indow.

And she faltered and stopped stock-still, with a strangled whimper,
due in part to sheer surprise, but mostly to semi-superstitious dread.

The Presence did not move; but she was frightfully aware of the fixed
regard of its coldly hostile eyes.

"Who are you?" she demanded in a choking whisper. "What are you doing
here? What do you want?"

"Where have you been?" the Presence retorted in a level voice
instantly identified as that of Mrs. Standish. "What have you been
doing"--a spectral arm gestured vaguely toward the terrace--"out
there?"

Sally took firm hold of herself and mustered all her wit against this
emergency.

"I went out," she said slowly, "because I couldn't sleep,
and--everything seemed so lovely. . . ."

"Dressed like that!"

Profound scorn informed this comment. The girl writhed, but held
herself well in hand.

"It was so late," she explained, "I didn't think it possible there'd
be anybody else about."

"Of course you didn't." The woman's tone was saturated with hateful
innuendo. "On the other hand, you soon discovered your mistake, didn't
you?"

Sally muttered a sullen "Yes . . ."

"You're wise not to lie I to me," her patroness remarked with just a
suspicion of satisfaction. "I knew, you see. I've been sitting here,
waiting, the better part of an hour, listening to you two bickering
behind the hedge. You little fool!"

Sally said nothing. Her mood was all obsessed now with the conviction
that this was the end to her life of a moth. An end to everything;
come morning and she must be cast forth in disgrace, to go back to . . .

She choked upon an importunate sob and dug nails into the palms of her
hands.

"Who was the man?" Mrs. Standish pursued inexorably.

Then she didn't know!

"Does it matter?" Sally fenced.

"Certainly. I insist upon knowing. Remember your position here--and
mine. I have assumed responsibility for you; but I cannot permit you
to make me answerable for the antics of a man-crazy woman. If you
can't behave yourself and refrain from annoying my aunt's guests, you
must go. I thought you understood that."

"Of course," the girl muttered. "You didn't think I expected anything
else, did you?"

"Who was the man you followed out there?"

The calculated offensiveness of this was balanced by its sudden
revelation to Sally's mind of the fact that Mrs. Standish didn't know
there had been two men. It was, however, true that the window did not
command a view of