She looked at me searchingly.

“Locked up—and writing, and his clothing gone! What’s he writing, Bab? His Will?”

“He is doing his duty to the end, Jane,” I said softly. “He is writing the last Act of a Play. The Company is rehearsing the first two Acts, and he has to get this one ready, though the Heavens fall.”

But to my surprise, she got up and said to me, in a firm voice:

“Either you are crazy, Barbara Archibald, or you think I am. You’ve been stuffing me for about a week, and I don’t beleive a Word of it. And you’ll apologize to me or I’ll never speak to you again.”

She said this loudly, and then went away. And Mr. Beecher said, through the door:

“What the Devil’s the row about?”

Perhaps my nerves were going, or possably it was no luncheon and probably no dinner. But I said, just as if he had been an ordinary person:

“Go on and write and get through. I can’t stew on these steps all day.”

“I thought you were an amiable Child.”

“I’m not amiable and I’m not a Child.”

“Don’t spoil your pretty face with frowns.”

“It’s my face. And you can’t see it anyhow,” I replied, venting in femanine fashion, my anger at Jane on the nearest object.

“Look here,” he said, through the door, “you’ve been my good Angel. I’m doing more work than I’ve done in two months, although it was a dirty, low-down way to make me do it. You’re not going back on me now, are you?”

Well, I was mollafied, as who would not be? So I said:

“Well?”

“What did Patten do with my clothes?”

“He took them with him.”

He was silent, except for a muttered word.

“You might throw those Keys back again,” he said. “Let me know first, however. You’re the most acurate Thrower I’ve ever seen.”

So I through them through the window and I beleive hit the ink bottle. But no matter. And he tried them, but none availed.

So he gave up, and went back to Work, having saved enough ink to finish with. But a few minutes later he called to me again, and I moved to the Doorstep, where I sat listening, while aparently admiring the sea. He explained that having been thus forced, he had almost finished the last Act, and it was a corker. And he said if he had his clothes and some money, and a key to get out, he’d go right back to Town with it and put it in rehearsle. And at the same time he would give the Pattens something to worry about over night. Because, play or no play, it was a Rotten thing to lock a man in a bath-house and take his clothes away.

“But of course I can’t get my clothes,” he said. “They’ll take cussed good care of that. And there’s the Key too. We’re up against it, Little Sister.”

Although excited by his calling me thus, I retained my faculties, and said:

“I have a suit of Clothes you can have.”

“Thanks awfully,” he said. “But from the slight acquaintance we have had, I don’t beleive they would fit me.”

“Gentleman’s Clothes,” I said fridgidly.

“You have?”

“In my Studio,” I said. “I can bring them, if you like. They look quite good, although Creased.”

“You know,” he said, after a moment’s silence, “I can’t quite beleive this is realy happening to me! Go and bring the suit of clothes, and—you don’t happen to have a cigar, I suppose?”

“I have a large box of Cigarettes.”

“It is true,” I heard him say through the door. “It is all true. I am here, locked in. The Play is almost done. And a very young lady on the doorstep is offering me a suit of Clothes and Tobaco. I pinch myself. I am awake.”

Alas! Mingled with my joy at serving my Ideal there was also greif. My idle had feet of clay. He was a slave, like the rest of us, to his body. He required clothes and tobaco. I felt that, before long, he might even ask for an apple, or something to stay the pangs of hunger. This I felt I could not bare.

Perhaps I would better pass over quickly the events of the next hour. I got the suit and the cigarettes, and even Jane’s bath towle, and through them in to him. Also I beleive he took a shower, as I heard the water running. At about seven o’clock he said he had finished the play. He put on the Clothes which he observed almost fitted him, although gayer than he usually wore, and said that if I would give him a hair pin he thought he could pick the Lock. But he did not succeed.

Being now dressed, however, he drew a chair to the window and we talked together. It seemed like a dream that I should be there, on such intimate terms with a great Playwright, who had just, even if under compulsion, finished a last Act. I bared my very soul to him, such as about resembling Julia Marlowe, and no one understanding my craveing to acheive a Place in the World of Art. We were once interupted by Hannah looking for me for dinner. But I hid in a bath-house, and she went away.

What was Food to me compared with such a conversation?

When Hannah had disappeared, he said suddenly:

“It’s rather unusual, isn’t it, your having a suit of clothes and everything in your—er—studio?”

But I did not explain fully, merely saying that it was a painful story.

At half past seven I saw mother on the veranda looking for me, and I ducked out of sight. I was by this time very hungry, although I did not like to mention the fact. But Mr. Beecher made a suggestion, which was this: that the Pattens were evadently going to let him starve until he got through work, and that he would see them in perdetion before he would be the Butt for their funny remarks when they freed him. He therfore tried to escape out the window, but stuck fast, and finaly gave it up.

At last he said:

“Look here, you’re a curious child, but a nervy one. How’d you like to see if you can get the Key? If you do we’ll go to a hotel and have a real meal, and we can talk about your Career.”

Although quivering with Terror, I consented. How could I do otherwise, with such a prospect? For now I began to see that all other Emotions previously felt were as nothing to this one. I confess, without shame, that I felt the stiring of the Tender Passion in my breast. Ah me, that it should have died ere it had hardly lived!

“Where is the key?” I asked, in a wrapt but anxious tone.

He thought a while.

“Generaly,” he said, “it hangs on a nail at the back entry. But the chances are that Patten took it up to his room this time, for safety. You’d know it if you saw it. It has some buttons off sombody’s batheing suit tied to it.”

Here it was necessary to hide again, as father came stocking out, calling me in an angry tone. But shortly afterwards I was on my way to the Patten’s house, on shaking Knees. It was by now twilight, that beautiful period of Romanse, although the dinner hour also. Through the dusk I sped, toward what? I knew not.

The Pattens and the one-peace lady were at dinner, and having a very good time, in spite of having locked a Guest in the bath-house. Being used to servants and prowling around, since at one time when younger I had a habit of taking things from the pantrey, I was quickly able to see that the Key was not in the entry. I therfore went around to the front Door and went in, being prepared, if discovered, to say that somone was in their bath-house and they ought to know it. But I was not heard among their sounds of revelry, and was able to proceed upstairs, which I did.

But not having asked which was Mr. Patten’s room, I was at a loss and almost discovered by a maid who was turning down the beds—much to early, also, and not allowed in the best houses until nine-thirty, since otherwise the rooms look undressed and informle.

I had but Time to duck into another chamber, and from there to a closet.

I remained in that closet all night.

I will explain. No sooner had the maid gone than a Woman came into the room and closed the door. I heard her moving around and I suddenly felt that she was going to bed, and might get her robe de nuit out of the closet. I was petrafied. But it seems, while she really was undressing at that early hour, the maid had laid her night clothes out, and I was saved.

Very soon a knock came to the door, and sombody came in, like Mrs. Patten’s voice and said: “You’re not going to bed, surely!”

“I’m going to pretend to have a sick headache,” said the other Person, and I knew it was the One-peace Lady. “He’s going to come back in a frenzey, and he’ll take it out on me, unless I’m prepared.”

“Poor Reggie!” said Mrs. Patten. “To think of him locked in there alone, and no Clothes or anything. It’s too funny for words.”

“You’re not married to him.”

My heart stopped beating. Was she married to him? She was indeed. My dream was over. And the worst part of it was that for a married man I had done without Food or Exercise and now stood in a hot closet in danger of a terrable fuss.

“No, thank Heaven!” said Mrs. Patten. “But it was the only way to make him work. He is a lazy dog. But don’t worry. We’ll feed him before he sees you. He’s always rather tractible after he’s fed.”

Were all my dreams to go? Would they leave nothing to my shattered ilusions? Alas, no.

“Jolly him a little, to,” said—can I write it?—Mrs. Beecher. “Tell him he’s the greatest thing in the World. That will help some. He’s vain, you know, awfully vain. I expect he’s written a lot of piffle.”

Had they listened they would have heard a low, dry sob, wrung from my tortured heart. But Mrs. Beecher had started a vibrater, and my anguished cry was lost.

“Well,” said Mrs. Patten, “Will has gone down to let him out. I expect he’ll attack him. He’s got a vile Temper. I’ll sit with you till he comes back, if you don’t mind. I’m feeling nervous.”

It was indeed painful to recall the next half hour. I must tell the truth however. They discussed us, especialy mother, who had not called. They said that we thought we were the whole summer Colony, although every one was afraid of mother’s tongue, and nobody would marry Leila, except Carter Brooks, and he was poor and no prospects. And that I was an incorrigable, and carried on somthing gastly, and was going to be put in a convent. I became justly furious and was about to step out and tell them a few plain Facts, when sombody hammered at the door and then came in. It was Mr. Patten.

“He’s gone!” he said.

“Well, he won’t go far, in bathing trunks,” said Mrs. Beecher.

“That’s just it. His bathing trunks are there.”

“Well, he won’t go far without them!”

“He’s gone so far I can’t locate him.”

I heard Mrs. Beecher get up.

“Are you in ernest, Will?” she said. “Do you mean that he has gone without a Stich of clothes, and can’t be found?”

Mrs. Patten gave a sort of screach.

“You don’t think—oh Will, he’s so tempermental. You don’t think he’s drowned himself?”

“No such luck,” said Mrs. Beecher, in a cold tone. I hated her for it. True, he had decieved me. He was not as I had thought him. In our to conversations he had not mentioned his wife, leaveing me to beleive him free to love “where he listed,” as the poet says.

“There are a few clues,” said Mr. Patten. “He got out by means of a wire hairpin, for one thing. And he took the manuscript with him, which he’d hardly have done if he meant to drown himself. Or even if, as we fear, he had no Pockets. He has smoked a lot of cigarettes out of a candy box, which I did not supply him, and he left behind a bath towle that does not, I think, belong to us.”

“I should think he would have worn it,” said Mrs. Beecher, in a scornfull tone.

“Here’s the bath towle,” Mr. Patten went on. “You may recognize the initials. I don’t.”

“B. P. A.,” said Mrs. Beecher. “Look here, don’t they call that—that fliberty-gibbet next door ‘Barbara’?”

“The little devil!” said Mr. Patten, in a raging tone. “She let him out, and of course he’s done no work on the Play or anything. I’d like to choke her.”

Nobody spoke then, and my heart beat fast and hard. I leave it to anybody, how they’d like to be shut in a closet and threatened with a violent Death from without. Would or would they not ever be the same person afterwards?

“I’ll tell you what I’d do,” said the Beecher woman. “I’d climb up the back of father, next door, and tell him what his little Daughter has done. Because I know she’s mixed up in it, towle or no towle. Reg is always sappy when they’re seventeen. And she’s been looking moon-eyed at him for days.”

Well, the Pattens went away, and Mrs. Beecher manacured her Nails,—I could hear her fileing them—and sang around and was not much concerned, although for all she knew he was in the briney deep, a corpse. How true it is that “the paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

I got very tired and much hoter, and I sat down on the floor. After what seemed like hours, Mrs. Patten came back, all breathless, and she said:

“The girl’s gone to, Clare.”

“What girl?”

“Next door. If you want Excitement, they’ve got it. The mother is in hysterics and there’s a party searching the beech for her body. The truth is, of course, if that towle means anything——”

“That Reg has run away with her, of course,” said Mrs. Beecher, in a resined tone. “I wish he would grow up and learn somthing. He’s becoming a nusance. And when there are so many Interesting People to run away with, to choose that chit!”

Yes, she said that. And in my retreat I could but sit and listen, and of course perspire, which I did freely. Mrs. Patten went away, after talking about the “scandle” for some time. And I sat and thought of the beech being searched for my Body, a thought which filled my Eyes with tears of pity for what might have been. I still hoped Mrs. Beecher would go to bed, but she did not. Through the key hole I could see her with a Book, reading, and not caring at all that Mr. Beecher’s body, and mine to, might be washing about in the cruel Sea, or have eloped to New York.

I lothed her.

At last I must have slept, for a bell rang, and there I was still in the closet, and she was ansering it.

“Arrested?” she said. “Well, I should think he’d better be, if what you say about clothing is true.... Well, then—what’s he arrested for?... Oh, kidnaping! Well, if I’m any judge, they ought to arrest the Archibald girl for kidnaping him. No, don’t bother me with it tonight. I’ll try to read myself to sleep.”

So this was Marriage! Did she flee to her unjustly acused husband’s side and comfort him? Not she. She went to bed.

At daylight, being about smotherd, I opened the closet door and drew a breath of fresh air. Also I looked at her, and she was asleep, with her hair in patent wavers. Ye gods!

The wife of Reginald Beecher thus to distort her looks at night! I could not bare it.

I averted my eyes, and on my tiptoes made for the Window.

My sufferings were over. In a short time I had slid down and was making my way through the dewey morn toward my home. Before the sun was up, or more than starting, I had climbed to my casement by means of a wire trellis, and put on my robe de nuit. But before I settled to sleep I went to the pantrey and there satisfied the pangs of nothing since Breakfast the day before. All the lights seemed to be on, on the lower floor, which I considered wastful of Tanney, the butler. But being sleepy, gave it no further thought. And so to bed, as the great English dairy-keeper, Pepys, had said in his dairy.

It seemed but a few moments later that I heard a scream, and opening my eyes, saw Leila in the doorway. She screamed again, and mother came and stood beside her. Although very drowsy, I saw that they still wore their dinner clothes.

They stared as if transfixed, and then mother gave a low moan, and said to Sis:

“That unfortunate man has been in Jail all night.”

And Sis said: “Jane Raleigh is crazy. That’s all.” Then they looked at me, and mother burst into tears. But Sis said:

“You little imp! Don’t tell me you’ve been in that bed all night. I know better.”

I closed my eyes. They were not of the understanding sort, and never would be.

“If that’s the way you feel I shall tell you nothing,” I said wearily.

“Where have you been?” mother said, in a slow and dreadful voice.

Well, I saw then that a part of the Truth must be disclosed, especialy since she has for some time considered sending me to a convent, although without cause, and has not done so for fear of my taking the veil. So I told her this. I said:

“I spent the night shut in a clothes closet, but where is not my secret. I cannot tell you.”

“Barbara! You must tell me.”

“It is not my secret alone, mother.”

She caught at the foot of the bed.

“Who was shut with you in that closet?” she demanded in a shaking voice. “Barbara, there is another wreched Man in all this. It could not have been Mr. Beecher, because he has been in the Station House all night.”

I sat up, leaning on one elbow, and looked at her ernestly.

“Mother,” I said, “you have done enough damage, interfering with Careers—not only mine, but another’s imperiled now by not haveing a last Act. I can tell you no More, except”—here my voice took on a deep and intence fiber—“that I have done nothing to be ashamed of, although unconventional.”

Mother put her hands to her Face, and emited a low, despairing cry.

“Come,” Leila said to her, as to a troubled child. “Come, and Hannah can use the vibrater on your spine.”

So she went, but before she left she said:

“Barbara, if you will only promise to be a good girl, and give us a chance to live this Scandle down, I will give you anything you ask for.”

“Mother!” Sis said, in an angry tone.

“What can I do, Leila?” mother said. “The girl is atractive, and probably men will always be following her and making trouble. Think of last Winter. I know it is Bribery, but it is better than Scandle.”

“I want nothing, mother,” I said, in a low, heartstricken tone, “save to be allowed to live my own life and to have a Career.”

“My Heavens,” mother said, “if I hear that word again, I’ll go crazy.”

So she went away, and Sis came over and looked down at me.

“Well!” she said. “What’s happened, anyhow? Of course you’ve been up to some Mischeif, but I don’t suppose anybody will ever know the Truth of it. I was hopeing you’d make it this time and get married, and stop worrying us.”

“Go away, please, and let me Sleep,” I said. “As to getting married, under no circumstances did I expect to marry him. He has a Wife already. Personally, I think she’s a totle loss. She wears patent wavers at night, and sleeps with her Mouth open. But who am I to interfere with the marriage bond? I never have and never will.”

But Sis only gave me a wild look and went away.

This, dear readers and schoolmates, is the true story of my meeting with and parting from Reginald Beecher, the playwright. Whatever the papers may say, it is not true, except the Fact that he was recognized by Jane Raleigh, who knew the suit he wore, when in the act of pawning his ring to get money to escape from his captors (i. e., The Pattens) with. It was the necktie which struck her first, and also his gilty expression. As I was missing by that time, Jane put two and two together and made an Elopement.

Sometimes I sit and think things over, my fingers wandering “over the ivory keys” of the typewriter they gave me to promise not to elope with anybody—although such a thing is far from my mind—and the World seems a cruel and unjust place, especialy to those with ambition.

For Reginald Beecher is no longer my ideal, my Night of the pen. I will tell about that in a few words.

Jane Raleigh and I went to a matinée late in September before returning to our institutions of learning. Jane cluched my arm as we looked at our programs and pointed to something.

How my heart beat! For whatever had come between us, I was still loyal to him.

This was a new play by him!

“Ah,” my heart seemed to say, “now again you will hear his dear words, although spoken by alien mouths. The love seens——”

I could not finish. Although married and forever beyond me, I could still hear his manly tones as issueing from the door of the Bath-house. I thrilled with excitement. As the curtain rose I closed my eyes in ecstacy.

“Bab!” Jane said, in a quavering tone.

I looked. What did I see? The bath-house itself, the very one. And as I stared I saw a girl, wearing her hair as I wear mine, cross the stage with a Bunch of Keys in her hand, and say to the bath-house door:

“Can’t I do somthing to help? I do so want to help you.”

My very words.

And a voice from beyond the bath-house door said:

“Who’s that?”

His words.

I could bare no more. Heedless of Jane’s Protests and Anguish, I got up and went out, into the light of day. My body was bent with misry. Because at last I knew that, like mother and all the rest, he to did not understand me, and never would. To him I was but material, the stuff that plays are made of!

Ignoring Jane’s observation that the tickets had cost two dollars each, I gathered up the scattered Skeins of my life together, and fled.

CHAPTER III

HER DAIRY: BEING THE DAILY JOURNAL OF THE SUB-DEB

When one looks at Miss Everett, one recognises that no couzin of hers could write a play.

New Year’s resolution—to help some one every day. Today helped Mademoiselle to put on her rubers.

January 2nd. Today I wrote my French theme, beginning, “Les hommes songent moins à leur Ame qú à leur corps. Mademoiselle sent for me and objected, saying that it was not a theme for a young girl, and that I must write a new one, on the subject of pears. How is one to develope in this atmosphere?

Some of the girls are coming back. They stragle in, and put the favers they got at Cotillions on the dresser, and their holaday gifts, and each one relates some amorus experience while at home. Dear dairy, is there somthing wrong with me, that Love has passed me by? I have had offers of Devotion but none that apealed to me, being mostly either to young or not atracting me by physicle charm. I am not cold, although frequently acused of it. Beneath my fridgid Exterior beats a warm heart. I intend to be honest in this dairy, and so I admit it. But, except for passing Fansies—one being, alas, for a married man—I remain without the Divine Passion.

What must it be to thrill at the aproach of the loved Form? To harken to each ring of the telephone bell, in the hope that, if it is not the Idolised Voice, it is at least a message from it? To waken in the morning and, looking around the familiar room, to muze: “Today I may see him—on the way to the Post Office, or rushing past in his racing car.” And to know that at the same moment he to is muzing: “Today I may see her, as she exercises herself at basket ball, or mounts her horse for a daily canter!”

Although I have no horse. The school does not care for them, considering walking the best exercise.

Have flunked the French again, Mademoiselle not feeling well, and marking off for the smallest Thing.

Today’s helpfull Deed—asisted one of the younger girls with her spelling.

January 4th. Miss Everett’s couzin’s play is coming here. The school is to have free tickets, as they are “trying it on the dog.” Which means seeing if it is good enough for the large cities.

We have desided, if Everett marks us well in English from now on, to aplaud it, but if she is unpleasent, to sit still and show no interest.

January 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th. Bad weather, which is depressing to one of my Temperment. Also boil on noze.

A few helpfull Deeds—nothing worth putting down.

January 9th. Boil cut.

Again I can face my Image in my mirror, and not shrink.

Mademoiselle is sick and no French. Miséricorde!

Helpfull Deed—sent Mademoiselle some fudge, but this school does not encourage kindness. Reprimanded for cooking in room. School sympathises with me. We will go to Miss Everett’s couzin’s play, but we will dam it with faint praise.

January 10th. I have written this Date, and now I sit back and regard it. As it is impressed on this white paper, so, Dear Dairy, is it written on my Soul. To others it may be but the tenth of January. To me it is the day of days. Oh, tenth of January! Oh, Monday! Oh, day of my awakning!

It is now late at night, and around me my schoolmates are sleeping the sleep of the young and Heart free. Lights being off, I am writing by the faint luminocity of a candle. Propped up in bed, my mackinaw coat over my robe de nuit for warmth, I sit and dream. And as I dream I still hear in my ears his final words: “My darling. My woman!”

How wonderfull to have them said to one Night after Night, the while being in his embrase, his tender arms around one! I refer to the heroine in the play, to whom he says the above raptureous words.

Coming home from the theater tonight, still dazed with the revelation of what I am capable of, once aroused, I asked Miss Everett if her couzin had said anything about Mr. Egleston being in love with the Leading Character. She observed:

“No. But he may be. She is very pretty.”

“Possably,” I remarked. “But I should like to see her in the morning, when she gets up.”

All the girls were perfectly mad about Mr. Egleston, although pretending merely to admire his Art. But I am being honest, as I agreed at the start, and now I know, as I sit here with the soft, although chilly breeses of the night blowing on my hot brow, now I know that this thing that has come to me is Love. Morover, it is the Love of my Life. He will never know it, but I am his. He is exactly my Ideal, strong and tall and passionate. And clever, to. He said some awfuly clever things.

I beleive that he saw me. He looked in my direction. But what does it matter? I am small, insignifacant. He probably thinks me a mere child, although seventeen.

What matters, oh Dairy, is that I am at last in Love. It is hopeless. Just now, when I had written that word, I buried my face in my hands. There is no hope. None. I shall never see him again. He passed out of my life on the 11:45 train. But I love him. Mon Dieu, how I love him!

January 13th. The Familey managed to restrain its ecstacy on seeing me today. The house is full of people, as they are having a Dinner-Dance tonight. Sis had moved into my room, to let one of the visitors have hers, and she acted in a very unfilial manner when she came home and found me in it.

“Well!” she said. “Expelled at last?”

“Not at all,” I replied in a lofty manner. “I am here through no fault of my own. And I’d thank you to have Hannah take your clothes off my bed.”

She gave me a bitter glanse.

“I never knew it to fail!” she said. “Just as everything is fixed, and we’re recovering from you’re being here for the Holadays, you come back and stir up a lot of trouble. What brought you, anyhow?”

“Meazles.”

She snached up her ball gown.

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll see that you’re quarentined, Miss Barbara, all right. And if you think you’re going to slip downstairs tonight after dinner and worm yourself into this party, I’ll show you.”

She flounsed out, and shortly afterwards mother took a minute from the Florest, and came upstairs.

“I do hope you are not going to be troublesome, Barbara,” she said. “You are too young to understand, but I want everything to go well tonight, and Leila ought not to be worried.”

“Can’t I dance a little?”

“You can sit on the stairs and watch.” She looked fidgity. “I—I’ll send up a nice dinner, and you can put on your dark blue, with a fresh collar, and—it ought to satisfy you, Barbara, that you are at home and posibly have brought the meazles with you, without making a lot of fuss. When you come out——”

“Oh, very well,” I murmured, in a resined tone. “I don’t care enough about it to want to dance with a lot of Souses anyhow.”

“Barbara!” said mother.

“I suppose you have some one on the String for her,” I said, with the abandon of my thwarted Hopes. “Well, I hope she gets him. Because if not I darsay I shall be kept in the Cradle for years to come.”

“You will come out when you reach a proper Age,” she said, “if your Impertanence does not kill me off before my Time.”

Dear Dairy, I am fond of my mother, and I felt repentent and stricken.

So I became more agreable, although feeling all the time that she does not and never will understand my Temperment. I said:

“I don’t care about Society, and you know it, mother. If you’ll keep Leila out of this room, which isn’t much but is my Castle while here, I’ll probably go to bed early.”

“Barbara, sometimes I think you have no afection for your Sister.”

I had agreed to honesty January first, so I replied.

“I have, of course, mother. But I am fonder of her while at school than at home. And I should be a better Sister if not condemed to her old things, including hats which do not suit my Tipe.”

Mother moved over magestically to the door and shut it. Then she came and stood over me.

“I’ve come to the conclusion, Barbara,” she said, “to appeal to your better Nature. Do you wish Leila to be married and happy?”

“I’ve just said, mother——”

“Because a very interesting thing is happening,” said mother, trying to look playfull. “I—a chance any girl would jump at.”

So here I sit, Dear Dairy, while there are sounds of revelery below, and Sis jumps at her chance, which is the Honorable Page Beresford, who is an Englishman visiting here because he has a weak heart and can’t fight. And father is away on business, and I am all alone.

I have been looking for a rash, but no luck.

Ah me, how the strains of the orkestra recall that magic night in the theater when Adrian Egleston looked down into my eyes and although ostensably to an actress, said to my beating heart: “My Darling! My Woman!”

3 A. M. I wonder if I can controll my hands to write.

In mother’s room across the hall I can hear furious Voices, and I know that Leila is begging to have me sent to Switzerland. Let her beg. Switzerland is not far from England, and in England——

Here I pause to reflect a moment. How is this thing possable? Can I love to members of the Other Sex? And if such is the Case, how can I go on with my Life? Better far to end it now, than to perchance marry one, and find the other still in my heart. The terrable thought has come to me that I am fickel.

Fickel or polygamus—which?

Dear Dairy, I have not been a good girl. My New Year’s Resolutions have gone to airey nothing.

The way they went was this: I had settled down to a quiet evening, spent with his beloved picture which I had clipped from a newspaper. (Adrian’s. I had not as yet met the other.) And, as I sat in my chamber, I grew more and more desolate. I love Life, although pessamistic at times. And it seemed hard that I should be there, in exile, while my Sister, only 20 months older, was jumping at her chance below.

At last I decided to try on one of Sis’s frocks and see how I looked in it. I though, if it looked all right, I might hang over the stairs and see what I then scornfully termed “His Nibs.” Never again shall I so call him.

I got an evening gown from Sis’s closet, and it fitted me quite well, although tight at the waste for me, owing to Basket Ball. It was also to low, so that when I had got it all hooked about four inches of my lingerie showed. As it had been hard as anything to hook, I was obliged to take the scizzors and cut off the said lingerie. The result was good, although very decollte. I have no bones in my neck, or practicaly so.

And now came my moment of temptation. How easy to put my hair up on my head, and then, by the servant’s staircase, make my way to the seen below!

I, however, considered that I looked pale, although Mature. I looked at least nineteen. So I went into Sis’s room, which was full of evening wraps but emty, and put on a touch of rouge. With that and my eyebrows blackend, I would not have known myself, had I not been certain it was I and no other.

I then made my way down the Back Stairs.

Ah me, Dear Dairy, was that but a few hours ago? Is it but a short time since Mr. Beresford was sitting at my feet, thinking me a debutante, and staring soulfully into my very heart? Is it but a matter of minutes since Leila found us there, and in a manner which revealed the true feeling she has for me, ordered me to go upstairs and take off Maidie Mackenzie’s gown?

(Yes, it was not Leila’s after all. I had forgotten that Maidie had taken her room. And except for pulling it somewhat at the waste, I am sure I did not hurt the old thing.)

I shall now go to bed and dream. Of which one I know not. My heart is full. Romanse has come at last into my dull and dreary life. Below, the revelers have gone. The flowers hang their herbacious heads. The music has flowed away into the river of the past. I am alone with my Heart.

January 14th. How complacated my Life grows, Dear Dairy! How full and yet how incomplete! How everything begins and nothing ends!

He is in town.

I discovered it at breakfast. I knew I was in for it, and I got down early, counting on mother breakfasting in bed. I would have felt better if father had been at home, because he understands somwhat the way They keep me down. But he was away about an order for shells (not sea; war), and I was to bear my chiding alone. I had eaten my fruit and serial, and was about to begin on sausage, when mother came in, having risen early from her slumbers to take the decorations to the Hospital.

“So here you are, wreched child!” she said, giving me one of her coldest looks. “Barbara, I wonder if you ever think whither you are tending.”

I ate a sausage.

What, Dear Dairy, was there to say?

“To disobey!” she went on. “To force yourself on the atention of Mr. Beresford, in a borowed dress, with your eyelashes blackend and your face painted——”

“I should think, mother,” I observed, “that if he wants to marry into this family, and is not merely being dragged into it, that he ought to see the worst at the start.” She glared, without speaking. “You know,” I continued, “it would be a dreadfull thing to have the Ceramony performed and everything to late to back out, and then have me sprung on him. It wouldn’t be honest, would it?”

“Barbara!” she said in a terrable tone. “First disobedience, and now sarcasm. If your father was only here! I feel so alone and helpless.”

Her tone cut me to the Heart. After all she was my own mother, or at least maintained so, in spite of numerous questions enjendered by our lack of resemblence, moral as well as physicle. But I did not offer to embrase her, as she was at that moment poring out her tea. I hid my misery behind the morning paper, and there I beheld the fated vision. Had I felt any doubt as to the state of my afections it was settled then. My Heart leaped in my bosom. My face sufused. My hands trembled so that a piece of sausage slipped from my fork. His picture looked out at me with that well remembered gaze from the depths of the morning paper.

Oh, Adrian, Adrian!

Here in the same city as I, looking out over perchance the same newspaper to perchance the same sun, wondering—ah, what was he wondering?

I was not even then, in that first Rapture, foolish about him. I knew that to him I was probably but a tender memory. I knew, to, that he was but human and probably very concieted. On the other hand, I pride myself on being a good judge of character, and he carried Nobilaty in every linament. Even the obliteration of one eye by the printer could only hamper but not destroy his dear face.

“Barbara,” mother said sharply. “I am speaking. Are you being sulkey?”

“Pardon me, mother” I said in my gentlest tones. “I was but dreaming.” And as she made no reply, but rang the bell visciously, I went on, pursuing my line of thought. “Mother, were you ever in Love?”

“Love! What sort of Love?”

I sat up and stared at her.

“Is there more than one sort?” I demanded.

“There is a very silly, schoolgirl Love,” she said, eyeing me, “that people outgrow and blush to look back on.”

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you blush to look back on it?”

Mother rose and made a sweeping gesture with her right arm.

“I wash my hands of you!” she said. “You are impertanent and indelacate. At your age I was an inocent child, not troubleing with things that did not concern me. As for Love, I had never heard of it until I came out.”

“Life must have burst on you like an explosion,” I observed. “I suppose you thought that babies——”

“Silense!” mother shreiked. And seeing that she persisted in ignoring the real things of Life while in my presence, I went out, cluching the precious paper to my Heart.

January 15th. I am alone in my boudoir (which is realy the old schoolroom, and used now for a sowing room).

My very soul is sick, oh Dairy. How can I face the truth? How write it out for my eyes to see? But I must. For something must be done. The play is failing.

The way I discovered it was this. Yesterday, being short of money, I sold my amethist pin to Jane, one of the housemaids, for two dollars, throwing in a lace coller when she seemed doubtful, as I had a special purpose for useing funds. Had father been at home I could have touched him, but mother is diferent.

I then went out to buy a frame for his picture, which I had repaired by drawing in the other eye, although lacking the Fire and passionate look of the originle. At the shop I was compeled to show it, to buy a frame to fit. The clerk was almost overpowered.

“Do you know him?” she asked, in a low and throbing tone.

“Not intimitely,” I replied.

“Don’t you love the Play?” she said. “I’m crazy about it. I’ve been back three times. Parts of it I know off by heart. He’s very handsome. That picture don’t do him justise.”

I gave her a searching glanse. Was it posible that, without any acquaintance with him whatever, she had fallen in love with him? It was indeed. She showed it in every line of her silly face.

I drew myself up hautily. “I should think it would be very expencive, going so often,” I said, in a cool tone.

“Not so very. You see, the play is a failure, and they give us girls tickets to dress the house. Fill it up, you know. Half the girls in the store are crazy about Mr. Egleston.”

My world shuddered about me. What—fail! That beautiful play, ending “My darling, my woman”? It could not be. Fate would not be cruel. Was there no apreciation of the best in Art? Was it indeed true, as Miss Everett has complained, although not in these exact words, that the Theater was only supported now by chorus girls’ legs, dancing about in uter abandon?

With an expression of despair on my features, I left the store, carrying the Frame under my arm.

One thing is certain. I must see the play again, and judge it with a criticle eye. If it is worth saving, it must be saved.

January 16th. Is it only a day since I saw you, Dear Dairy? Can so much have happened in the single lapse of a few hours? I look in my mirror, and I look much as before, only with perhaps a touch of paller. Who would not be pale?

I have seen him again, and there is no longer any doubt in my heart. Page Beresford is atractive, and if it were not for circumstances as they are I would not anser for the consequences. But things are as they are. There is no changing that. And I have read my own heart.

I am not fickel. On the contrary, I am true as steal.

I have put his Picture under my mattress, and have given Jane my gold cuff pins to say nothing when she makes my bed. And now, with the house full of People downstairs acting in a flippent and noisy maner, I shall record how it all happened.

My finantial condition was not improved this morning, father having not returned. But I knew that I must see the Play, as mentioned above, even if it became necesary to borow from Hannah. At last, seeing no other way, I tried this, but failed.

“What for?” she said, in a suspicous way.

“I need it terrably, Hannah,” I said.

“You’d ought to get it from your mother, then, Miss Barbara. The last time I gave you some you paid it back in postage stamps, and I haven’t written a letter since. They’re all stuck together now, and a totle loss.”

“Very well,” I said, fridgidly. “But the next time you break anything——”

“How much do you want?” she asked.

I took a quick look at her, and I saw at once that she had desided to lend it to me and then run and tell mother, beginning, “I think you’d ought to know, Mrs. Archibald——”

“Nothing doing, Hannah,” I said, in a most dignafied manner. “But I think you are an old Clam, and I don’t mind saying so.”

I was now thrown on my own resourses, and very bitter. I seemed to have no Friends, at a time when I needed them most, when I was, as one may say, “standing with reluctent feet, where the brook and river meet.”

Tonight I am no longer sick of Life, as I was then. My throws of anguish have departed. But I was then uterly reckless, and even considered running away and going on the stage myself.

I have long desired a Career for myself, anyhow. I have a good mind, and learn easily, and I am not a Paracite. The idea of being such has always been repugnent to me, while the idea of a few dollars at a time doaled out to one of independant mind is galling. And how is one to remember what one has done with one’s Allowence, when it is mostly eaten up by Small Lones, Carfare, Stamps, Church Collection, Rose Water and Glicerine, and other Mild Cosmetics, and the aditional Food necesary when one is still growing?

To resume, Dear Dairy; having uterly failed with Hannah, and having shortly after met Sis on the stairs, I said to her, in a sisterly tone, intimite rather than fond:

“I darsay you can lend me five dollars for a day or so.”

“I darsay I can. But I won’t,” was her cruel reply.

“Oh, very well,” I said breifly. But I could not refrain from making a grimase at her back, and she saw me in a mirror.

“When I think,” she said heartlessly, “that that wreched school may be closed for weeks, I could scream.”

“Well, scream!” I replied. “You’ll scream harder if I’ve brought the meazles home on me. And if you’re laid up, you can say good-bye to the Dishonorable. You’ve got him tide, maybe,” I remarked, “but not thrown as yet.”

(A remark I had learned from one of the girls, Trudie Mills, who comes from Montana.)

I was therfore compeled to dispose of my silver napkin ring from school. Jane was bought up, she said, and I sold it to the cook for fifty cents and half a minse pie—although baked with our own materials.

All my Fate, therfore, hung on a paltrey fifty cents.

I was torn with anxiety. Was it enough? Could I, for fifty cents, steel away from the sordid cares of life, and lose myself in obliviousness, gazing only at his dear Face, listening to his dear and softly modulated Voice, and wondering if, as his eyes swept the audiance, they might perchance light on me and brighten with a momentary gleam in their unfathomable Depths? Only this and nothing more, was my expectation.

How diferent was the reality!

Having ascertained that there was a matinee, I departed at an early hour after luncheon, wearing my blue velvet with my fox furs. White gloves and white topped shoes completed my outfit, and, my own chapeau showing the effect of a rainstorm on the way home from church while away at school, I took a chance on one of Sis’s, a perfectly madening one of rose-colored velvet. As the pink made me look pale, I added a touch of rouge.

I looked fully out, and indeed almost Second Season. I have a way of assuming a serious and Mature manner, so that I am frequently taken for older than I realy am. Then, taking a few roses left from the decorations, and thrusting them carelessly into the belt of my coat, I went out the back door, as Sis was getting ready for some girls to Bridge, in the front of the house.

Had I felt any greif at decieving my Familey, the bridge party would have knocked them. For, as usual, I had not been asked, although playing a good game myself, and having on more than one occasion won most of the money in the Upper House at school.

I was early at the theater. No one was there, and women were going around taking covers off the seats. My fifty cents gave me a good seat, from which I opined, alas, that the shop girl had been right and busness was rotten. But at last, after hours of waiting, the faint tuning of musicle instruments was heard.

From that time I lived in a daze. I have never before felt so strange. I have known and respected the Other Sex, and indeed once or twise been kissed by it. But I had remained Cold. My Pulses had never flutered. I was always conserned only with the fear that others had overseen and would perhaps tell. But now—I did not care who would see, if only Adrian would put his arms about me. Divine shamlessness! Brave Rapture! For if one who he could not possably love, being so close to her in her make-up, if one who was indeed employed to be made Love to, could submit in public to his embrases, why should not I, who would have died for him?

These were my thoughts as the Play went on. The hours flew on joyous feet. When Adrian came to the footlights and looking aparently square at me, declaimed: “The World owes me a living. I will have it,” I almost swooned. His clothes were worn. He looked hungry and ghaunt. But how true that