Although the Champneys house was tightly closed, with the upper door and windows boarded up, the blonde person in shoddy fineries rang the area bell on the chance that there must be a caretaker somewhere about the premises. She felt that when one has come upon such an errand as hers, one mustn’t leave any stone unturned; and she couldn’t trust to a haphazard letter. An impassive and immaculate Japanese opened the door, and stood looking at her without any expression at all. Had the blonde person baldly stated her errand, the Japanese would probably have closed the door and that would have been the end of it. But she didn’t speak; after a sharp glance at him she opened her gay hand-bag, extracted a slip of paper, handed it to him, and stood waiting.

The Japanese read: “I wish you’d do what you can, for my sake,” and saw that it was addressed to Mr. Chadwick Champneys and signed by Mr. Peter Champneys. It had evidently been carefully kept, and for a long time, as the creases showed. The Japanese stood reflecting for a few moments, then beckoned the blonde person inside the house, ushering her into a very neat basement sitting-room.

“For you?” he asked, glancing at the slip of paper.

“Me? No. I come for a lady friend o’ mine. You might tell ’em she’s awful sick an’ scared, just about all in, she is, or she wouldn’t of sent. But he said she was to come here an’ hand in that slip I’ve just gave you. That’s how I come to bring it.”

“All right. You wait,” said the Japanese, and glided from the room. It was the first time Hoichi had received any message from the new master, as he knew Mr. Peter Champneys to be; if the message was genuine, he was sure that Mr. Chadwick Champneys, had he been alive, would have investigated it. Hoichi couldn’t imagine how the blonde person had gotten hold of such a slip of paper, signed by Mr. Peter Champneys. If there was some trick behind it, some ulterior motive underlying it, then Hoichi proposed to have the trickster taught a needed lesson. He was a suspicious man and visions of clever robbers planning a raid on the premises rose before him. He would run no risks, take no chances. He rang up Mr. Jason Vandervelde, fortunately caught the lawyer at home, and faithfully repeated the blonde person’s message. He insisted that the signature was genuine; he had seen many letters addressed to the late Mr. Champneys by his nephew, and he would recognize that writing anywhere. He asked to be instructed.

“Tell her to wait half an hour and I’ll be there,” said the lawyer upon reflection.

The blonde person was leaning back in a Morris chair, tiredly, when Vandervelde was ushered into the basement sitting-room. He recognized her type with something of a shock. She was what might be called charitably a peripatetic person, and she reeked of very strong perfume. The lawyer’s eyes narrowed, while he explained briefly that he represented the Champneys interests. Would she explain as concisely as possible just why and for whom she had come?

She explained ramblingly. Mr. Vandervelde gathered that a certain “lady friend” of hers, one Gracie Cantrell, now in the hospital, said her prayers to Mr. Peter Champneys, whom she had met on a time, and who had advised her if ever she needed help to apply to his uncle, and to tell him that he had sent her. Feeling herself down and out now, she had done so.

“Honest to Gawd, the poor little simp thinks this feller’s a angel. Why, when she gets out o’ her head, she don’t rave about nothin’ but him, beggin’ him to help her. Ain’t it somethin’ fierce, though?” The blonde person dabbed at her eyes with a scented handkerchief.

Mr. Vandervelde rubbed his nose thoughtfully. A girl down and out, a waif in a city ward, in her delirium calling upon Peter Champneys for help, didn’t sound at all good to him. In connection with that penciled slip which seemed to imply that she had a right to expect help, it smacked of possible heart-interest sob-stuff so dear to enterprising special writers for a yellow press. He couldn’t understand how or where Peter had met the girl; possibly some youthful foolishness back there in Carolina. Maybe she’d followed him north, to become what her friendship with such as the blonde person indicated. Vandervelde was a cautious man and he thought he had better investigate that message, written before Chadwick Champneys’s death.

“My car’s outside,” he told the blonde person briefly. “We’ll see this Gracie at once and find out just what’s to be done.”

It was past the hour for visitors, but Vandervelde’s card procured them admittance to the ward where Gracie lay. At sight of the big-eyed, white-faced, wasted little creature who looked at him with such a frightened and beseeching stare, Vandervelde’s suspicions of her died. No matter what she had been, and the house-physician’s brief comment on her case left him in no doubt, this poor wrecked bit of humanity beached upon the bleak shore of a charity ward was harmless. He absolved her of all evil intent, of any desire to obtain anything under false pretenses. He even absolved the blonde person, who despite her brassy hair, her hectic face, had of a sudden become a kind, gentle, and soothing presence. “Well, dearie, you got a straight tip from that feller. All I had to do was to show that piece o’ paper he give you, and this kind gent’man come right off to see you,” said the blonde cheerfully. “An’ now maybe he’ll be wantin’ to talk with you, so I’ll leave you be. Good night, dearie,” and she stepped away quietly, a trail of perfume in her wake, so that Vandervelde’s nose involuntarily wrinkled.

Gracie lay and looked at her visitor.

“You ain’t his uncle. You don’t look nothin’ at all like him,” said she, disappointedly.

“No. His uncle is dead. I’m the lawyer who has the estate in charge. So you can tell me just exactly what you know about Mr. Peter Champneys, and then tell me what I can do for you.”

He spoke so kindly that Gracie’s spirits revived. She told him just exactly what she knew about Mr. Peter Champneys, which of course was very, very little. Yet this much was luminously clear: of all the men Gracie had ever encountered, of all her experiences, Peter Champneys and the hour he had sat and talked with her stood out clearest, clean, touched with a soft and pure light, a solitary sweet remembrance in a sodden and sordid existence.

“Like a angel, he was. I never seen nobody with such a way o’ lookin’ at you. Never pretended he didn’t understand, but treated me like a lady. I couldn’t never forget him. I kep’ the piece o’ paper he give me, mostly because it was somethin’ belongin’ to him an’ it sort o’ proved I hadn’t dreamed him. I never meant to ask for no help but when I come here an’ there wasn’t nothin’ else to do, I kep’ rememberin’ he said I was to go to his uncle an’ say he’d sent me. I I’m scared! My Gawd! I’m scared!”

He remembered once seeing a trapped rabbit die of sheer terror. This girl, trapped by the inevitable, reminded him unpleasantly of the rabbit. His kind heart contracted. He asked gently:

“What is it you are so afraid of, Gracie? Try to tell me just what you want me to do for you.” Perspiration appeared upon her forehead. She clutched him with a skeleton hand.

“I’m scared o’ bein’ cut up!” she whispered fearfully. “Oh, for Gawdsake, save me from bein’ cut up!” Her eyes widened; in her thin breast you could see her laboring heart thumping. “I want you keep ‘em from cuttin’ me up!” she repeated feverishly.

“Cutting you up!” Vandervelde looked at her wonderingly.

“Yes. I heard ’em say I didn’t have no chanst. They put you in the morgue afterward when you’re folks like me, and then the doctors come and get you and cut you up. I don’t want to be cut up! For Christ’s sake, don’t you let ’em cut me up!”

Vandervelde felt a sort of sick horror. He couldn’t quite understand Gracie’s psychology; her unreasoning, ignorant terror.

“Why, my poor girl, what a notion! You ” he stammered.

“I been treated bad enough alive without bein’ cut up when I’m dead,” said she, interrupting him. “I get to thinkin’ about it, wakin’ up here in the night. He said his folks’d help me if I asked ’em.”

“Of course, of course! Certainly we’ll help!” said Vandervelde hastily.

“If I had any money saved up, ’t wouldn’t be so bad. But I ain’t. We never do. I I been sick a long time. What clothes I had they kep’ against the rent I was owin’, when they told me to get out. An’ I walked an’ walked, an’ then one o’ them cops in Central Park, he seen me, an’ next thing I knew I was here.”

She was getting hysterical, and he saw that it was quite useless to try to reason with her; the one way to allay her terror was to make the promise she implored.

“Well, now that your message has reached us, Gracie, you need not be afraid any more, because what you fear won’t happen; it can’t happen. There! Put it out of your mind.”

She stared at him intently, and decided that this large, fair man was one to be implicitly trusted.

“You bein’ one o’ his people, if you say it won’t happen, then it won’t happen,” she told him, and fetched a great sight of relief. “Oh! I was that scared I ’most died! I I just naturally can’t bear the idea o’ bein’ turned over to them doctors.” And she shuddered.

“Well, now that you’re satisfied you won’t be, suppose you tell me something more immediate that I can do for you. Isn’t there something you’d like?”

“I’d like it most of anything if you’d tell me somethin’ about him,” she said timidly. “I know I got no right to ast, me bein’ what I am,” she added, apologetically. “You see, nobody ever behaved to me like he did, an’ I can’t forget him.”

She looked so pathetically eager, her look was so humble, that Vandervelde couldn’t find it in his heart to deny the request. He found himself telling her that Peter Champneys had become a great painter, that he had never returned to America, and that his wife also was abroad.

“Is the lady he’s married to as nice as him? I sure hope she’s good enough for him,” was Gracie’s comment.

Seeing how mortally weak she was, Vandervelde took his departure, promising to see her again. He had a further interview with the house-physician and the head nurse. Whatever could be done for her would be done, but they had handled too many Gracies to be optimistic about this particular one. They knew how quickly these gutter-candles flicker out.

Commonplace as the girl was, she managed to win Vandervelde’s interest and sympathy. That she had won young Peter Champneys’s didn’t surprise him. He was glad that she had had that one disinterested and kindly deed to look back to. The boy’s quixotic behavior brought a smile to the lawyer’s lips. Fancy his wishing to send such a girl to his uncle and being sure that old Chadwick wouldn’t misunderstand! Gracie cast a new light upon Peter Champneys, and a very likable one. Vandervelde had seen in the uncle something of that same unworldliness that the nephew displayed, and it had established the human equation between Peter and the shrewd old man.

Busy as he was, he managed to see Gracie again. She had refused to be put into a private room; she preferred the ward.

“It’s not fittin’,” she said. “Anyhow, I don’t want to stay by myself. When I wake up at night I want to feel people around me, even sick people’s better than nobody. It’s sort o’ comfortin’ to have comp’ny,” and she stayed in the ward, sharing with less fortunate ones the fruit and flowers Vandervelde had sent to her. Once the gripping fear that had obsessed her had been dispelled, once she was sure of a protecting kindness that might be relied upon, she proved a gay little body. As the blonde person said, Gracie wasn’t a bad sort at all. As a matter of fact, neither was the blonde person. Vandervelde saw that, and it troubled his complacent satisfaction with things. He saw in the waste of these women an effect of that fatally unmoral energy ironically called modern civilization. He wondered how Marcia, or Peter’s wife, would react to Gracie. Should he tell them about her? N-no, he rather thought not.

Marcia had cabled that she and Anne were leaving Italy were, in fact, on their way home. During his wife’s absence he had had to make two or three South American trips, to safeguard certain valuable Champneys interests. The trips had been highly successful and interesting, and he hadn’t disliked them, but Vandervelde was incurably domestic; he liked Marcia at the household helm.

“I wanted to hire half a dozen brass-bands to meet you,” he told his wife the morning of her arrival, and kissed her brazenly. “Marcia, you are prettier than ever! As for Anne ” At sight of Anne Champneys his eyes widened.

“Why, Anne! Why Anne!” He took off his glasses, polished them, and stared at his ward. Marcia smiled the pleased smile of the artist whose work is being appreciated by a competent critic. She was immensely proud of the tall fair girl, so poised, so serene, so decorative.

“As a target for the human eye,” said Vandervelde, fervently, “you’re more than a success: you’re a riot!”

Anne slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. “I’m glad you like me,” said she, frankly. “It’s so nice when the right people like one.”

Hayden was not in town. He didn’t, as a matter of fact, know that they had left Italy, for Anne’s last letter had said nothing of any intention to return to America shortly. Anne felt curiously disappointed that he wasn’t at the pier with Jason to meet them. She was surprised at her own eagerness to see him. He pleased her more than any man she had ever met, and her impatience grew with his absence.

Marcia, a born general, was already planning with masterly attention to details the social career of Mrs. Peter Champneys. With the forces that she could command, the immense power that Berkeley Hayden would swing in her favor, and the Champneys money, that career promised to be unusually brilliant, when one considered Anne herself.

The Champneys house was to be reopened. In the main, as Chadwick Champneys had planned it, it pleased Marcia’s critical taste. Anne herself appreciated as she had been unable to do when she first came to it. She liked its fine Aubusson carpets, its lovely old rosewood and mahogany furniture, its uncluttered stateliness. But there were certain changes and improvements she wished made, and she took a businesslike pleasure in supervising the carrying out of her orders. The portrait of Mr. Chadwick Champneys, painted the year before his death hung over the library mantel and seemed to watch her thoughtfully, critically, with its fine brown eyes. The girl he had snatched from obscure slavery liked to study the visage of the old monomaniac who had been the god in the machine of her existence. Her judgment of him now was clear-eyed but cold. He had been liberal because it fell in with his plans. He had never been loving.

She was sitting in the library one morning, looking up at him rather somberly. Workmen came and went, and somewhere in the back regions a hammer kept up a steady tapping.

“Mr. Hayden,” said Hoichi, as he ushered that gentleman into the room.

She turned her head and looked at him for a full moment, before rising to greet him: one of Anne Champneys’s long, still, mysterious looks, that made his heart feel as if it were a candle, blown and shaken by the wind. Then she smiled and held out her hand. It was good to see him again! She was prouder of his friendship than of anything that had yet come to her. It gave her a sense of security, raised her in her own estimation.

She explained, eagerly, the changes and improvements she was planning, and he went over the house with her. He liked it as Marcia liked it; once or twice he offered suggestions; the relationship of pupil and master was at once resumed, but this time the pupil was more advanced.

Then he took her out to lunch. It was with difficulty that he restrained the exuberant delight he felt; just to have her with him went to his head. “Marcia’s advice was wise, but my behavior’s going to be otherwise, if I don’t keep a tight hold upon myself,” he told himself.

He jealously watched her social progress, and he contributed not a little toward it. He had a sense of proprietorship in her, and he did not mean that she should be just one among many; he wished her to be a great luminary around which lesser lights revolved. Under Marcia Vandervelde’s wing, then, Mrs. Peter Champneys was launched, and from the very first she was a success. She played her part beautifully, though she was curiously apathetic about her triumphs. The incense of adulation did not make as sweet an odor in her nostrils as one might have supposed. Anne Champneys was oddly lacking in personal vanity, and she retained her sense of values, she was able to see things in their just proportions. That she had created a sensation didn’t turn her red head. But she had a feeling that she had, in a sense, kept her word to Chadwick Champneys, discharged part of her debt. This was what he had wished her to accomplish. Very well, she had accomplished it. She was glad. But she sensed a certain hollowness under it all. Sometimes, alone in her room, she would stand and look long and earnestly at the red Indian face of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, brought from Florence and now hanging on her wall. That room had changed. It was plain and simple, almost austere; the “honest monk” who had died in the fire, and the wooden crucifix under him, seemed to dominate it. That treasure of a maid whom Marcia had secured for her, secretly sniffed at Mrs. Champneys’s bed-chamber. She couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t in keeping with the rest of the house. For, it was a brilliant house, as the home of an exceedingly fashionable, wealthy, and handsome woman should be.

Anne bore the name of Champneys like a conquering banner. What had happened on a smaller scale in Florence, happened on a large scale here at home. Something of the Champneys story had crept out, the early marriage, which had kept all the wealth in the family; the departure of the bridegroom to become an artist, and the fact that he had really become a noted one. The halo of romance encircled her head. She was considered beautiful and clever, and the glamour of much money added to the impression she created; but she was also considered cold, inaccessible, and perhaps, as the Italian had said, without a heart. She became, as Marcia had laughingly predicted, a legend in her own lifetime.

Jason Vandervelde watched her speculatively. He adored Anne, and he hoped she wasn’t going to be spoiled by all the pother made over her. And he watched with a growing concern Berkeley Hayden’s quiet, persistent, deliberate pursuit of her. Jason wasn’t under any illusions about the Champneys marriage, but he had, as his wife said, an almost superstitious respect for Chadwick Champneys, and that marriage had been the old man’s darling plan. It was upon that he had builded, and Vandervelde hated to see that plan brought to naught. Anne wouldn’t really lose, of course, Hayden could give her as much as she might forego, but Vandervelde somehow didn’t relish the idea. That girl Gracie, lingering on in the hospital ward, had brought the real Peter Champneys poignantly close to his trustee. He couldn’t help thinking that if Anne could know that real Peter, there might be a hope that old Chadwick’s judgment would be once more vindicated. At the same time, he cared a great deal for Berkeley Hayden, and the latter wanted Anne. And when Hayden wanted anything, he generally got it. What Anne herself thought, or what she might know, he couldn’t determine. And Marcia, when he ventured to speak to her about the matter, said cryptically:

“Why worry? What is to be, will be. Kismet, Jason, kismet!”

On a certain afternoon the house-physician telephoned Mr. Vandervelde that the girl Gracie was very low, and that she had asked for him. Vandervelde finished the letter he was dictating to his secretary, gave a few further instructions to that faithful animal, and had himself driven to the hospital. He couldn’t explain his feelings where Gracie was concerned. There was something to blame, somewhere, for these Gracies. It made him feel a bit remorseful, as if he and his sort had left something undone.

The house-physician said that Gracie’s hold upon life was a mystery and a miracle; by all the laws she should have been gone some months since. She had certainly taken her time about dying! Her little, sharp, immature face had lost all earthliness; only the eyes were alive. They looked at Vandervelde gratefully. He had been very kind, and Gracie was trying to thank him.

“Good-by,” said Gracie. “You been white. Tell him I couldn’t never forget him.” She put out a claw of a hand, and the big man took it.

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Gracie? Isn’t there something you’d like?” The business of seeing Gracie go wasn’t at all pleasant.

Her eyes of a sudden sparkled. She smiled.

“There’s one thing I been wanting awful bad. But I ain’t sure I ought to ask.”

“Tell me, my child, tell me.”

“I want to see her,” said Gracie, unexpectedly.

“Her?”

“His wife. I got no right to ast, but I want somethin’ awful to see his wife. Just once before I I go, I want to see her.”

Vandervelde felt bewildered. He had never spoken of Gracie to Marcia, or to Anne. They were so far removed from this poor little derelict that he was not sure they would understand. He said after a moment’s painful reflection:

“My poor child, I will see what I can do. But if I that is, if she ” He paused, not knowing exactly how to put his dilemma into words without wounding her. But Gracie understood.

“You mean if she won’t come? That’s what I want to know,” said she, enigmatically. So weak was she that with the words on her lips she dropped into sudden slumber. He stood looking down upon her irresolutely. Then he tiptoed away, meeting at the door the house-physician.

“How long?” asked the lawyer, jerkily.

“Probably until morning. Or at any minute,” said the doctor, indifferently. He thought it the best thing Gracie could do.

Vandervelde nodded. Then, moved by one of those impulses under the influence of which the most conservative and careful people do things that astonish nobody more than themselves, he got into his car and went after Anne Champneys.

Anne was for the moment alone. The spring dusk had just fallen, and she was glad to sit for a breathing-space in the shadowy room. Berkeley Hayden had just left. His visit had been momentous, and as a result she was shaken to the depths. She had come face to face with destiny, and she was called upon to make a decision.

For the first time Hayden had broken the rigid rule of conduct he had set for himself. He felt that he could endure no more. He had to know. They had chatted pleasantly, idly. But of a sudden Berkeley had risen from his chair, gone to the window, looked out, turned and faced her.

“Anne,” said he, directly, “what are you going to do about Peter Champneys?”

She started as if she had received an electric shock. After a moment, looking at him with a confused and startled stare, she stammered:

“W-why do you ask!”

“I have to know,” said Hayden, and his voice trembled. “You must be aware, Anne, that I love you. I have loved you from the first moment of our meeting. You are the only woman I have ever really wished to marry. That is why I must ask you: What are you going to do about Peter Champneys?”

“I I don’t know,” said she, twisting her fingers.

“Do you fancy you might be able to love him, later?”

“No,” said she, violently. “No!”

“Why, then, do you not have this abominable marriage annulled?” he demanded. “I know nothing of Champneys, except that he’s an artist, and, truth forces me to say, a great one. But if he doesn’t love you, if you do not love him, do you think anything but misery is ahead for you both, if you decide to carry out the terms of that promise extorted from you?”

She shrank back in her chair. She made no reply, and Hayden came and stood directly before her, looking down at her.

“And I am I nothing to you Anne? I love you. What of me, Anne?”

“What can I say?” said she, falteringly. “I am not free.”

“If you were free, would you marry me? For that is what I am asking you to do, free yourself, and marry me.”

She lifted her troubled eyes. “If I were free,” she said, “if I were free Berkeley, give me time to consider this. It isn’t only the annulling of my marriage to a man I had never seen until the day I married him, and have never seen since, it’s the breaking of my promise to Uncle Chadwick ” They were in the library, and she looked up at the portrait above the mantel. Hayden’s glance followed hers.

“He had no right to extort any such promise from you!” he cried. “Anne, think it over! Weigh Peter Champneys and me in the balance. And, let the best man win, Anne. Will you?”

She regarded him steadfastly. “Yes,” she said.

“And when you have decided, you will let me know?”

“I will let you know,” said she, smiling faintly.

Berkeley took her hand and kissed it. He looked deep into her eyes. Then he left her. He had been very quiet, but his passion for her glowed in his eyes, rang in his voice, and was in the lips that kissed her palm.

She had not been in the least thrilled by it, but she was not displeased. She liked him. As for loving him, she didn’t think it was really in her to love anybody. Looking back upon her youthful infatuation for Glenn Mitchell, she smiled at herself twistedly. She knew now that she had been in love with the bright shadow of love.

But, she reflected, if she did not love Hayden, she respected him, she was proud of him; he represented all that was best and most desirable in her present life. Life with Berkeley Hayden wouldn’t be empty. And life as she faced it now was as empty as a shell that has lost even the faintest echo of the sea. Despite its outward glitter, its mother-of-pearl sheen, she was beginning to be more and more aware of its innate hollowness. Her young and healthy nature cried out against its futility. She was in the May morning of her existence, and yet the joy of youth eluded her.

She had, perhaps, one more year of freedom. Then, Peter Champneys. Berkeley might well ask what she was going to do about it! Was she to accept as final that contract which would make her the unloved wife of an unloved husband? Now that she had grown somewhat older and considerably wiser, now that her horizon had widened, her sense of values broadened, she perceived that she owed to herself, to her sacredest instincts, the highest duty. She did not like to break her pledged word; but that pledge wronged Berkeley, wronged her, wronged Peter.

Her feeling toward that unknown husband was one of stark terror, a sick dislike that had grown stronger with the years. In her mind he remained unchanged. She saw him as the gawky, shrinking boy, his lips apart, his eyes looking at her with uncontrollable aversion. Oh, no! Life with Peter Champneys was unthinkable! There remained, then, Berkeley Hayden. It wasn’t unpleasant to think of Berkeley Hayden. It made one feel safe, and assured; there was a glamour of gratified pride about it, Nancy Simms, Mrs. Peter Champneys, Mrs. Berkeley Hayden. A little smile touched her lips.

Into these not unpleasant musings Mr. Jason Vandervelde irrupted himself, with the astounding request that she come with him now, immediately, to a hospital where a girl unknown to her prayed to see her. Hoichi had turned the lights on upon Mr. Vandervelde’s entrance, and Anne looked at her visitor wonderingly.

“I do sound wild,” admitted Jason, “but if you could have seen the poor thing’s face when she asked to see you Anne, she’ll be dead before morning.” The big man’s glance was full of entreaty.

“But if she doesn’t know me, why on earth should she wish to see me, at such a time?” asked Anne, still more astonished.

Flounderingly Vandervelde tried to tell her. A questionable girl, to whom Peter Champneys had been kind, she couldn’t exactly gather how. Dying in a hospital, and before she went wishing to see Peter Champneys’s wife.

Peter Champneys’s wife, fortunately for herself, was still too near and close to the plain people to consider such a request an outrageous impertinence, to be refused as a matter of course. The terrible power of money had not come to her soon enough to make her consider herself of different and better clay than her fellow mortals. She wasn’t haughty. The heart she was not supposed to possess stirred uncomfortably. She looked at Vandervelde questioningly.

“You wish me to go?”

“I leave that to you entirely,” said he, uncomfortably. “But,” he blurted, “I think it would be mighty decent of you.”

“I will go,” she said.

When they reached the hospital, the blonde person was with Gracie. The blonde person had been crying, and it had not improved her appearance. Her nose looked like a pink wedge driven into the white triangle of her face. Screens had been placed around the bed. A priest with a rosy, good-humored face was just leaving.

Gracie turned her too-large eyes upon Peter Champneys’s wife with a sort of unearthly intensity, and Anne Champneys looked down at her with a certain compassion. Anne had a bourgeois sense of respectability, and she had involuntarily stiffened at sight of the blonde drab sitting by the bedside, staring at her with sodden eyes. She hadn’t expected the blonde. She ignored her and looked, instead, at Gracie. One could be decently sorry for Gracie.

A faint frown puckered Gracie’s brows. Her hand in the blonde person’s tightened its grasp. After a moment she said gravely:

“You came?”

“Yes,” said Anne, mechanically. “I came. You wished to see me?” Her tone was inquiring.

“I wanted to see if you was good enough for him,” said the gutter-candle, as if she were throwing a light into the secret places of Anne Champneys’s soul. “You ain’t. But you could be.”

Vandervelde had the horrid sensation as of walking in a nightmare. He wished somebody in mercy would wake him up.

Anne’s brows came together. She bent upon Gracie one of her long, straight, searching looks.

“Thank you for comin’,” murmured Gracie. “You got a heart.” Her eyelids flickered.

“I am glad I came, if it pleases you to see me,” said Anne. “Is that all you wished to say to me!”

“I wanted to see if you was good enough for him,” murmured Gracie again. “You ain’t. But remember what I’m tellin’ you: you could be.” Her eyes closed. She fell into a light slumber, holding the blonde person’s hand. Vandervelde touched Anne on the arm, and they went out.

As they drove home Vandervelde told her, as well as he could, all that the little wrecked vessel which was now nearing its last harbor had told him. He was deeply moved. He said, patting her hand.

“It was decent of you to come. You’re a little sport, Anne.”

For a while she was silent. Peter Champneys, then, was capable of kindness. He could do a gentle and generous deed. And perhaps he also was finding the heavy chain of his promise to his uncle, of his marriage to herself, galling and wearisome. She reached a woman’s swift decision.

“I’m going to be a better sport,” said she. “I’m going to reward Peter Champneys by setting him free. I shall have our marriage annulled.”