father had kissed her to-night. Was not that enough?

"Why, Sene, what's the matter with you?"

Dick mounted the stairs, and touched his lips to her forehead with a
gently compassionate smile.

She fled from him with a cry like the cry of a suffocated creature, shut
her door, and locked it with a ringing clang.

"She's walked too far, and got a little nervous," said Dick, screwing up
his lamp; "poor thing!"

Then he went into his room to look at Del's photograph awhile before he
burned it up; for he meant to burn it up.

Asenath, when she had locked her door, put her lamp before the
looking-glass and tore off her gray cape; tore it off so savagely that
the button snapped and rolled away,--two little crystal semicircles like
tears upon the floor.

There was no collar about the neck of her dress, and this heightened the
plainness and the pallor of her face. She shrank instinctively at the
first sight of herself, and opened the drawer where the crimson cape was
folded, but shut it resolutely.

"I'll see the worst of it," she said with pinched lips. She turned
herself about and about before the glass, letting the cruel light gloat,
over her shoulders, letting the sickly shadows grow purple on her face.
Then she put her elbows on the table and her chin into her hands, and