uld end.

"But you like to cry over stories?"

"Oh, yes, in the middle of them. But I like everything to come right at
last."

"I must have one pathetic scene in it," said Anne thoughtfully. "I might
let ROBERT RAY be injured in an accident and have a death scene."

"No, you mustn't kill BOBBY off," declared Diana, laughing. "He belongs
to me and I want him to live and flourish. Kill somebody else if you
have to."

For the next fortnight Anne writhed or reveled, according to mood, in
her literary pursuits. Now she would be jubilant over a brilliant
idea, now despairing because some contrary character would NOT behave
properly. Diana could not understand this.

"MAKE them do as you want them to," she said.

"I can't," mourned Anne. "Averil is such an unmanageable heroine. She
WILL do and say things I never meant her to. Then that spoils everything
that went before and I have to write it all over again."

Finally, however, the story was finished, and Anne read it to Diana in
the seclusion of the porch gable. She had achieved her "pathetic scene"
without sacrificing ROBERT RAY, and she kept a watchful eye on Diana as
she read it. Diana rose to the occasion and cried properly; but, when
the end came, she looked a little disappointed.

"Why did you kill MAURICE LENNOX?" she asked reproachfully.

"He was the villain," protested Anne. "He had to be punished."

"I like him best of them all," said unreasonable Diana.

"Well, he's dead, and he'll have to stay dead," said Anne, rather
resentfully. "If I had let him live he'd have gone on persecuting AVERIL
and PERCEVAL."

"Yes--unless you had reformed him."

"That wouldn't have been romantic, and, besides, it would have made the
story too long."

"Well, anyway, it's a perfectly elegant story, Anne, and will make you
famous, of that I'm sure. Have you got a title for it?"

"Oh, I decided on the title long ago. I call it AVERIL'S ATONEMENT.
Doesn't that sound nice and alliterative? Now, Diana, tell me candidly,
do you see any faults in my story?"

"Well," hesitated Diana, "that part where AVERIL makes the cake doesn't
seem to me quite romantic enough to match the rest. It's just what
anybody might do. Heroines shouldn't do cooking, _I_ think."

"Why, that is where the humor comes in, and it's one of the best parts
of the whole story," said Anne. And it may be stated that in this she
was quite right.

Diana prudently refrained from any further criticism, but M