She feared that with her low neck—she thought of it as low—the bauble would be flashy.

Mrs. Penniman came from the kitchen and sat on the porch steps. She was much like Winona, except that certain professional touches of colour at waist, neck, and wrists made her appear, in spirit at least, the younger woman. There were times when Winona suffered herself to doubt her mother's seriousness; times when the woman appeared a slave to levity. She would laugh at things Winona considered no laughing matters, and her sympathy with her ailing husband had come to be callous and matter of fact, almost perfunctory. She longed, moreover, to do fancy dressmaking for her child; and there was the matter of the silk stockings. The Christmas before the too downright Dave Cowan, in a low spirit of banter, had gifted Winona with these. They were of tan silk, and Dave had challenged her to wear them for the good of her soul.

Winona had been quite unpleasantly shocked at Dave's indelicacy, but her mother had been frivolous throughout the affair. Her mother said, too, that she would like to wear silk stockings at all times. But Winona—she spoke of the gift as hose—put the sinister things away at the bottom of her third bureau drawer. Once, indeed, she had nearly nerved herself to a public appearance in them, knowing that perfectly good women often did this. That had been the day she was to read her paper on Early Greek Sculpture at the Entre Nous Club. She had put them on with her new tan pumps, but the effect had been too daring. She felt the ogling eyes. The stockings had gone back to the third bureau drawer—to the bottom—and never had her ankles flashed a silken challenge to a public that might misunderstand.

Yet—and this it was that was making Winona old before her time—always in her secret heart of hearts she did long abjectly to wear silk stockings—all manner of sinful silken   trifles. Evil yearnings like this would sweep her. But she took them to be fruits of a natural depravity that good women must fight. Thus far she had triumphed.

Mrs. Penniman now wielded the palm-leaf fan. She eyed her husband with an almost hardened glance, then ran a professional eye over the lines of Winona. Her head moved with quick little birdlike turnings. Her dark hair was less orderly than Winona's, and—from her kitchen work—two spots of colour burned high on her cheeks.

"Your locket's slipped inside your waist," she said, not dreaming that Winona had in shame brought this 

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