sort of apathy of self-pity. "At nine something or other. I shall meet her at the station in the car."

Laura turned a quizzical, slitted pair of eyes upon her friend, now busy again with her tear-smudged make-up.

"Not in Judd's car, surely, Tony?" she said, in earnest expostulation. "Why do that? Why not let the girl in upon your—your tangled affairs a little more gradually? How could she help wondering at the extravagant, vulgar ornateness of Judd's car? For of course she knows perfectly well that your own finances are not equal to such a whale of a machine as that."

"It will not take her long to find out everything," said Mrs. Treharne, a little sullenly. "She need not be uncommonly observant to do that. And you remember how embarrassingly observant she was even as a child."

"Give her a chance to observe piecemeal, then," said Laura, laconically. "I shall be with you at the station. One of my poor accomplishments, you know, is the knack of ameliorating difficult situations. And I was always so fond of the child. I am stark curious to see how she has developed. She was a starchy Miss of fifteen when last I saw her. We'll fetch her home in a taxicab. That will be better. It is arranged, then?"

"Everything that you suggest is as good as arranged,' Laura," replied Mrs. Treharne, with a wan smile. "Your gift of persuasion is irresistible—I wish I knew the secret of it. It is extremely good of you to want to meet the child. If I could only meet her with—with such clean hands as—well, as I should have!"

"Never mind—there'll be a way out of it," said Laura, cheerily. "I am off."

She grazed the adeptly-applied artificial bloom of the other woman's cheek with her lips.

As they stood side by side in the juxtaposition of a caress—they were friends from girlhood—the contrast between the two women was sufficiently striking. Laura Stedham, a woman of thirty-five, had the slender yet well-rounded structural sinuosities of a girl of twenty who passes all her days in the open air—minus the indubitable blowsiness which some open-air young women can't help but reveal to the dissecting eye. Unusually tall, she had the gliding grace of movement which so many women of uncommon stature lack. Even in the cluttered dressing room of her friend she made nothing of the obstacles that barred her path, but, walking always with a sort of nervous swiftness, passed around them to her point of destination—a mantel, a table, a hanging picture—with a threading 

 Prev. P 8/183 next