afternoon. It is no good for you to try to reassure me with platitudes; I know better. I ought to, at least."
August Turnbull was startled by the fire of resentment smoldering under her still pale exterior. Why, she was like a charged battery. If he touched her, he thought, sparks would fly. She was utterly different from Emmy, as different as a live flame from ashes.
It was evident that having at last spoken she intended to unburden herself of long-accumulated passionate words.
"All my life I've had to listen to and smile sweetly at ridiculous hypocrisies. I have had to teach them and live them too. But now I'm so sick of them I can't keep it up a month longer. I could kill some one, easily. In a world where salvation for a woman is in a pair of slippers I have to be damned. If I could have kept my hair smartly done up and worn sheer batiste do you suppose for a minute I'd be a companion to Mrs. Turnbull? I could be going out to the cafés in a landaulet."
"And looking a lot better than most that do," he commented without premeditation.
She glanced at him again, and he saw that her eyes were gray, habitually half closed and inviting.
"I've had frightfully bad luck," she went on; "once or twice when it seemed that I was to have a chance, when it appeared brighter—everything went to pieces."
"Perhaps you want too much," he suggested.
"Perhaps," she agreed wearily; "ease and pretty clothes and—a man." She added the latter with a more musical inflection than he had yet heard.
"Of course," he proceeded importantly, "there are not a great many men. At least I haven't found them. As
