r candid eyes. It
was different--the face of this woman of twenty-eight who calmly
regarded Kate.

She turned her head and took in the room with a sweeping glance.

It was there, in the middle of the floor, that she had torn off and
flung her wreath; it was in the corner over there that she had thrown
her bunting dress. On the spot where the rug with the pink child and the
red-eyed dog used to be, she had stood with the tears streaming down her
cheeks--tears of humiliation, of fierce outraged pride, feeling that the
most colossal, crushing tragedy that possibly could come into any life
had fallen upon her.

It came back to the last detail, that evening of torture--the audible
innuendos and the whispering behind hands, the lifted eyebrows and the
exchange of mocking looks, the insolent eyes of Neifkins, and the final
deliberate insult--she lived it all again as she stood before the mirror
calmly arranging her hair.

And Hughie! Her hands paused in mid-air. Could she ever forget that
moment of agony on the stairs when she thought he was going to fail
her--that he was ashamed, and a coward! But what a thoroughbred he had
been! She could better appreciate now the courage it had required.

Afterward--in the moonlight--on the way home--his contrition, his
sympathy, his awkward tenderness. "I love you--I'll love you as long as
I live!" Her lips parted as she listened to the boyish voice--vibrating,
passionate. He had come to her again and she had sent him away for the
sake of the hour that was shortly to arrive. She had reached her goal.
More than she had dared hope for in her wildest dreams had come to her
at last. She had money, power, success, a name. A choking lump rose in
her throat.

It was no longer of any use to refuse to admit it to herself--she wanted
Hugh. She wanted him with all her heart and soul and strength, nothing
and no one else. She threw herself upon the uninviting bed, and in the
hour when she should have been exultant Kate cried.

Throughout Prouty, among the socially select, the act of dressing for
the function at the Prouty House was taking place. This dinner given to
Prentiss by the members of the Boosters Club was the most important
event from every viewpoint that had taken place since the town was
incorporated. It would show the bankrupt stockholders where they were
"at," since Prentiss had reserved the announcement of his decision
regarding the irrigation project for this occasion. In additi