mered in her head, crying in tune with the
frenzied music--"the End--the End!"

Abruptly she recognized a face despite the wreck and ruin of its beauty.

"Bertie!" she cried as she seized the mother of little Emma by the arm.

The woman staggered and offered her glass.

"Drink," she cried, "drink and forget."

In a moment Zora sprang forward and seized the burning liquid in both
hands. A dozen hands clapped a devil's tattoo. A score of voices yelled
and laughed. The shriek of the music was drowned beneath the thunder of
stamping feet. Men reeled to singing women's arms, but above the roar
rose the song of the voice of Zora--she glided to the middle of the
room, standing tip-toed with skirts that curled and turned; she threw
back her head, raised the liquor to her lips, paused and looked into the
face of Miss Smith.

A silence fell like a lightning flash on the room as that white face
peered in at the door. Slowly Zora's hands fell and her eyes blinked as
though waking from some awful dream. She staggered toward the woman's
outstretched arms....

Late that night the girl lay close in Miss Smith's motherly embrace.

"I was going to hell!" she whispered, trembling.

"Why, Zora?" asked Miss Smith calmly.

"I couldn't find the Way--and I wanted to forget."

"People in hell don't forget," was the matter-of-fact comment. "And,
Zora, what way do you seek? The way where?"

Zora sat up in bed, and lifted a gray and stricken face.

"It's a lie," she cried, with hoarse earnedstness, "the way nowhere.
There is no Way! You know--I want _him_--I want nothing on earth but
him--and him I can't ever have."

The older woman drew her down tenderly.

"No, Zora," she said, "there's something you want more than him and
something you can have!"

"What?" asked the wondering girl.

"His respect," said Sarah Smith, "and I know the Way."

_Twenty-one_

THE MARRIAGE MORNING

Mrs. Vanderpool watched Zora as she came up the path beneath the oaks.
"She walks well," she observed. And laying aside her book, she waited
with a marked curiosity.

The girl's greeting was brief, almost curt, but unintentionally so, as
one could easily see, for back in her eyes lurked an impatient hunger;
she was not thinking of greetings. She murmured a quick word, and stood
straight and tall with her eyes squarely on the lady.

In the depths of Mrs. Vanderpool's heart something strange--not new, but
very old--stirred. Before her stood thi