“Geraldine!”

“I did.  I wanted to be horrid.”

She sat there breathing fast, her big brown eyes looking defiantly at Kathleen, but the child’s mouth quivered beyond control and the nervous hands tightened and relaxed.

“How bad have I been, Kathleen?  It sounds pretty bad to tell it.  But Muriel says ‘damn!’ and Rosalie says ‘the devil!’ and when anything goes wrong and I say, ‘Oh, fluff!’ I mean swearing, so I thought I’d do it....  And almost every woman I know smokes and has her favourite cocktail, and they all bet and play for stakes; and from what I hear talked about, nobody’s conduct is modified because anybody happens to be married——­”

The horror in Kathleen’s blue eyes checked her; she hid her face in her hands for a moment, then flung out her arms and crushed Kathleen to her breast.

“I’m going to tell Duane how I’ve behaved.  I couldn’t rest until he knows the very worst ... how fearfully common and bad a girl I can be.  Darling, don’t break down.  I don’t want to go any closer to the danger line than I’ve been.  And, oh, I’m so ashamed, so humiliated—­I—­I wish I could go to Duane as—­as clean and sweet and innocent as he would have me.  For he is the dearest boy—­and I love him so, Kathleen.  I’m so silly about him....  I’ve got to tell him how I behaved, haven’t I?”

[Illustration:  “’I want to confess!  I’ve been horribly depraved for a week!’”]

“Are—­are you going to?”

“Of course I am!” ...  She drew away and sat up very straight in bed, serious, sombre-eyed, hands clasped tightly about her knees.

“Do you know,” she said, as though to herself, “it is curious that a trivial desire for anything like that”—­pointing to Rosalie’s gift—­“should make me restless—­annoy me, cause me discomfort.  I can’t understand why it should actually torment me.  It really does, sometimes.”

“That is the terrible part of it,” faltered Kathleen.  “For God’s sake, keep clear of anything with even the faintest odour of alcohol about it....  Where did you find that cut-glass thing?”

“Rosalie gave it to me.”

“What is in it?”

“I don’t know—­creme de something or other.”

Kathleen took the girl’s tightly clasped hands in hers: 

“Geraldine, you’ve got to be square to Duane.  You can’t marry him until you cleanse yourself, until you scour yourself free of this terrible inclination for stimulants.”

“H-how can I?  I don’t intend, ever again, to——­”

“Prove it then.  Let sufficient time elapse——­”

“How long?  A—­year?”

“Dear, if you will show a clean record of self-control for a year I ask no more.  It ought not to be difficult for you to dominate this silly weakness.  Your will-power is scarcely tainted.  What fills me with fear is this habit you have formed of caressing danger—­this childish trifling with something which is still asleep in you—­with all that is weak and ignoble.  It is there—­it is in all of us—­in you, too.  Don’t rouse it; it is still asleep—­merely a little restless in its slumber—­but, oh, Geraldine!  Geraldine!—­if you ever awake it!—­if you ever arouse it to its full, fierce consciousness——­”