myself now!"

"Only prove it, darling. Be frank with me. Who in the world loves you as
I do, Geraldine? Who desires happiness for you as I do? What have I in
life besides you and Scott?... And lately, dearest--I _must_ speak as I
feel--something--some indefinable constraint seems to have grown between
you and me--something--I don't exactly know what--that threatens our
intimate understanding----"

"No, there is nothing!"

"Be honest with me, dear. What is it?"

The girl lay silent for a while, then:

"I don't know myself. I have been--worried. It may have been that."

"Worried about yourself, you poor lamb?"

"A little.... And a little about Duane."

"But, darling, if Duane loves you, that is all cleared up, isn't it?"

"Yes.... But for a long time he and Rosalie made me perfectly
wretched.... I didn't know I was in love with him, either.... And I
couldn't sleep very much, and I--I simply couldn't tell you how unhappy
they were making me--and I--sometimes--now and then--in fact, very
often, I--formed the custom of--doing what I ought not to have done--to
steady my nerves--in fact, I simply let myself go--badly."

"Oh, my darling! My darling! Couldn't you have told me--let me sit with
you, talk, read to you--_love_ you to sleep? Why did you do this,
Geraldine?"

"Nothing--very disgraceful--ever happened. It only helped me to sleep
when I was excited and miserable.... I--I didn't care what I did--Duane
and Rosalie made me so wretched. And there seemed no use in my trying to
be different from others, and I thought I might as well be as rotten as
everybody. But I tried and couldn't--I tried, for instance, to misbehave
with Jack Dysart, but I couldn't--and I only hated myself and him and
Rosalie and Duane!"

She sat up, flushed, dishevelled, lips quivering. "I want to confess!
I've been horribly depraved for a week! I gambled with the Pink 'uns and
swore as fashionably as I knew how! I scorched my tongue with
cigarettes; I sat in Bunny Gray's room with the door bolted and let him
teach me how to make silver fizzes and Chinese juleps out of Rose wine
and saki! I let Jack Dysart retain my hand--and try to kiss me--several
times----"

"Geraldine!"

"I _did_. I wanted to be horrid."

She sat there breathing fast, her big brown eyes looking defiantly at
Kathleen, but the child's mouth quivered beyond control and the nervous
hands tightened and relaxed.

"How bad have I been, Kathleen? It sounds pretty bad to