Watson standing there, smiling radiantly down at her.

"Eleanor!" she gasped helplessly. Somehow the sight of the real Eleanor,
smiling and lovely, made the deceit she had practiced seem so much more
concrete and palpable, the penalty she must pay at best so much more real
and dreadful. Betty had puzzled over the rights and wrongs of the matter
until it had come to be almost an abstraction--a subject for formal,
impersonal debate, like those they used to discuss in the junior English
classes, in high school days--"Resolved: that it is right to help
plagiarists to try again." Now the reality of it all was forced upon her.
In spite of her surprise at seeing Eleanor, who almost never came to her
room now, and her dismay that she should have come on this evening in
particular, she found time to be glad that she had not yet refused
Dorothy's request--and time to be a little ashamed of herself for being
so glad.

Her perturbation showed so plainly in her face and manner that Eleanor
could not fail to notice it. Her smile vanished and a troubled look stole
into her gray eyes. "May I come in, Betty?" she asked. "Or are you too
busy?"

"No-o," stammered Betty. "Come in, Eleanor, of course. I--I was just
writing a note."

Eleanor glanced at the floor, littered with all Betty's futile
beginnings, and her smile came flashing back again. "I should think," she
said, "that you must be writing a love letter--if it isn't a sonnet--
judging by the trouble it's making you. They told me downstairs that you
were cramming history, but I was sure it would take more than a mere
history cram to keep you away from that music. Isn't it lovely?"