e or dead--"

Ella had stopped sobbing, but the acute misery of her face was somehow
more pitiful than tears. Rose-Marie waited, for a moment, and then--as
Ella did not speak--she got up from her place beside the suit-case, and
going to the dividing door, opened it softly.

The room was as she had left it. Mrs. Volsky was still bending above the
tubs, Lily was standing in almost the same place in which she had been
left. With hurried steps Rose-Marie crossed the room, and took the
child's slim, little hand in her own.

"Come with me, honey," she said, almost forgetting that Lily could not
hear her voice. "Come with me," and she led her gently back to the
inner room.

Ella was sitting on the floor, her face still wan, her attitude
unconsciously tragic. But as the child, clinging to Rose-Marie's hand,
came over to her side, she was suddenly galvanized into action.

"Oh, darlin', darlin'," she sobbed wildly, "Ella was a-goin' ter leave
you! Ella was a-goin' away. But she isn't now--not now! Darlin'," her
arms were flung wildly about the little figure, "show, some way, that you
forgive Ella--who loves you!"

Rose-Marie was crying, quite frankly. All at once she dropped down on the
floor and put her arms about the two sisters--the big one and the little
one--and her sobs mingled with Ella's. But, curiously enough, as she
stood like a little statue between them, a sudden smile swept across the
face of Lily. She might, almost, have understood.

XIV

PA STEPS ASIDE

They wept together for a long time, Ella and Rose-Marie. And as they
cried something grew out of their common emotion. It was a something that
they both felt subconsciously--a something warm and friendly. It might
have been a new bond of affection, a new chain of love. Rose-Marie, as
she felt it, was able to say to herself--with more of tolerance than she
had ever known--

"If I had been as tempted and as unhappy as she--well, I might, perhaps,
have reacted in the same way!"

And Ella, sobbing in the arms of the girl that she had never quite
understood, was able to tell herself: "She's right--dead right! The
straight road's the only road...."

It was little Lily who created a diversion. She had been standing, very
quietly, in the shelter of their arms for some time--she had a way of
standing with an infinite patience, for hours, in one place. But
suddenly, as if drawn by some instinct, she dropped down on the floor,
beside the cheap suit-case