fourteen, had written to Vance for help. She was ill, without
money, and asked for work. To him she was known as the last of a
long line of people who had always been professional mediums and
spiritualists, and, out of charity and from a sense of noblesse
oblige to one of the elect of the profession, Vance had made her
his assistant. He had never regretted having done so. The bread
cast upon the waters was returned a thousandfold. From the
first, the girl brought in money. And his wife, the older of the
two, had welcomed her as a companion. After a fashion the Vances
had adopted her. In the advertisements she was described as
their "ward."

Vera now was twenty-one, tall, wonderfully graceful, and of the
most enchanting loveliness. Her education had been cosmopolitan.
In the largest cities of America she had met persons of every
class -- young women, old women, mothers with married sons and
daughters; women of society as it is exploited in the Sunday
supplements; school girls, shop girls, factory girls -- all had
told her their troubles; and men of every condition had come to
scoff and had remained to express, more or less offensively,
their admiration. Some of the younger of these, after a first
visit, returned the day following, and each begged the beautiful
priestess of the occult to fly with him, to live with him, to
marry him. When this happened Vera would touch a button, and
"Mannie" Day, who admitted visitors, and later, in the hall,
searched their hats and umbrellas for initials, came on the run
and threw the infatuated one out upon a cold and unfeeling
sidewalk.

So Vera had seen both the seamy side of life and, in the drawing