"Do sit down, if there's a place to sit on," she cordially advised;
adding, as Anna took the edge of a chair hung with miscellaneous
raiment: "My singing takes so much time that I don't get a chance to
walk the fat off--that's the worst of being an artist."

Anna murmured an assent. "I hope it hasn't inconvenienced you to see me;
I told Mr. Birch--"

"Mr. WHO?" the recumbent beauty asked; and then: "Oh, JIMMY!" she
faintly laughed, as if more for her own enlightenment than Anna's.

The latter continued eagerly: "I understand from Mrs. Farlow that your
sister was with you, and I ventured to come up because I wanted to ask
you when I should have a chance of finding her."

Mrs. McTarvie-Birch threw back her head with a long stare. "Do you
mean to say the idiot at the door didn't tell you? Sophy went away last
night."

"Last night?" Anna echoed. A sudden terror had possessed her. Could it
be that the girl had tricked them all and gone with Owen? The idea was
incredible, yet it took such hold of her that she could hardly steady
her lips to say: "The porter did tell me, but I thought perhaps he was
mistaken. Mrs. Farlow seemed to think that I should find her here."

"It was all so sudden that I don't suppose she had time to let the
Farlows know. She didn't get Mrs. Murrett's wire till yesterday, and she
just pitched her things into a trunk and rushed----"

"Mrs. Murrett?"

"Why, yes. Sophy's gone to India with Mrs. Murrett; they're to meet at
Brindisi," Sophy's sister said with a calm smile.

Anna sat motionless, gazing at the disordered room, the pink bed, the
trivial face among the pillows.

Mrs. McTarvie-Birch pursued: "They had a fearful kick-up last spring--I
daresay you knew about it--but I told Sophy she'd better lump it, as
long as the old woman was willing to...As an artist, of course, it's
perfectly impossible for me to have her with me..."

"Of course," Anna mechanically assented.

Through the confused pain of her thoughts she was hardly aware that
Mrs. Birch's explanations were still continuing. "Naturally I didn't
altogether approve of her going back to that beast of a woman. I said
all I could...I told her she was a fool to chuck up such a place as
yours. But Sophy's restless--always was--and she's taken it into her
head she'd rather travel..."

Anna rose from her seat, groping for some formula of leave-taking. The
pushing back of her chair roused the white dog's smouldering animosity,
and he