“I am sorry,” Ariel turned from the roses, and faced her and the heavy perfume.  “I hope he will come soon.”

“I hope so,” said the other.  “It’s something to do with me that keeps him away, and the longer he is the more it scares me.”  She shivered and set her teeth together.  “It’s kind of hard, waitin’.  I cert’nly got my share of troubles.”

“Don’t you think that Mr. Louden will be able to take care of them for you?”

“Oh, I hope so, Miss Tabor!  If he can’t, nobody can.”  She was crying openly now, wiping her eyes with her musk-soaked handkerchief.  “We had to send fer him yesterday afternoon—­”

“To come to Beaver Beach, do you mean?” asked Ariel, leaning forward.

“Yes, ma’am.  It all begun out there,—­least-ways it begun before that with me.  It was all my fault.  I deserve all that’s comin’ to me, I guess.  I done wrong—­I done wrong!  I’d oughtn’t never to of went out there yesterday.”

She checked herself sharply, but, after a moment’s pause, continued, encouraged by the grave kindliness of the delicate face in the shadow of the wide white hat.  “I’d oughtn’t to of went,” she repeated.  “Oh, I reckon I’ll never, never learn enough to keep out o’ trouble, even when I see it comin’!  But that gentleman friend of mine—­Mr. Nashville Cory’s his name—­he kind o’ coaxed me into it, and he’s right comical when he’s with ladies, and he’s good company—­and he says, `Claudine, we’ll dance the light fantastic,’ he says, and I kind o’ wanted something cheerful—­I’d be’n workin’ steady quite a spell, and it looked like he wanted to show me a good time, so I went, and that’s what started it.”  Now that she had begun, she babbled on with her story, at times incoherently; full of excuses, made to herself more than to Ariel, pitifully endeavoring to convince herself that the responsibility for the muddle she had made was not hers.

“Mr. Cory told me my husband was drinkin’ and wouldn’t know about it, and, `Besides,’ he says, `what’s the odds?’ Of course I knowed there was trouble between him and Mr. Fear—­that’s my husband —­a good while ago, when Mr. Fear up and laid him out.  That was before me and Mr. Fear got married; I hadn’t even be’n to Canaan then; I was on the stage.  I was on the stage quite a while in Chicago before I got acquainted with my husband.”

“You were on the stage?” Ariel exclaimed, involuntarily.

“Yes, ma’am.  Livin’ pitchers at Goldberg’s Rat’skeller, and amunchoor nights I nearly always done a sketch with a gen’leman friend.  That’s the way I met Mr. Fear; he seemed to be real struck with me right away, and soon as I got through my turn he ast me to order whatever I wanted.  He’s always gen’lemanlike when he ain’t had too much, and even then he vurry, vurry seldom acks rough unless he’s jealous.  That was the trouble yesterday.  I never would of gone to the Beach if I’d dreamed what was comin’!  When we got there I saw Mike—­that’s