ght
flush stained her face:

"Why should I not go to Paris by myself?" she demanded.

"You mean now? On this ship?"

"Yes. Why not? I have enough money to go there and study, haven't I?"

"Yes. But----"

"Why not!" she repeated feverishly, her grey eyes sparkling. "I have
three thousand dollars; I can't go back to Brookhollow and disgrace
them. What does it matter where I go?"

"It would be all right," he said, "if you'd ever had any
experience----"

"Experience! What do you call what I've had today!" She exclaimed
excitedly. "To lose in a single day my mother, my home--to go through
in this city what I have gone through--what I am going through now--is
not that enough experience? Isn't it?"

He said:

"You've had a rotten awakening, Rue--a perfectly devilish experience.
Only--you've never travelled alone----" Suddenly it occurred to him
that his lively friend, the Princess Mistchenka, was sailing on the
_Lusitania_; and he remained silent, uncertain, looking with vague
misgivings at this girl in the armchair opposite--this thin, unformed,
inexperienced child who had attained neither mental nor physical
maturity.

"I think," he said at length, "that I told you I had a friend sailing
on the _Lusitania_ tomorrow."

She remembered and nodded.

"But wait a moment," he added. "How do you know that this--this fellow
Brandes will not attempt to sail on her, also----" Something checked
him, for in the girl's golden-grey eyes he saw a flame glimmer;
something almost terrible came into the child's still gaze; and
slowly died out like the afterglow of lightning.

And Neeland knew that in her soul something had been born under his
very eyes--the first emotion of maturity bursting from the
chrysalis--the flaming consciousness of outrage, and the first, fierce
assumption of womanhood to resent it.

She had lost her colour now; her grey eyes still remained fixed on
his, but the golden tinge had left them.

"_I_ don't know why you shouldn't go," he said abruptly.

"I _am_ going."

"All right! And if _he_ has the nerve to go--if he bothers you--appeal
to the captain."

She nodded absently.

"But I don't believe he'll try to sail. I don't believe he'd dare,
mixed up as he is in a dirty mess. He's afraid of the law, I tell you.
That's why he denied marrying you. It meant bigamy to admit it.
Anyway, I don't think a fake ceremony like that is binding; I mean
that it isn't even real enough to put him in jail. Whic