more at present from yours truly."

"This time," he added, "I'm on the right track and know it. No more fancy
theories. But I won't say a word till I can deliver the goods. Give your
wife all the rope you can."

Price and Helene met briefly and amiably and she did not again broach the
subject of the loan for her friend, nor did she ask for her jewels. It
was apparent that she was proudly determined to conceal whatever terrors
or even worries that might haunt her, but the effort deprived her of all
her native vivacity; she was almost formal in manner and her white face
grew more like a classic mask daily.

On the evening before the Thornton fete, however, Price was able to dine
at home. They met at table and he saw at once that she either had
recovered her spirits or was making a deliberate attempt to create the
impression of a carefree young woman happy in a tete-a-tete dinner with a
busy husband.

Her talk for the most part was of the great entertainment at San Mateo.
The weather promised to be simply magnificent. Wasn't that exactly like
Flora Thornton's luck? The immense grounds were simply swarming with
workmen; wagon-loads of all sorts of things went through the gates after
every train--simply one procession after another; but no one else could
so much as get her nose through those gates.

Helene, with all her old childish glee, related how she and Aileen, Polly
(who apparently had forgotten her impending doom), and two or three other
girls, had called up Mrs. Thornton on the telephone every ten minutes for
an hour--pretending it was long distance to make sure of a personal
response--and begged to be allowed to go over and see the preparations,
until finally, in a towering rage, her ladyship had replied that if they
called her again she would withdraw her invitations.

"How we did long for an airship. It would have been such fun, for she
does so disapprove of all of us; thinks us a little flock of silly geese.
Well, we are, I guess, but wasn't she one herself once? She has a pretty
hard time even now making life interesting for herself--out here, anyhow.

"Yesterday we motored down to Menlo and dropped in at the Maynards. There
were a lot of the props of San Francisco society, all as rich as croesus,
sitting on the veranda crocheting socks or sacks for a crop of new babies
that are due. One or two were hemstitching lawn, or embroidering a
monogram, or something else equally useless or virtuous. They were
ta