was at her best, and he brought her news of
her little world at Dariawarpur. To her sister he seemed the one link
with reality. Without him the heavy dream would have gone on unbroken.
Fay was always most eager he should take Jan out, and, though at first
Jan had been unwilling, she gradually came to look upon such times as a
blessed break in the monotonous restraint of her day. With him she was
natural, said what she felt, expressed her fears, and never failed to
return comforted and more hopeful.

One night he took her to the Yacht Club, and Jan was glad she had gone,
because it gave her so much to tell Fay when she got back.

It was a very odd experience for Jan, this tea on the crowded lawn of
the Yacht Club. She turned hot when people looked at her, and Jan had
always felt so sure of herself before, so proud to be a daughter of
brilliant, lovable Anthony Ross.

Here, she knew that her sole claim to notice was that she had the
misfortune to be Hugo Tancred's sister-in-law. Fay, too, had once been
joyfully proud and confident--and now!

Sometimes in the long, still days Jan wondered whether their father had
brought them up to expect too much from life, to take their happiness
too absolutely as a matter of course. Anthony Ross had fully subscribed
to the R.L.S. doctrine that happiness is a duty. When they were both
quite little girls he had loved to hear them repeat:

If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain;
Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take,
And stab my spirit broad awake.

Surely as young girls they had both shown a "glorious morning face." Who
more so than poor Fay? So gay and beautiful and kind. Why had this come
upon her, this cruel, numbing disgrace and sorrow? Jan was thoroughly
rebellious. Again she went over that time in Scotland six years before,
when, at a big shooting-box up in Sutherland, they met, among other
guests, handsome Hugo Tancred, home on leave. How he had, almost at
first sight, fallen violently in love with Fay. How he had singled her
out for every deferent and delicate attention; how she, young,
enthusiastic, happy and flattered, had fallen quite equally in love with
him. Jan recalled her father's rather comical dism