Across the table, made dim by her misty eyes, she seemed to see Doris smiling fondly, faithfully, at her.  Doris’s power over people was largely due to that faith she had in them.

“And I will be all you want me to be, Aunt Dorrie!” Joan promised that while she choked down the food.  “I feel as if I were in the bear’s house,” she mused, whimsically.  “I’m half afraid that I’ll be pounced upon.”

And so she paid her bill and went back, via the bus, to Sylvia.  She ran up the long flights of stairs and burst in upon Sylvia with the announcement that “nothing would count if you didn’t have someone to come home and tell it to.”  And then she forgot her glooms while they prepared an evening meal more conservative than bacon and eggs.

“Yes, my beloved,” Sylvia returned as she plunged a wicked-looking little knife into the heart of a grapefruit:  “And that accounts for half the marriages in life.”  Sylvia was refraining, just then, from telling of her own engagement.  She wanted and needed Joan for the present—­her secret would keep.

“You funny old Syl,” Joan flung back over her shoulder as she drew the curtain over the closet that screened the housekeeping skeletons from the wonderful studio.  “We won’t have to resort to marriage, anyway.  We’ve solved the eternal question!”

“Exactly!  And now give those chops a twist.  Thank the Lord, we both love them crisp.”

The experiment in a few days had Joan by the throat.  So utterly had she thrown herself into it, so almost unbelievably had Doris Fletcher permitted her to do so, that it took on all the attributes of reality and demanded nothing less than obedience to its laws, or surrender to defeat.

Doris had given Joan, when she came North, a check for five hundred dollars.  Upon reaching Sylvia she had, after paying her expenses, that, and fifty dollars in cash left.

It had seemed boundless wealth for the first few days and continued to seem so until the necessity for bringing the check into action faced the girl.

“I must find something to do!” she vowed as she made her way to the bank where she had deposited the check.  “No more fooling around.”

Sylvia made no suggestions; never appeared to be anything but satisfied with things as they were.  The companionship, the feeling of home that Joan had introduced into her life, were deep joys to the girl who, like many women who know not the art of making a home, are soul-sick for the blessings of one.

“I’d work till my last tube ran dry,” she thought to herself, standing at the wide north window, “if I could keep her singing and dancing about and—­getting meals!”

Joan did not interfere with Sylvia’s profession—­she gave it new meaning—­but Sylvia realized that Joan was interfering with her own.  Still, Sylvia was never one to usurp the rights of a Higher Power, and at twenty-four she was intensely, shamefacedly religious and absolutely lacking in desire to shape the ends of others.