t she knew she must--that she was in a difficult
position and must play the game to the end.

She went into the bathroom and bathed her flushed face in cold water,
straightened her tumbled hair, resumed her usual attitude of
indifference to the world in general, and going down to the dining-room
slipped into her place quietly.

CHAPTER X

UNDER A CLOUD

Directly across the hall from Blue Bonnet Ashe roomed two girls--Angela
Dare and Patricia Payne, the latter better known to her schoolmates as
"Patty."

Angela Dare was the pride and hope of the school. She was unusually
gifted in English, and gave promise of doing something brilliant in
verse. She had the face and temperament of a poet--even the name--if
names count for anything; for, as Ruth Biddle once said, "a lovely poem
wouldn't look half so good with Susie Simpkins signed to it as Angela
Dare!"

Angela had large blue eyes, as serene as a summer's day, and oddly
translucent. Her head with its crown of yellow hair was charming in
contour, and her face, ivory in coloring, gave her an ethereal,
lily-like appearance, distinctive and unusual. She lived in a world of
her own, which was satisfying and all absorbing.

It was Deborah Watts, practical and efficient, who one day found Angela
in the heart of the Boston shopping district, wending her way through
the busy throng, eyes heavenward, her gaze transfixed and rapturous.

"Angela--Angela Dare!" Deborah Watts said, "what are you doing? You'll
be killed in all this traffic. Look where you're going. Have you any
money? Do you know where you are?"

To all of these questions Angela shook her head in a dazed fashion and
burst into tears, because Deborah had spoiled a poem upon which she had
been working for hours.

"I almost had it, Deborah, and it was so good. Quite the best thing I've
done this year. It went like this:"

Again the gaze sought the skies but the lips faltered.

"Oh, Deborah; now see what you've done! I can't get it! I never shall be
able to again--not just that way, and it was so pretty--a sonnet. The
lines were in three quatrains and a couplet, with the climax in the
octave--you--oh, I'm so annoyed at you."

And it is recorded that the next minute Angela was steeped in regret---
not for the lost verse, but because of her ingratitude and rudeness to
Wee, by which it will be seen that she had all the eccentricity of
genius, combined with rare kindness of heart, a combination that
end