ye think
I care if you want to kneel and kotow like other idiots? If you're that
kind--and I suppose you are, being a woman--pray and be--blessed!"

It was the nearest thing to a paternal benediction that had ever come to
Sissy, but she was too wary a small actress to be moved by it out of her
role. Nor did her father wait to note the effect of his words. His heavy
step passed on and out of her room into his own, and the door slammed
between them.

In a moment Sissy was up; in another moment she had torn off her
clothes, blown out her candle, and jumped back into bed. She was almost
asleep when the twins came in, but she feigned the deepest of slumbers
when Bessie pushed a crackling piece of paper under her pillow, though
her fingers closed greedily about it as soon as the room was quiet
again.

She knew what it was--her precious compact with herself, that loyal
little Bep had recaptured from the enemy. She lay there, lulled by its
presence; and slowly, slowly she was dropping off into real slumber
when a sharply agonizing thought, an inescapable mental pin-prick,
roused her. It was Number 9. She had not touched the piano during the
whole of that strenuous day.

She withdrew her fingers reproachfully from the insistent reminder of
virtuous intention, and resolutely she turned her back on it and tried
to pretend herself to sleep. But every broken section of her treaty had
a voice, and above them all clamored the call of Number 9 that it was
not yet too late.

When Sissy rose wearily at last and draped the Mexican quilt about her,
the house was quiet. All youthful Madigans were abed, and the older ones
were in secure seclusion.

It was a small Saint Cecilia, with a short, stiff braid standing out
from one side of her head, and utterly without musical enthusiasm, that
sat down in the darkness at the old square piano. "La Gazelle" was out
of the question, for she had no lamp and she did not yet know the trills
and runs of her new "piece" by heart. But the five-finger exercises and
the scales that it had been her custom to run over slightingly while she
read from a paper novel by the Duchess open in front of her music--this
much of an atonement was still within her power.

With her bare foot on the soft pedal, that none might hear her, Sissy
played. It was dark and very quiet; the hush-hush of the throbbing mines
filled the night and stilled it. At times her heart stood still for fear
that she might be discovered; a