realization that it was her affair to provide the sunbeam and she did not
know how to do it. They were rich, they had a fine house, but nothing
ever happened there and it was evident that Chrystie wanted things to
happen. It was a situation which Lorry had not foreseen and before which
she quailed, feeling herself inadequate. That was why, at twenty-three, a
little line had formed between her eyebrows and her glance dwelt
anxiously on Chrystie as an obligation--her great obligation--that she
was not discharging worthily.

The glare of the chandelier revealed the girls as singularly
unlike--Lorry--her full name was Loretta--was slender and small with
nut-brown hair and a pale, pure skin. The richest note of color in her
face was the rose of her lips, clearly outlined and smoothly pink. She
had "thrown back" to her New England forbears. On the elm-shaded
streets of Vermont villages one often sees such girls, fragile, finely
feminine, with no noticeable points except a delicate grace and
serenely honest eyes.

Chrystie was all California's--tall, broad-shouldered, promising future
opulence, her skin a warm cream deepening to shades of coral, her hair a
blonde cloud, hanging misty round her brows. She was as unsubtle as a
chromo, as fragrantly fresh as a newly wakened baby. Her hands, large,
plump, with flexible broad-tipped fingers, were ivory-colored and
satin-textured, and her teeth, narrow and slightly overlapping, would go
down to the grave with her if she lived to be eighty. Two months before
she had passed her eighteenth birthday and was now of age and in
possession of more money than she knew how to spend. She was easily
amused, overflowing with good nature and good spirits as a healthy puppy,
but owing to her sheltered environment and slight contact with the world
was, like her sister, shy with strangers.