hey obeyed.
Camille stowed away her crumpled finery in the bulging old trunks, and
Margaret folded daintily her few remnants of past treasures. She had an
old silk gown or two, which resisted with their rich honesty the inroads
of time, and a few pieces of old lace, which Camille understood no
better than she understood their owner.

Then Margaret and the Desmonds went to the city and lived in a horrible,
tawdry little flat in a tawdry locality. Jack roared with bitter mirth
when he saw poor Margaret forced to enter her tiny room sidewise;
Camille laughed also, although she chided Jack gently. "Mean of you to
make fun of poor Margaret, Jacky dear," she said.

For a few weeks Margaret's life in that flat was horrible; then it
became still worse. Margaret nearly filled with her weary, ridiculous
bulk her little room, and she remained there most of the time, although
it was sunny and noisy, its one window giving on a courtyard strung with
clothes-lines and teeming with boisterous life. Camille and Jack
went trolley-riding, and made shift to entertain a little, merry but
questionable people, who gave them passes to vaudeville and entertained
in their turn until the small hours. Unquestionably these people
suggested to Jack Desmond the scheme which spelled tragedy to Margaret.

She always remembered one little dark man with keen eyes who had seen
her disappearing through her door of a Sunday night when all these gay,
bedraggled birds were at liberty and the fun ran high. "Great Scott!"
the man had said, and Margaret had heard him demand of Jack that she be
recalled. She obeyed, and the man was introduced, also the other members
of the party. Margaret Lee stood in the midst of this throng and heard
their repressed titters of mirth at her appearance. Everybody there was
in good humor with the exception of Jack, who was still nursing his bad
luck, and the little dark man, whom Jack owed. The eyes of Jack and the
little dark man made Margaret cold with a terror of something, she
knew not what. Before that terror the shame and mortification of her
exhibition to that merry company was of no import.

She stood among them, silent, immense, clad in her dark purple silk gown
spread over a great hoopskirt. A real lace collar lay softly over her
enormous, billowing shoulders; real lace ruffles lay over her great,
shapeless hands. Her face, the delicacy of whose features was veiled
with flesh, flushed and paled. Not even flesh could s