ated boats, and all the rest."

She flushed at the picture. "Do they send them up from the Lake, too?"

"Rather. Didn't you notice that big raft we passed? It's wonderful to
see the rockets completing their orbits down under one's feet." She said
nothing, and he put the oars into the rowlocks. "If we stay we'd better
go and pick up something to eat."

"But how can we get back afterwards?" she ventured, feeling it would
break her heart if she missed it.

He consulted a time-table, found a ten o'clock train and reassured her.
"The moon rises so late that it will be dark by eight, and we'll have
over an hour of it."

Twilight fell, and lights began to show along the shore. The trolleys
roaring out from Nettleton became great luminous serpents coiling in and
out among the trees. The wooden eating-houses at the Lake's edge danced
with lanterns, and the dusk echoed with laughter and shouts and the
clumsy splashing of oars.

Harney and Charity had found a table in the corner of a balcony built
over the Lake, and were patiently awaiting an unattainable chowder.
Close under them the water lapped the piles, agitated by the evolutions
of a little white steamboat trellised with coloured globes which was to
run passengers up and down the Lake. It was already black with them as
it sheered off on its first trip.

Suddenly Charity heard a woman's laugh behind her. The sound was
familiar, and she turned to look. A band of showily dressed girls and
dapper young men wearing badges of secret societies, with new straw hats
tilted far back on their square-clipped hair, had invaded the balcony
and were loudly clamouring for a table. The girl in the lead was the
one who had laughed. She wore a large hat with a long white feather,
and from under its brim her painted eyes looked at Charity with amused
recognition.

"Say! if this ain't like Old Home Week," she remarked to the girl at her
elbow; and giggles and glances passed between them. Charity knew at once
that the girl with the white feather was Julia Hawes. She had lost her
freshness, and the paint under her eyes made her face seem thinner; but
her lips had the same lovely curve, and the same cold mocking smile, as
if there were some secret absurdity in the person she was looking at,
and she had instantly detected it.

Charity flushed to the forehead and looked away. She felt herself
humiliated by Julia's sneer, and vexed that the mockery of such a
creature should affect her. She