r by way
of a direct inquiry.

"What's wrong, Molly?"

Molly was hunched up in the biggest and shabbiest armchair by the fire,
smoking innumerable cigarettes and flinging them away half-finished. At
Sara's question, she looked up with a shade of defiance in her eyes.

"Why should anything be wrong?" she countered, obviously on the
defensive.

"I don't know, I'm sure," responded Sara good-humouredly. "But I'm
pretty certain there is something. Come, out with it, you great baby!"

Molly sighed, smoked furiously for a moment, and then tossed her
cigarette into the fire.

"Well, yes," she admitted at last. "There is--something wrong." She rose
and stood looking across at Sara like a big, perplexed child. "I--I owe
some money."

Sara was conscious of a distinct shock.

"How much?" she asked sharply.

"It's--it's rather a lot--twenty pounds!"

"Twenty pounds!" This was certainly a large sum for Molly--whose annual
dress allowance totaled very little more--to be in debt. "What on earth
have you been up to? Buying a new trousseau? Where do you owe it--Carr &
Bishop's?"--mentioning the principal draper's shop in Oldhampton.

"No. I--don't owe it to a shop at all. It's--it's a bridge debt!" The
confession came out rather hurriedly.

Sara's face grew grave.

"But, Molly, you little fool, you've no business to be playing bridge.
Where have you been playing?"

"Oh, we play sometimes at the studios--when the light's too bad to go on
painting, you know"--airily.

"You mean," said Sara, "the artists' club people play?"

"Yes."

Sara frowned. She knew that Molly was one of the youngest members of
this club of rather irresponsible and happy-go-lucky folk, and privately
considered that Selwyn had made a great mistake in ever allowing her to
join it. It embodied, as she had discovered by inquiry, some of the
most rapid elements of Oldhampton's society, and was, moreover, open to
receive as temporary members artists who come from other parts of the
country to paint in the neighbourhood. More than one well-known name had
figured in the temporary membership list, and, in addition, the name of
certain _dilettanti_ to whom the freedom from convention of the artistic
life signified far more that art itself.

"I don't understand," said Sara slowly, "how they let you go on playing
until you owed twenty pounds. Don't you square up at the end of the
afternoon's play?"

"Yes. But I'd--I'd been losing badly, and--and some one