its blazing end expressed his thought with stark simplicity.

"When we were over in your studio," he said, "I admitted that twice in my life I had tried to--make away with myself. Only two other persons in the world know that, but I'd like to tell you about it, if you don't mind."

She looked at him. There were strange things in the look, things that thrilled him, and other things he subconsciously resented, without understanding why. When she spoke there was a more personal note in her voice than it had yet held.

"You?" she asked; and she added almost lightly, "That seems absurd."

"I know." Laurie spoke with the new humility he had found only to-day. "You think that because I'm so young I couldn't have been desperate enough for that. But--you're young, too."

He was looking straight at her as he spoke. Her eyes, a little hard and challenging, softened, then dropped.

"That's different," she muttered.

He nodded.

"I know the causes were different enough," he agreed. "But the feeling back of them, that pushes one up against such a proposition, must be pretty much the same sort of thing. Anyway, it makes me understand; and I consider that it gives me a claim on you, and the privilege of trying to help you."

Her eyes were still cast down, and suddenly she flushed, a strange, dark flush that looked out of place on the pure whiteness of her skin. She had the exaggerated but wholesome pallor of skin that often goes with reddish hair and red-brown eyes. It does not lend itself becomingly to flushes, and this deep flush lingered, an unwelcome visitor, throughout her muttered, almost ungracious words.

"Oh, please don't talk about it," she said, brusquely. "It's no use. I know you mean to be kind, but you can't do anything."

"Oh, but that's just where you're wrong." Laurie spoke with a cheerful assurance he did not feel. "If I hadn't been there myself, I'd talk all sorts of twaddle to you, and do more harm than good; and I'd probably let you go on thinking you were facing a trouble that no one could help. Instead of that, you and I are going to hold your bugaboo up to the light, and see just what it is and how small it is. And then--" he smiled at 

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