ment they walked in silence. Then,
"How soon will you reach home?" she asked.

"Oh, about a quarter to ten--the Interurban gets into La Chance
at nine-fifteen, and it's about half an hour across town on the
Washington Street trolley."

"In less than two hours!" cried Mrs. Fiske wildly. "In less than two
hours!"

Seeing no cause for wonder in her statement, and not welcoming at
all this unsought escort, Sylvia made no answer. There was another
silence, and then, looking in the starlight at her companion, the girl
saw with consternation that the quiet tears were running down her
cheeks. She stopped short, "Oh ... _oh_!" she cried. She caught up the
other's hand in a bewildered surprise. She had not the faintest idea
what could cause her hostess' emotion. She was horribly afraid she
would lose the trolley. Her face painted vividly her agitation and her
impatience.

Mrs. Fiske drew back her hand and wiped her eyes with her palm. "Well,
I must be going back," she said. She looked dimly at the girl's face,
and suddenly threw her arms about Sylvia's neck, clinging to her. She
murmured incoherent words, the only ones which Sylvia could make out
being, "I can't--I can't--I _can't!_"

What it was she could not do, remained an impenetrable mystery to
Sylvia, for at that moment she turned away quickly, and went back up
the driveway, her face in her hands. Sylvia hesitated, penetrated,
in spite of her absorption in her own affairs, by a vague pity, but
hearing in the distance the clang of the trolley-car's bell, she
herself turned and ran desperately down the driveway. She reached the
public road just in time to stop the heavy car, and to swing herself
lightly on, to all appearances merely a rather unusually well-set-up,
fashionably dressed young lady, presenting to the heterogeneous
indifference of the other passengers in the car even a more
ostentatiously abstracted air than is the accepted attitude for young
ladies traveling alone. One or two of her fellow voyagers wondered at
the deep flush on her face, but forgot it the next moment. It was a
stain which was not entirely to fade from Sylvia's face and body for
many days to come.

CHAPTER XX

"BLOW, WIND; SWELL, BILLOW; AND SWIM, BARK!"

She reached home, as she had thought, before ten o'clock, her
unexpected arrival occasioning the usual flurry of exclamation and
question not to be suppressed even by the most self-contained family
with a fixed desire to let i