ught to
wear only Beresford's flowers if she means to marry him.

Jane at once remarked that I looked changed.

"Naturaly," I said, in a BLASE maner.

"If I didn't know you, Bab," she observed, "I would say that you are
rouged."

I became very stiff and distant at that. For Jane, although my best
friend, had no right to be suspicous of me.

"How do I look changed?" I demanded.

"I don't know. You--Bab, I beleive you are up to some mischeif!"

"Mischeif?"

"You don't need to pretend to me," she went on, looking into my very
soul. "I have eyes. You're not decked out this way for ME."

I had meant to tell her nothing, but spying just then a man ahead who
walked like Adrian, I was startled. I cluched her arm and closed my
eyes.

"Bab!" she said.

The man turned, and I saw it was not he. I breathed again. But Jane was
watching me, and I spoke out of an overflowing Heart.

"For a moment I thought--Jane, I have met THE ONE at last."

"Barbara!" she said, and stopped dead. "Is it any one I know?"

"He is an Actor."

"Ye gods!" said Jane, in a tence voice. "What a tradgedy!"

"Tradgedy indeed," I was compeled to admit. "Jane, my Heart is breaking.
I am not alowed to see him. It is all off, forever."

"Darling!" said Jane. "You are trembling all over. Hold on to me. Do
they disaprove?"

"I am never to see him again. Never."

The bitterness of it all overcame me. My eyes sufused with tears.

But I told her, in broken accents, of my determination to stick to him,
no matter what. "I might never be Mrs. Adrian Egleston, but----"

"Adrian Egleston!" she cried, in amazement. "Why BARBARA, you lucky
Thing!"

So, finding her fuller of simpathy than usual, I violated my Vow of
Silence and told her all.

And, to prove the truth of what I said, I showed her the sachet over my
heart containing his rose.

"It's perfectly wonderfull," Jane said, in an awed tone. "You beat
anything I've ever known for Adventures. You are the tipe men like,
for one thing. But there is one thing I could not stand, in your
place--having to know that he is making love to the heroine every
evening and twice on Wednesdays and--Bab, this is WEDNESDAY!"

I glansed at my wrist watch. It was but to o'clock. Instantly, dear
Dairy, I became conscious of a dual going on within me, between love and
duty. Should I do as instructed and see him no more, thus crushing
my inclination under the iron heal of Resolution? Or should I cast my
Parents