“Love!  What sort of Love?”

I sat up and stared at her.

“Is there more than one sort?” I demanded.

“There is a very silly, schoolgirl Love,” she said, eyeing me, “that people outgrow and blush to look back on.”

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you blush to look back on it?”

Mother rose and made a sweeping gesture with her right arm.

“I wash my hands of you!” she said.  “You are impertanent and indelacate.  At your age I was an inocent child, not troubleing with things that did not concern me.  As for Love, I had never heard of it until I came out.”

“Life must have burst on you like an explosion,” I observed.  “I suppose you thought that babies——­”

“Silense!” mother shreiked.  And seeing that she persisted in ignoring the real things of Life while in my presence, I went out, cluching the precious paper to my Heart.

January 15th.  I am alone in my boudoir (which is realy the old schoolroom, and used now for a sowing room).

My very soul is sick, oh Dairy.  How can I face the truth?  How write it out for my eyes to see?  But I must.  For something must be done.  The play is failing.

The way I discovered it was this.  Yesterday, being short of money, I sold my amethist pin to Jane, one of the housemaids, for two dollars, throwing in a lace coller when she seemed doubtful, as I had a special purpose for useing funds.  Had father been at home I could have touched him, but mother is diferent.

I then went out to buy a frame for his picture, which I had repaired by drawing in the other eye, although licking the Fire and passionate look of the originle.  At the shop I was compeled to show it, to buy a frame to fit.  The clerk was almost overpowered.

“Do you know him?” she asked, in a low and throbing tone.

“Not intimitely,” I replied.

“Don’t you love the Play?” she said.  “I’m crazy about it.  I’ve been back three times.  Parts of it I know off by heart.  He’s very handsome.  That picture don’t do him justise.”

I gave her a searching glanse.  Was it posible that, without any acquaintance with him whatever, she had fallen in love with him?  It was indeed.  She showed it in every line of her silly face.

I drew myself up hautily.  “I should think it would be very expencive, going so often,” I said, in a cool tone.

“Not so very.  You see, the play is a failure, and they give us girls tickets to dress the house.  Fill it up, you know.  Half the girls in the store are crazy about Mr. Egleston.”

My world shuddered about me.  What—­fail!  That beautiful play, ending “My darling, my woman”?  It could not be.  Fate would not be cruel.  Was there no apreciation of the best in Art?  Was it indeed true, as Miss Everett has complained, although not in these exact words, that the Theater was only supported now by chorus girls’ legs, dancing about in uter abandon?