toward the window. Then she stopped and turned upon him, her lips parted
as if to give utterance to the thing that was stirring her heart so
violently. The words would not come. She smiled plaintively and said
instead: "Good-night! Get a good sleep."

"The same to you," he called feverishly.

"Deppy," she said firmly, a red spot in each cheek, her voice tense and
strained to a high pitch of suppressed decision, "I shall marry Karl
Brabetz. That will be the end of your Mr. Chase."

"I hope so," he said. "But I'm not so sure of it, if you continue to
love him as you do now."

She went out with her cheeks burning and a frightened air in her heart.
What right, what reason had he to say such things to her? Her thoughts
raced back to Neenah's airy prophecy.

Bobby Browne and Agnes were approaching from the lower end of the
balcony. She drew back into the shadow suddenly, afraid that they might
discover in her flushed face the signs of that ugly blow to her pride
and her self-respect. "I'm not so sure of it," was whirling in her
brain, repeating itself a hundred times over, stabbing her each time in
a new and even more tender spot.

"If you continue to love him as you do now," fought its way through the
maze of horrid, disturbing thoughts. How could she face the charge: "I'm
not so sure of it," unless she killed the indictment "if you love him as
you do now?"

Lady Agnes and Browne passed by without seeing her and entered the
window. She heard him say something to his companion, softly,
tenderly--she knew not what it was. And Lady Agnes laughed--yes,
nervously. Ah, but Agnes was playing! She was not in love with this man.
It was different. It was not what Neenah meant--nor Deppingham, honest
friend that he was.

Down below she heard voices. She wondered--inconsistently alert--whether
_he_ was one of the speakers. Thomas Saunders and Miss Pelham were
coming in from the terrace. They were in love with each other! They
_could_ be in love with each other. There was no law, no convention that
said them nay! They could marry--and still love! "If you continue to
love him as you do now," battered at the doors of her conscience.

Silently she stole off to her own rooms; stealthily, as if afraid of
something she could not see but felt creeping up on her with an evil
grin. It was Shame!

Her maid came in and she prepared for bed. Left alone, she perched
herself in the window seat to cool her heated face with the breezes that