Linda tied her eyes with a handkerchief, gave her a pencil and seated herself on an arm of the chair watching the pencil hovering over the pages of the Social Register which her sister was turning at hazard.

“This page,” announced Sacharissa, “and this name!” marking it with a quick stroke.

Linda gave a stifled cry and attempted to arrest the pencil; but the moving finger had written.

“Whom have I selected?” inquired the girl, whisking the handkerchief from her eyes.  “What are you having a fit about, Linda?”

And, looking at the page, she saw that she had marked her own name.

“We must try it again,” said Destyn, hastily.  “That doesn’t count.  Tie her up, Linda.”

“But—­that wouldn’t be fair,” said Sacharissa, hesitating whether to take it seriously or laugh.  “We all promised, you know.  I ought to abide by what I’ve done.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Linda, preparing the handkerchief and laying it across her sister’s forehead.

Sacharissa pushed it away.  “I can’t break my word, even to myself,” she said, laughing.  “I’m not afraid of that machine.”

“Do you mean to say you are willing to take silly chances?” asked Linda, uneasily.  “I believe in William’s machine whether you do or not.  And I don’t care to have any of the family experimented with.”

“If I were willing to try it on others it would be cowardly for me to back out now,” said Sacharissa, forcing a smile; for Destyn’s and Linda’s seriousness was beginning to make her a trifle uncomfortable.

“Unless you want to marry somebody pretty soon you’d better not risk it,” said Destyn, gravely.

“You—­you don’t particularly care to marry anybody, just now, do you, dear?” asked Linda.  “No,” replied her sister, scornfully.

There was a silence; Sacharissa, uneasy, bit her underlip and sat looking at the uncanny machine.

She was a tall girl, prettily formed, one of those girls with long limbs, narrow, delicate feet and ankles.

That sort of girl, when she also possesses a mass of chestnut hair, a sweet mouth and gray eyes, is calculated to cause trouble.

And there she sat, one knee crossed over the other, slim foot swinging, perplexed brows bent slightly inward.

“I can’t see any honorable way out of it,” she said resolutely.  “I said I’d abide by the blindfolded test.”

“When we promised we weren’t thinking of ourselves,” insisted Ethelinda.

“That doesn’t release us,” retorted her Puritan sister.

“Why?” demanded Linda.  “Suppose, for example, your pencil had marked William’s name!  That would have been im—­immoral!”

“Would it?” asked Sacharissa, turning her honest, gray eyes on her brother-in-law.

“I don’t believe it would,” he said; “I’d only be switched on to Linda’s current again.”  And he smiled at his wife.

Sacharissa sat thoughtful and serious, swinging her foot.