erself for her consciousness of Eve's clothes, of her
rings--of the gold comb in her hair.

When her visitor had gone, Anne took down her own hair, and flung it up
into a soft knot on the top of her head. Swept back thus, her face seemed
to bloom into sudden beauty. She slipped the blue dress from her
shoulders and saw the long slim line of her neck and the whiteness of her
skin.

The fire had died down in the little round stove. The room was cold. She
thought of Eve's rose-color, and of the warmth of her furs.

Bravely, however, she hummed the tune to which the others had danced. She
lifted her feet in time. Her shoes were heavy, and she took them off. She
tried to get the rhythm, the lightness, the grace of movement. But these
things must be taught, and she had no one to teach her.

When at last she crept into bed beside the sleeping Peggy, she was
chilled to the bone, and she was crying.

Peggy stirred and murmured.

Soothing the child, Anne told herself fiercely that she was a goose to be
upset because Eve Chesley had rings and wore rose-color. Why, she was no
better than Diogenes, who had fumed and fussed because Toby had taken his
straw in the stable.

But her philosophy failed to bring peace of mind. For a long time she lay
awake, working it out. At last she decided, wearily, that she had wept
because she really didn't know any of the worth-while things. She didn't
know any of the young things and the gay things. She didn't know how to
dance or to talk to men like Richard Brooks. The only things that she
knew in the whole wide world were--books!

CHAPTER III

_In Which the Crown Prince Enters Upon His Own._

IT developed that the name of the young man with the eye-glasses was
Geoffrey Fox. Mrs. Bower told Anne at the breakfast table, as the two
women sat alone.

"He is writing a book, and he wants to stay."

"The little dark man?"

"I shouldn't call him little. He is thin, but he is as tall as Richard
Brooks."

"Is he?" To Anne it had seemed as if Richard had towered above her like a
young giant. She had scarcely noticed the young man with the eye-glasses.
He had melted into the background of old gentlemen; had become, as it
were, a part of a composite instead of a single personality.

But to be writing a book!

"What kind of a book, Mrs. Bower?"

"I don't know. He didn't say. I am going to give him the front room in
the south wing; then he will have a view of the river."

When Ann