ou've nothing but your
hundred pounds a week, and you're spending half of that, as it is."

Louise flicked the ash from her cigarette.

"And even you, my child, don't know the worst," she remarked. "There's
Fenillon, my dressmaker. She doesn't send me a bill at all, but I owe
her nearly six hundred pounds. I have to wear a shockingly unbecoming
gown in the second act, as it is, just because she's getting
disagreeable."

"Well, I've tried to set things straight," Sophy declared. "You'll have
either to marry or to borrow some money. You can't go on much longer!"

Louise was looking up at the ceiling. She sighed.

"It would be nice," she said, "to have some one to pay one's bills and
look after one, and see that one wasn't too extravagant."

"Well, you need some one badly," Sophy asserted. "I suppose you mean to
make up your mind to it some day."

"I wonder!" Louise murmured. "Did you know that that terrible man from
the hills--John Strangewey's brother--has been here this morning? He
frightened me almost to death."

"What did he want?" Sophy asked curiously.

"He was a trifle vague," Louise remarked. "I gathered that if I don't
send John back to Cumberland, he's going to strangle me."

Sophy leaned across the table.

"Are you going to send him back?" she asked.

"I am in an uncertain frame of mind," Louise confessed. "I really can't
decide about anything."

Sophy poured herself out some coffee.

"I think," she said, "that you'll have to decide about John before
long."

"About John, indeed!" Louise exclaimed lightly. "Who gave you the right
to call him by his Christian name?"

Sophy colored.

"I suppose I have just dropped into it," she remarked. "Tell me what you
have decided to do, Louise?"

"Why should I do anything at all?"

"You know very well," Sophy insisted, "that you have encouraged John
Strangewey shamefully. You have persuaded him to live up here, to make
new friends, and to start an entirely new mode of life, just in the hope
that some day you will marry him."

"Have I?" Louise asked. "Then I suppose I must keep my word--some day!"

Sophy drew her chair a little nearer to her friend's. She passed her arm
around Louise's waist; their heads almost touched.

"Dear Louise," she whispered, "please tell me!"

Louise was silent. Her hesitation became momentous. Her eyes seemed to
be looking through the walls. Sophy watched her breathlessly.

"You ought to make up your mind," she went on.