s.

"Essie, Essie, don't feel so bad!" she begged chokingly.

The girl's answer was a swift look of bitter reproach.

"You can stay here until you find some place that suits you."

The girl shook her head.

"To-morrow I'll go--somewhere."

"Don't feel hard toward me, Essie," and she would have taken the girl's
hand, but she drew it quietly away and stood with folded arms in an
attitude of aloofness which was new to her.

"It's not that; it's only that I don't want your--pity. I don't think
that I want anything you have to give. You have hurt me; you have cut me
to the quick and something is happening--has happened--_here_!" She laid
both hands upon her heart. "I feel still and cold and sort
of--impersonal inside."

"Oh, Essie!"

"I understand perfectly, Mrs. Terriberry. You like me--you like me very
much, but you are one kind of a coward, and of what value is a coward's
friendship or regard? I don't mean to be impertinent--I'm just trying to
explain how I feel. In your heart you believe in me, but you are
afraid--afraid of public opinion--afraid of being left out of the teas
and card parties which mean more to you than I do. You've known me all
my life and fail me at the first test."

"I hate to hear you talk like that; it doesn't sound like Essie
Tisdale." But in her heart she knew the girl was right. She was a
coward; she had not the requisite courage to set her face against the
crowd, but must needs turn and run with them while every impulse and
instinct within her pulled the other way.

"Doesn't it?" The girl smiled bitterly. "Why should it? Can't you
see--don't you understand that you've helped kill _that_ Essie
Tisdale--that blundering, ignorant Essie Tisdale who liked everybody and
believed in everybody as she thought they liked and believed in her?"

"Dear me! oh, dear me!" Mrs. Terriberry rubbed her forehead and groaned
pathetically.

Any consecutive line of thought outside the usual channels pulled Mrs.
Terriberry down like a spell of sickness. She looked jaded from the
present conversation and her thoughts ran together bewilderingly.

"I know to-night how an outlaw feels when the posse's at his heels and
he rides with murder in his heart," the girl went on with hardness in
her young voice. "I know to-night why he makes them pay dear for his
life when he takes his last stand behind a rock."

"Oh, Essie, don't!" Mrs. Terriberry wrung her garnet and
moonstone-ringed fingers together in distres