The three typewritten lines upon the sheet were, if
anything, more horrifying than the device beneath them. "Your beauty has
made you rich and famous," the letter read. "Without it you could do
nothing. Within thirty days it shall be destroyed, and you will be
hideous."

For a long time Ruth sat gazing at the words before her. In spite of
their ghastly significance she could with difficulty bring herself to
believe that she had an enemy in the world sufficiently ruthless,
sufficiently envious of her beauty and her success, to be capable of
either threatening her in this brutal way, or of carrying such a threat
into execution. So far as she knew, there was not a single person of all
her acquaintance who wished her ill. Her own nature was too sweet, too
sympathetic, too free from malice and bitterness, to conceive for a
moment that the very charms which had brought her fame, success, might
also be the means of bringing her envy and hatred in like proportion.
She cast about in her mind for some possible, some reasonable
explanation of the matter, but try as she would, she was unable to think
of anyone with whom she had ever come in contact, capable of threatening
her in this terrible way. She had about decided that the whole thing
must be some stupidly conceived practical joke, when she saw her mother
cross the hall and come into the room.

Mrs. Harriet Morton was a woman of fifty, handsome and youthful in spite
of her gray hair, her years. That she had once been extremely
good-looking could have been told at a glance; anyone seeing mother and
daughter together experienced no difficulty in determining the source of
Ruth Morton's charms.

"Well, dear," said the older woman, with a pleasant smile. "Haven't you
finished your letters yet?" She glanced toward the clock on the mantel.
"You'll have to leave for the studio in half an hour." Ruth nodded,
gazing at her mother rather uneasily.

"You'll have to open the rest of them, mother," she said, indicating the
pile of letters. "I--I'm tired."

Mrs. Morton came up to her daughter and passed her hand over the girl's
glossy hair.

"What's wrong, Ruth? You look as though something had frightened you."
Then her eyes fell upon the letter lying in the girl's lap, and she
paused suddenly.

Ruth handed her mother the sheet of paper.

"I--I just got this," she said, simply.

Mrs. Morton took the letter quickly from her daughter's hand and
proceeded to read it. A look of appr