, Paul? If you take care of
yourself, everything will come out all right. You have always been
so strong. One has only to look at you."

"Did you," Wanning asked, "say anything to Harold?"

"Yes, of course. I saw him in town today, and he agrees with me that
Seares draws the worst conclusions possible. He says even the young
men are always being told the most terrifying things. Usually they
laugh at the doctors and do as they please. You certainly don't look
like a sick man, and you don't feel like one, do you?"

She patted his shoulder, smiled at him encouragingly, and rang for
the maid to come and hook her dress.

When the maid appeared at the door, Wanning went out through the
bathroom to his own sleeping chamber. He was too much dispirited to
put on a dinner coat, though such remissness was always noticed. He
sat down and waited for the sound of the gong, leaving his door
open, on the chance that perhaps one of his daughters would come in.

When Wanning went down to dinner he found his wife already at her
chair, and the table laid for four.

"Harold," she explained, "is not coming home. He has to attend a
first night in town."

A moment later their two daughters entered, obviously "dressed."
They both wore earrings and masses of hair. The daughters' names
were Roma and Florence,--Roma, Firenze, one of the young men who
came to the house often, but not often enough, had called them.
Tonight they were going to a rehearsal of "The Dances of the
Nations,"--a benefit performance in which Miss Roma was to lead the
Spanish dances, her sister the Grecian.

The elder daughter had often been told that her name suited her
admirably. She looked, indeed, as we are apt to think the
unrestrained beauties of later Rome must have looked,--but as their
portrait busts emphatically declare they did not. Her head was
massive, her lips full and crimson, her eyes large and heavy-lidded,
her forehead low. At costume balls and in living pictures she was
always Semiramis, or Poppea, or Theodora. Barbaric accessories
brought out something cruel and even rather brutal in her handsome
face. The men who were attracted to her were somehow afraid of her.

Florence was slender, with a long, graceful neck, a restless head,
and a flexible mouth--discontent lurked about the corners of it. Her
shoulders were pretty, but her neck and arms were too thin. Roma was
always struggling to keep within a certain weight--her chin and
upper arms grew