ing to-night, really. I'd like to have kept Chip to ourselves, if we could. But I suppose it wouldn't have done."
The gong boomed loudly, and Judy flew to get a dress out of her wardrobe.
When they met at breakfast a few minutes later, they said good morning as though they hadn't seen each other before. In the midst of their family, the brother and sister had from childhood maintained a sort of Secret Society. Their two minds, critical and inquiring from the first, had early found themselves in tune with each other and out of tune with the rest. When Judy looked back on her childhood and girlhood, it always seemed to her to be streaked with light and dark spots. The light spots were Noel's vacations, and the times when they were together, and the dark spots were the long school terms, and—darkest spot of all—his absence at the war. But even as a child the joy of having him with her was always faintly shadowed by the fear of some day not having him. For years she had said to herself:
"If I could only love some one else as much as I do Noel, then fate would have a choice of two marks."
And if the other members of the family ob-
