Putting her impatiently aside, Laura closed the door upon her, and then
crossing to the windows threw back the shutters to let in the late
sunshine.

"A little light won't hurt you, dearest," she said, with a smile.

Gerty, still in her nightgown with a Japanese kimono flung carelessly
about her and her hair falling in a brilliant shower upon her shoulders,
was sitting before her bureau making a pretence of sorting a pile of
bills. In spite of this pathetic subterfuge, her beautiful green eyes
held a startled and angry look, and her face was flushed with an
excitement like that of fever.

"I was sorry I sent for you the moment afterward," she said, hardly
yielding to Laura's embrace, while she nervously tore open a bill she
held and then tossed it aside without glancing over it. "It's the same
thing over again--there's no use talking about it. I shall die."

"You cannot--you cannot," protested Laura, still holding her in her
arms. "You are too beautiful. You were never in your life lovelier than
you are to-day."

"And yet it does not hold him," broke out Gerty, in sudden passion, "and
it will never be any better, I see that. If it's not one it's another,
but it's always somebody. A year ago he promised me that I should never
have cause for jealousy again--he swore that and I believed him--and now
this--this--"

Her anger choked her like a sob, and she tore with trembling fingers at