habby black dress, and had decided that here no danger threatened.
Nevertheless she did not take chances. Sheila had been in Millings a
fortnight and had not met the admirable Jim. Her attempt that morning to
send the note to Dickie by Jim was exactly the action that led to the
painful splitting of her shell.

She had seen from her window Sylvester's departure after breakfast. There
was something in his grim, angular figure, moving carefully over the icy
pavement in the direction of the hotel, that gave her a pang for Dickie.
She was sure that Hudson was going to be very disagreeable in spite of
her attempt to soften his anger. And she was sorry that Dickie, with his
odd, wistful, friendly face and his eyes so wide and youthful and
apologetic for their visions, should think that she was angry or
disgusted. She wrote her letter in a little glow of rescue, and was proud
of the tact of that reference to his "fall down the steps"--for she
reasoned that the self-esteem of any boy of nineteen must suffer
poignantly over the memory of being knocked down by his father before the
eyes of a strange girl. She wrote her note and ran down the stairs, then
stopped to wonder how she could get it promptly to Dickie. It was
intended as a poultice to be applied after the "bawling-out," and she
could not very well take it to him herself. She knew that he worked in
the hotel, and the hotel was just around the corner. All that was needed
was a messenger.

She was standing, pink of cheek and vague of eye, fingering her apron
like a cottage child and nibbling at the corner of her envelope, the
light from a window on the stairs falling on the jewel-like polish of her
hair, when Girlie opened the door of the "parlor" and came out into the
hall. Girlie saw her and half-closed the door. Her lazy eyes, as
reflective and receptive and inexpressive as small meadow pools under a
summer sky, rested upon Sheila. In the parlor a pleasant baritone voice
was singing,

"Treat me nice, Miss Mandy Jane,
Treat me nice.
Don't you know I'se not to blame,
Lovers all act just the same,
Treat me nice..."

Girlie's fingers tightened on the doorknob.

"What do you want, Sheila?" she asked, and into the slow, gentle tones of
her voice something had crept, something sinuous and subtle, something
that slid into the world with Lilith for the eternal torment of earth's
daughters.

"I want to send this note to your brother," said Sheila with the
simplicity o