and skating, and regular high jinks, and a dinner that left you
feeling like a stuffed gooseberry. Old Wells says his grandmother
wears lace caps with lavender ribbons. Can you beat it! Of course he
felt like a hog, even thinking of wanting to stay away from her at
Christmas. Still, Christmas in a New York hotel--! But the fellows had
nagged him to write. Said they'd do it if he didn't. Of course he
hated to think of her spending Christmas alone--felt like a bloody
villain--

Little by little the smile that had wreathed her lips faded and was
gone. The lips still were parted, but by one of those miracles with
which the face expresses what is within the heart their expression had
changed from pleasure to bitter pain.

She sat there, at the edge of the bed, staring dully until the black
scrawls danced on the white page. With the letter before her she
raised her hand slowly and wiped away a hot, blinding mist of tears
with her open palm. Then she read it again, dully, as though every
selfish word of it had not already stamped itself on her brain and
heart.

[Illustration: "She read it again, dully, as though every selfish word
had not already stamped itself on her brain and heart"]

After the second reading she still sat there, her eyes staring down at
her lap. Once she brushed an imaginary fleck of lint from the lap of
her blue serge skirt--brushed, and brushed and brushed, with a
mechanical, pathetic little gesture that showed how completely absent
her mind was from the room in which she sat. Then her hand fell idle,
and she became very still, a crumpled, tragic, hopeless look rounding