I shall begin at the beginning.  I left off where Adrian had disapeared.

Although feeling very strange, and looking a queer red color in my mirror, I rose and dressed myself.  I felt that somthing had slipped, and I must find Adrian. (It is strange with what coldness I write that once beloved name.)

While dressing I percieved that my chest and arms were covered with small red dots, but I had no time to think of myself.  I sliped downstairs and outside the drawing room I heard mother conversing in a loud and angry tone with a visitor.  I glansed in, and ye gods!

It was the Adventuress.

Drawing somwhat back, I listened.  Oh, Dairy, what a revalation!

“But I must see her,” she was saying.  “Time is flying.  In a half hour the performance begins, and—­he cannot be found.”

“I can’t understand,” mother said, in a stiff maner.  “What can my daughter Barbara know about him?”

The Adventuress snifed.  “Humph!” she said.  “She knows, all right.  And I’d like to see her in a hurry, if she is in the house.”

“Certainly she is in the house,” said mother.

“Are you sure of that?  Because I have every reason to beleive she has run away with him.  She has been hanging around him all week, and only yesterday afternoon I found them together.  She had some sort of a Skeme, he said afterwards, and he wrinkled a coat under his mattress last night.  He said it was to look as if he had slept in it.  I know nothing further of your daughter’s Skeme.  But I know he went out to meet her.  He has not been seen since.  His manager has hunted for to hours.”

“Just a moment,” said mother, in a fridgid tone.  “Am I to understand that this—­this Mr. Egleston is——­”

“He is my Husband.”

Ah, dear Dairy, that I might then and there have passed away.  But I did not.  I stood there, with my heart crushed, until I felt strong enough to escape.  Then I fled, like a Gilty Soul.  It was gastly.

On the doorstep I met Jane.  She gazed at me strangely when she saw my face, and then cluched me by the arm.

“Bab!” she cried.  “What on the earth is the matter with your complexion?”

But I was desparate.

“Let me go!” I said.  “Only lend me two dollars for a taxi and let me go.  Somthing horible has happened.”

She gave me ninety cents, which was all she had, and I rushed down the street, followed by her peircing gaze.

Although realizing that my Life, at least the part of it pertaining to sentament, was over, I knew that, single or married, I must find him.  I could not bare to think that I, in my desire to help, had ruined Miss Everett’s couzin’s play.  Luckaly I got a taxi at the corner, and I ordered it to drive to the mill.  I sank back, bathed in hot persparation, and on consulting my bracelet watch found I had but twenty five minutes until the curtain went up.