upon her by her admiring friends. Manley Knight, renowed for his bravery in
the war, is an arrant coward. His soul is a thing of whining terror, his
heroism but a mask. Oh, I know--I read these people truly, when they sit to
me--off guard and unconsciously betraying themselves.

"Mrs. Holm Boddy! Pah! She's far from domestic! She yearns for the halls of
dazzling light, for gayety and even debauchery. Her devotion to home and
children is the blackest of lies! And Iva Payne! She's no invalid! It's a
pose to seem interesting and delicately fragile. You should see her stuff
when no one's looking!

"Judge Drinkwater is a secret drunkard. Lotta Munn is a pauper--an
adventuress, pretending to wealth she doesn't possess. Herman True and his
wife! Zounds, if you could hear those two quarrel! Yet they pose as lovers
yet, and folks fall for it!"

"May Young?" Warble asked, breathlessly.

"An old maid. Well preserved, but no chicken. And Daisy Snow! Angel-faced
debutante! Huh, she knows more than her mother ever dreamed of! You should
see her in my studio, at her sittings! Cocktails, cigarettes, snatches of
wild cabaret songs and dances--oh, Daisy Snow is a caution!"

"The Leathershams?"

"He's a profiteer--she--well, she was a cook--"

"Marigold! No!"

"Marigold, yes! You are a little numskull, you know. You can't see through