Her teeth came down on her lips to stop their sudden quivering, and
the picture on the wall grew blurred and indistinct.

"There isn't any use in praying." Two big tears rolled down her cheeks
and fell upon her hands. "I might as well give up."




CHAPTER X


For a half-moment after Carmencita left the room Frances Barbour stood
in the middle of the floor and stared at the door, still open, then
went over and closed it. Coming back to the table at which she had
been writing, she sat down and took up her pen and made large circles
on the sheet of paper before her. Slowly the color in her face cooled
and left it white.

Carmencita was by nature cyclonic. Her buoyancy and bubbling spirits,
her enthusiasms and intensities, were well understood, but how could
she possibly know Stephen Van Landing? All day he had been strangely
on her mind, always he was in her heart, but thought of him was forced
to be subconscious, for none other was allowed. Of late, however,
crowd it back as she would, a haunting sense of his presence had been
with her, and under the busy and absorbed air with which she had gone
about the day's demands there had been sharp surge of unpermitted
memories of which she was impatient and ashamed.

Also there had been disquieting questions, questions to which she had