ust wrong. What I'm
trying to do is to give you a prescription for an individual sick soul,
not a well one."

He stopped and pointed at the picture lying on Vi's lap.

"Don't you see where her philosophy helps you? You've got all the
elements of power that she lacked--beauty, wit, breeding, wealth,
and--yes--and mind. She had that, too, but she didn't know it. With all
that of your cargo left, can't you trade honestly with life? Can't you
make life worth while, not only just to yourself? You'll be trading in
compensations, it's true."

Leighton started walking up and down again.

"In one of my many brilliant moments," he went on, "I defined a
compensation to Lewis as something that doesn't quite compensate. There
you have the root of most of the sadness in life. But believe me, my
dear girl, almost all the live people you and I know are trading in
compensations, and this is what I want you to fasten on. Some of them do
it nobly."

Leighton stood with folded arms, frowning at the floor. Vi looked up at
him but could not catch his eye. She rose, picked up her wraps, and then
came and stood before him. She laid her fingers on his arms.

"Grapes," she said, still without a drawl, "you _have_ helped me--a lot.
Good night." She held up her lips.

"No, Vi," said Leighton, gravely. "Just give up paying even for kindness
with a kiss."

Vi nodded her head.

"You're right; only--that kiss wouldn't have been as old as I." She
turned from him. "I don't think I'll call you 'Grapes' any more."

"Yes, you will," said Leighton. "We're born into one name; we earn
another. We've got a right to the one we earn. You see, even a man can't
have his cake----"

But, with a wave of her hand, Vi was gone. Leighton heard Nelton running
down the stairs to call a cab for her.

CHAPTER XXXIV

Mlle. Folly Delaires was not born within a stone's throw of the Paris
fortifications, as her manager would have liked you to believe, but in
an indefinite street in Cockneydom, so like its mates that, in the words
of Folly herself, she had to have the homing instinct of a pigeon to
find it at all. Folly's original name had been--but why give it away?
She was one of those women who are above and beyond a name--of a class,
or, rather, of a type that a relatively merciful world produces
sparingly. She was all body and no soul.

From the moment that Lewis kissed Folly, and then kissed her several
times more, discovering with each essay dep