But Barbara and Wilmot Allen, well used to even larger and more stately rooms, chatted ... as two children.

She faced him, still scornful, but white now, and biting her lips.

In a few minutes Bubbles returned.  “He’s just sitting there with a hell of a face on him,” he said, “and she’s working like a dynamo”.

Dr. Ferris frowned.  “I’m not trying to interfere,” he said.  “You’re old enough to know what’s best for you”.

“Some unknown person,” said Barbara, “has formed the habit of sending me flowers”.

In the dim light she looked wonderfully young and beautiful.

He turned with one foot on the sidewalk, and one in the cab....  “Here I wishes you salutations”.

Wilmot Allen took her in to dinner, and looked much love at her, and talked much nonsense.

He saw her with the vase of jonquils in her hand ... and his stout heart failed him a little.

When Bubbles had trotted off, she dropped into her chair and cried.

The door opened, and Rose staggered into the room.

And in his soul the legless man was playing only for Barbara.

“’D afternoon, Mr. Lichtenstein,” said Bubbles.

“I want me thumb bandaged”.

She said in a small; surprised voice, “Why, it’s finished”.

In that instant the legless man overreached himself and fell heavily.

Barbara ... dashed into her dressing-room and locked the door behind her.

They passed out of the house and by marble steps into the first and most formal of their many gardens.

“What is Wilmot doing with himself these days?” “He went away,” said Barbara, her eyes troubled.

He caught her by the wrist, drew her to her feet, and into the room.

“I twisted the truth out of him, and then flung him over a cliff”.

“Climb out of that chair, and let me out of this house”.

“I’ve seen that man.  I was writing notes in the summer house when he came”.

“Read that, father”.

The engineer made generous terms across the dinner-table.

“You will,” said Barbara, “when the things dry”.

They were much amused with Bubbles, who came out to them for Christmas vacation.

“And when you think,” said she, “that some women spend the best years of their lives making statues!”

I

The number of love affairs which intervened between Barbara Ferris’s first one, when she was eleven, and her twenty-second birthday could not have been counted on the fingers of her two hands.  Many boys, many men, had seemed wonderfully attractive to her.  She did not know why.  She knew only that the attraction seemed strong and eternal while it lasted, and that it never lasted long.  She was sixteen before she began to consider herself a heartless, flirtatious, unstable, jilting sort of a girl.  When she made this discovery, she was terribly