batiste blouse.

"Well?" she said, as if she had been waiting for him to speak.

"I'll say it again--you're beautiful," he said.

The same half credulous look that she had given him when he told her she
was beautiful that day they met for the first time at the Barton
Randolph lawn fete came into her eyes.

"I did not mean to ask you that," she said.

"I know," he returned, "but you are, and I couldn't help saying so."

She took a chair near the tea-table and he seated himself in the chair
that was opposite to her.

"I meant, what do you think of me now?" she explained, pouring the tea
into absurdly small cups, one of which she handed to him.

"It was a surprise," he said. "I'll confess to you now that you puzzled
me. I could not understand why you were--well, exiled in the city during
the week. I imagined you were either with friends as a sort of a
permanent guest or studying."

"You never thought of me as working?" she asked.

"Yes," he admitted, "I have, but I could not picture you in any
employment I could think of. It was impossible to think of you as a
stenographer or a school teacher or a nurse or a shop girl."

"All because you met me at a lawn fete--a society affair," she
concluded.

"No. All because--well, all because you are you."

Was that a glint of pleasure he saw for the briefest fraction of a
second in her eyes?

"I asked you to come out here this afternoon because I knew that you
would find it out some day, probably tomorrow or the next day, or next
week, and I wanted you to know that I had not tried to keep it from
you," she said. "I want you to know, too, from me, why it is I'm here."

She paused and he waited for her to continue.

"I entered picture work because--well, frankly, we--that is, father,
mother and I--are alone in the world and poor," she said. "Really,
honestly poor. The last that we could afford to spend from the little we
have left was spent on my education. Father insisted.

"Once, and it was not so many years ago, our family was wealthy like
other California families that received land grants. But father--the
dear that he is--like so many of his friends, thought little of business
or the future and slowly our land was sold until now only a few acres
of what we once had remain--only the few acres of the home you visited.

"Of course, I was fortunate. My family name gave me entrance anywhere
and still does, although there are those who think I have desecrated
that