seems, in the nickname of Skeet, for
by that the other now spoke to her whisperingly, saying it was too bad
about the dance.

"That's nothing," Skeet answered promptly. "I'd a lot rather sit here
and talk to you--and your gentleman friend--" with a large wink for
me--"if you don't mind."

At the humorous, intimate glance which again passed between me and the
dark girl, sudden remembrance came to me, and I ejaculated,

"I know you now!"

"Only now?" smiling.

"You've changed a good deal in seven years," I defended myself.

"And you so very little," she was still smiling, "that I had almost a
mind to come and shake hands with you when Ina went to speak to Worth."

I remembered then that it was Worth's recognition of her which had
brought him to his feet. I told her of it, and the glowing, vivid face
was suddenly all rosy. Skeet regarded the manifestation askance, asking
jealously,

"When did you see Worth last, Barbie? You weren't still living in Santa
Ysobel when he left, were you?"

I sat thinking while the girlish voices talked on. Barbie--the nickname
for Barbara. Barbara Wallace; the name jumped at me from a poster;
that's where I first saw it. It linked itself up with what Worth had
said over there about the forlorn childhood of this beguiling young
charmer. Why hadn't I remembered then? I, too, had my recollections of
Barbara Wallace. About seven years before, I had first seen her, a
slim, dark little thing of twelve or fourteen, very badly dressed in
slinky, too-long skirts that whipped around preposterously thin ankles,
blue-black hair dragged away from a forehead almost too fine, made into
a bundle of some fashion that belonged neither to childhood nor
womanhood, her little, pointed face redeemed by a pair of big black eyes
with a wonderful inner light, the eyes of this girl glowing here at my
left hand.

The father Worth spoke of brusquely as "the professor" was Elman
Wallace, to whom all students of advanced psychology are heavily
indebted. The year I heard him, and saw the girl, his course of lectures
at Stanford University was making quite a stir. I had been one of a
bunch of criminologists, detectives and police chiefs who, during a
state convention were given a demonstration of the little girl's powers,
closing with a sort of rapid pantomime in which I was asked to take
part. A half dozen of us from the audience planned exactly what we were
to do. I rushed into the room through one door, holdi