rself into the kind of
girl he was used to and liked. She cut out the picture of Tony Holiday
that Max Hempel and Dick Carson had studied that day on the train. She
studied it even harder and hid it away among her very special treasures
where she could take it out and look at it often and use it as a model.
She even snatched her hitherto precious earrings from their pink cotton
resting place and hurled them as far as she could into the night. She was
very sure Tony Holiday did not wear earrings, and she was even surer she
had seen Ted's eyes resting disapprovingly on hers. The earrings had to
go. They had gone.

The next afternoon she had waited for a while patiently by the brook. The
distant clock struck the half hour, the three quarters, the full hour. No
Ted Holiday. By this time her patience had long since evaporated and now
blazed into blind rage. Ted had forgotten his promise, if indeed he had
ever meant to keep it. He was with those other girls--his kind. Maybe he
was laughing at her, telling them how "easy" she had been, how gullible.
No, he wouldn't! He would be ashamed to admit he had had anything to do
with her. Men did not boast of their conquest of one kind of girl to
another. She had read enough fiction to know that.

In any case she hated Ted Holiday with a fine fury of resentment. She
wanted to make him suffer, even as she was suffering, though she sensed
vaguely that men couldn't suffer that way. It was only women who were
capable of such fine-drawn torture. Men went free.

From her rage against her recreant cavalier she went on to rage against
life built on a man-made plan for the benefit of man. Women were hurt, no
matter what they did. Being good wasn't any use. You got hurt all the
worse if you were good. It was silly even to try. It was better to shut
your eyes and have a good time.

Pursuing this reasoning brought Madeline Taylor to the sycamore tree that
night where Willis Hubbard's car waited. She went with Willis, not to
please him, not to please herself, but to spite Ted Holiday. She had
hinted to Ted she would do something desperate if he failed her. She had
done something desperate, but it was herself, not Ted, that had been
hurt. She discovered that too late.

The next morning had brought Ted's pleasant, penitent note, explaining
his defection and expressing the hope that they might meet again soon,
signed hers "devotedly." Poor Madeline! The cup of her regret was very
bitter to the ta