saying why."

This reasoning seemed sound to Pearl. She felt that in order to fulfill Anthony's instructions she must go to Mrs. Conway's assistance at once. She did not like to burst in upon them from the open windows of the sitting-room, and so ran round the house to the front door. A small, shabby automobile was standing in the circle, and as Pearl bounded up the steps a man came out quickly and got into it—a pale man, with long white hands and something of Durland's birdlike quality. She saw that she was too late. She went into the sitting-room.

Mrs. Conway was standing in the middle of the room, supporting one elbow in one hand and two fingers of the other resting against her chin. She looked so white that every grain of rouge seemed to stand out—away from her cheeks. She turned her eyes coldly upon Pearl.

"Well?" she said.

Pearl had not thought at all what she was going to say, and blurted out, "Oh, Mrs. Conway, I thought you might need me! I thought I could help you if—Mr. Wood said——"

Edna, rather to her own surprise, suddenly lost her temper.

"I'm tired of being considered a perfect fool," she said. "Anthony! I know what Anthony thinks—that I'm always going to give Gordon all the children's money. As a matter of fact, I know better than anyone—though it isn't always very easy to say no, no, no, to a man who has been your husband and who insists if he had five dollars he could make a fortune; but I do say it—I always have—always—almost always. It's a little too much to be watched over and lectured by you, Miss Exeter."

After which speech Mrs. Conway left the room.

Luncheon was more than usually silent that day, although Edna attempted to take an interest in the children's morning, asking whether it had been pleasant in the water.

"My goodness, mother," Antonia answered, "have you looked at the water? We'd certainly have been drowned if we'd gone in."

After lunch was over Edna was obliged to address Miss Exeter directly.

"I think you went off this morning without unlocking my safe," she said.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Pearl.

Mrs. Conway smiled faintly.

"It was quite what I expected—it always happens with safes," she said. "But now perhaps you will get me my pearls."

Pearl went eagerly, and as she went she remembered that she had remembered to unlock the safe—just before she went to the beach with Antonia. Yes, as she thought, the safe was very slightly ajar. She took the long, slim, blue velvet case from its compartment and brought it to Mrs. Conway in the drawing-room.

It was empty!

The surprise was like a physical blow, and yet no one at first supposed that the pearls were actually gone. Mrs. Conway, as so often happens to anyone who has sustained a loss, was instantly severely lectured by her three children on her habitual carelessness.

Then a superficial search was made on her dressing table, on the glass shelves in the bathroom. Then a recapitulation was made—a joint effort on the part of everybody—of just what had occurred since the pearls were last seen.

Everyone agreed that Mrs. Conway had been wearing them at dinner the night before. She had gone to bed rather early, and distinctly remembered that she had put the pearls in their slim blue velvet case and put the case in the safe and shut the safe, which was then automatically locked. She did not remember seeing the safe unlocked in the morning.

No, Pearl explained, the reason for this was that she, Pearl, had knocked at the door about eleven, just after finishing Durland's algebra lesson. There had been no answer, because Mrs. Conway was in her bath—her bathroom opened out of her bedroom. Pearl had been in a hurry, so that she had just run and unlocked the safe and had called to Mrs. Conway that it was unlocked. There had been no one in the room at the time; but the maid—the maid had been Dolly's nurse when she was a baby, and was therefore absolutely above suspicion—had been sewing in the next room.

Mrs. Conway did not contradict this story. She simply raised her eyebrows and said that she had not noticed that the safe was open.

Evidently it must have been open all day long—very unfortunate.

Pearl felt and probably looked horribly guilty. Of course she ought to have looked to see whether the pearls were in their case when she opened the safe. She usually did. She remembered, too, her strange terror of the night before. Was it possible that that had been based on something real? Had she really heard a footstep under the noise of the storm? Could there have been a burglar in the house, hidden perhaps all night, and stepping out at the right moment about noon when the upstairs rooms were deserted?

It was Pearl who insisted on telephoning to New York for a detective. Mrs. Conway at first objected and said she would feel like a goose if the pearls were immediately discovered—caught in the lace of her tea gown, or something like that. But Pearl was quite severe. If there had been a robbery, she knew that every minute was of importance.

Just before dinner she called an agency. Two detectives arrived by motor about ten o'clock that night. They had a long secret conference with Mrs. Conway. Then one went back to New York and the other—the head man, Mr. Albertson—took up his residence in the house.

Pearl went to bed more worried than ever. It didn't seem to her that the detectives had really taken hold of the situation. She herself could think of a dozen things they might have done that night. It did not occur to her that their first action was to look up the past record of everyone in the household.