hy did you come
here with your little comedy in your hand, if you didn't mean to play it
out?"

"I did mean to play it," said Rose, laying her head back against the
high rail of the chair. She closed her eyes, for again she felt the
tears coming. "But I--got sick of it."

Madam Fulton nodded confirmingly.

"That's precisely it," she agreed. "We do get sick of it. We get sick of
conduct, good or bad. They don't, the good ones. They go on clambering,
one step after another, up that pyramid, and peering over the edge to
see us playing in the sand, and occasionally, if they can get a brick,
they heave it at us."

"Who are the good ones?" Rose asked languidly. "Electra?"

"Electra? She's neither hot nor cold. But she's of the kind that made
the system in the first place."

"Grannie is good," said Rose absently.

"Bessie Grant? Yes, she's God's anointed, if there is a God. My dear, I
love to talk with you, almost as much as with Billy Stark. You come and
stay with me next winter."

Rose smiled.

"There's Electra," she reminded her.

"Bless you, Electra and I don't live together! I only visit her here
half the year, to save my pocketbook. That's another proof of my general
unworthiness. I flout her and mad her all the time. She wouldn't do that
to me, but she'd drive me to drink trying not to. No, I've got a little
apartment in town, like a hollow tree, and I crawl into it in the
winter. You come, too, and I'll introduce you to all the people I know,
and you can make 'em listen while you sing."

Rose was looking at her in a moved warmth and wonder.

"How kind you are!" she breathed.

"No! no! Only when you said you were a liar, and worse, I suddenly felt
the most extraordinary interest in you. I feel as if you might speak my
language. I don't know that I want to do anything bad, but I don't want
to be kept so nervous trying to decide whether things are bad or not.
You come, my dear--unless I marry Billy Stark. I may do that. I must, if
it will plague Electra."

Rose gave her a quick glance, at once withdrawn, and while she allowed
the last possibility to sink into the depths of her mind, Madam Fulton
was interrogating her again.

"You don't think it is possible," she was urging, with the insistence of
one who sees incredible good fortune, "you don't suppose you haven't any
moral sense?"

She seemed to hang upon the answer. Rose, in spite of herself and the
unhappy moment, laughed.

"I hoped I had," she