e, stone-flagged kitchen.

Marcia, fresh as a flower from its morning dew in spite of her cry the
night before, had arisen to new opportunities for service. She was glad
with the joyous forgetfulness of youth when she looked at David's happy
face, and she thought no more of Kate's treatment of herself.

David followed Kate with a true lover's eyes and was never for more than a
few moments out of her sight, though it seemed to Marcia that Kate did not
try very hard to stay with him. When afternoon came she dismissed him for
what she called her "beauty nap." Marcia was passing through the hall at
the time and she caught the tender look upon his face as he touched her
brow with reverent fingers and told her she had no need for that. Her eyes
met Kate's as they were going up the stairs, and in spite of what Kate had
said the night before Marcia could not refrain from saying: "Oh, Kate! how
could you when he loves you so? You know you never take a nap in the
daytime!"

"You silly girl!" said Kate pleasantly enough, "don't you know the less a
man sees of one the more he thinks of her?" With this remark she closed
and fastened her door after her.

Marcia pondered these words of wisdom for some time, wondering whether
Kate had really done it for that reason, or whether she did not care for
the company of her lover. And why should it be so that a man loved you
less because he saw you more? In her straightforward code the more you
loved persons the more you desired to be in their company.

Kate had issued from her "beauty nap" with a feverish restlessness in her
eyes, an averted face, and ink upon one finger. At supper she scarcely
spoke, and when she did she laughed excitedly over little things. Her
lover watched her with eyes of pride and ever increasing wonder over her
beauty, and Marcia, seeing the light in his face, watched for its answer
in her sister's, and finding it not was troubled.

She watched them from her bedroom window as they walked down the path
where she had gone the evening before, decorously side by side, Kate
holding her light muslin frock back from the dew on the hedges. She
wondered if it was because Kate had more respect for David than for
Captain Leavenworth that she never seemed to treat him with as much
familiarity. She did not take possession of him in the same sweet
imperious way.

Marcia had not lighted her candle. The moon gave light enough and she was
very weary, so she undressed in the dim