ldn't have done it so easily. A
Barbara Walbrook had she attempted a freak so mad, would be discovered
within twenty-four hours. It was one of the advantages of extreme
obscurity that you came and went without notice. No matter how
conspicuously a Letty Gravely passed it would not be remembered that
she had gone by.

With regard to this, however, she made one reserve. She couldn't
disappear forever, not any more than Judith of Bethulia when she went
to the tent of Holofernes. The history of Judith was not in Letty's
mind, because she had never heard of it; there was only the impulse to
the same sort of sacrifice. Since Israel could be delivered only in
one way, that way Judith had been ready to take. To Letty her prince
was her Israel. One day she would have to inform him that the
Holofernes of his captivity was slain--that at last he was free.

There were lines along which Letty was not imaginative, and one of
those lines ran parallel to Judith's experience. When it came to love
at first sight, she could invent as many situations as there were
millionaires in the subway. In interpreting a part she had views of
her own beyond any held by Luciline Lynch. As to matters of dress her
fancy was boundless.

Her limitations were in the practical. Among practical things "going
to the bad" was now her chief preoccupation. She had always understood
that when you made up your mind to do it you had only to present
yourself. The way was broad; the gate wide open. There were wicked
people on every side eager to pull you through. You had only to go out
into the street, after dark especially--and there you were!

Having walked some three or four blocks she made out the figure of a
man coming up the hill toward her. Her heart stopped beating; her
knees quaked. This was doom. She would meet it, of course, since her
doom would be the prince's salvation; but she couldn't help trembling
as she watched it coming on.

By the light of an arc-lamp she saw that he was in evening dress. The
wicked millionaires who, in motion-pictures, were the peril of young
girls, were always so attired. Iphigenia could not have trodden to the
altar with a more consuming mental anguish than Letty as she dragged
herself toward this approaching fate; but she did so drag herself
without mercy. For a minute as he drew near she was on the point of
begging him to spare her; but she saved herself in time from this
frustration of her task.

The man, a young stoc