esn't seem to mean anything to you,--that thing--I told you."

"Everything you tell me means more than anything else in the world."

"But about Tom Fulton. I was not married to him. I lied about it. It
isn't possible that I seem--the same--to you."

"You would always seem the same to me," he answered,--and she found
herself smiling at the beauty of his voice. "How could you be different?
These things are just things that happen to you. Should I like you less
if you were caught in the rain, or got your pretty dress muddy?"

"How do you know it is a pretty dress?" she asked irrepressibly.

"Because it's your dress. Run home, now, and brush your hair."

She went at once, and, in spite of her doubts, light-heartedly. He made
her feel, as the night did, that here in this present life, as in the
outer universe, are great spaces still unexplored. Everything had
possibilities. Sprinkle new pollen on a flower and its fruit would take
on other forms. Stretch out a hand and you might be led into unguessed
delights, even after you were dulled with pain. Sleeping in the air,
even, were forces to nourish and revive, dormant only because we do not
call upon them. She smiled into the night, and her heart called
believingly.

XIX

Madam Fulton sat on the veranda, in the shade of the vines. It was
rather early in the morning, and Electra was about her methodical tasks.
Billy Stark sat reading the paper, but nevertheless not failing, from
time to time, to look up and give his old friend a smile. Madam Fulton
could not answer it. She felt estranged in a world where she had failed
to learn the values.

"Billy," she said at length, "do you think she is right?"

"Who?"

"Electra. She says the money I got out of that pesky book is tainted
money. Is it?"

Billy folded his paper and hung it over the veranda rail. His face began
to pucker into a smile, but, gazing at Madam Fulton, it became apparent
to him that she was really troubled. She even looked as if she had not
slept. Her faint pinkness was overlaid by a jaded ivory. Her eyes
interrogated him with a forlorn pleading. All his chivalry rose in arms.

"Hang the book, Florrie!" he said. "Forget it. You've had your fling
with it. You wanted fun and you got it. Stop thinking about it."

"But," she persisted, "is it really true? Have I done a shocking thing,
and is it monstrous to use the money?"

"You've been exceedingly naughty," said Billy. He eyed her with anxiety.