me, I should probably find her insupportable. Are you going, Nancy?"

"Yes, I promised to have cocoa with Annie Day. I had almost forgotten.
Good night, Maggie."

Nancy shut the door softly behind her, and Maggie closed her eyes for
a moment with a sigh of relief.

"It's nice to be alone," she said softly under her breath, "it's nice
and yet it isn't nice. Nancy irritated me dreadfully this evening. I
don't like stories about good people. I don't wish to think about good
people. I am determined that I will not allow my thoughts to dwell on
that unpleasant Priscilla Peel, and her pathetic poverty, and her
burst of heroics. It is too trying to hear footsteps in that room. No,
I will not think of that room nor of its inmate. Now, if I could only
go to sleep!"

Maggie curled herself up in her luxurious chair, arranged a soft
pillow under her head and shut her eyes. In this attitude she made a
charming picture: her thick black lashes lay heavily on her pale
cheeks; her red lips were slightly parted; her breathing came quietly.
By and by repose took the place of tension-- her face looked as if it
were cut out of marble. The excitement and unrest, which her words had
betrayed, vanished utterly; her features were beautiful, but almost
expressionless.

This lasted for a short time, perhaps ten minutes; then a trivial
circumstance, the falling of a coal in the grate, disturbed the light
slumber of the sleeper. Maggie stirred restlessly and turned her head.
She was not awake, but she was dreaming. A faint rose tint visited