-that everybody doesn't think me as bad as he does. He thinks I'm acting nowplaying to him. I can see his throat flicker above his collar.-Why will Willy wear turn-down collars? They're so unbecoming I can see his throat flicker and his fingers work and that queer little quiver in his cheek. He looks as if he wanted to say something and couldn't quite find the words. Not that I'm a good woman, he wouldn't say that! But something kind and sort of intimate. He's going to say it now. No, he isn't. He hears Mrs. Berry coming. Oh, dear!" Mrs. Berry entered on her knock at Farrell's bidding, garrulously apologetic for having let Linda bother Miss Stapleton so long. But she declared and called Farrell to witness if it wasn't a picture! "It's very pretty," he admitted with a quiet sincerity that brought the true color into his wife's cheeks.

Mrs. Berry, however, was unsatisfied. It was more than pretty! It was like one of those Madonnas-Farrell's sensitive lips registered a voiceless protest-Father Flynn had in his study.

"You'd ought to have a child of your own, Miss Stapleton," she climaxed, detaching her daughter. "You're that fond of children!"

The rose under Edna's rouge became a flame. She put up her hands to hide it from Willy, under pretense of rearranging her tumbled hair.

"Oh, I adore children," she smiled successfully, "-other people's. But I don't want any."

There was an embarrassed silence. Once Willy would have said: "I do!" Now he said nothing. She lowered her burning cheeks over the child Mrs. Berry was lifting. Willy had said nothing! He no longer wanted children-her children! Because he didn't think her a good woman! But he needn't think

"Her mother sent her up," she explained when Mrs. Berry had carried off her daughter, fast and happily asleep. "I had to be nice to her!" But her voice didn't ring true. She caught herself up on the false note sharply. Willy needn't think he was perfect himself.

"Willy! Have you done anything about that blue-serge girl-Miss Copeland, I mean? You know you promised."

"Er-what is that?" He seemed to come out of his abstraction wholly confused.

Edna Stapleton's delicately pencilled eyebrows lifted.

"About Ruth Copeland. You took her engagement away. How did you think she was going to live if you didn't find her something else? What did you think she was going to do? Where did you think she was going to stay? You wouldn't let her take what would at least have taken care of her. What did you think she was going to do?"

She was fiercely glad of the consternation in his face.

"I know. I meant to see if I couldn't find her something else, but—”

She said for him what hesitated on his lips, her own curling. They were overred with art, but the scorn on them cut. His eyes flinched.

"You forgot! Well, Mrs. Berry doesn't forget. She can't afford to. It's her living and her little girl's. She gave Miss Copeland until to-night-Sunday night. Because she must have the room to get ready for the new tenant Monday. Where could the girl go Sunday? What could she do? Willy, there are other roads than the theatre to the usurer's! Whose fault will it be if she takes one of them? Mrs. Berry's-or yours? But don't worry, Willy!" The beautiful lips laughed lightly in mock derision. "Some other man will see, as you did, that she hasn't parted with her youth, her beauty, her innocence yet!—and he'll give her a job! Don't look so worried. She won't starve. Young and beautiful and innocent girls never do! I know, you see, because "the mocking voice dragged slowly over the words with a heavy undertone of terrible significance "I was all thatonce, myself."

Farrell's face had whitened. There was a blue-white ring around his lips. She had meant only to punish him, not to start the old agony. She was almost frightened at what she had done. Without taking his eyes from hers, he had begun to move toward the door. She sprang after him, between it and him.

"Willy! Where are you going? What are you going to do?"

He put her aside gently, yet with decision.

"To see what I can do-at the eleventh hour!" he said gravely. "She's not gone yet?"

An idea came to her. "You can't offer her money! She's not one of us. She'd think you meant to insult her!"

He answered, still with that white unbroken gravity:

"I've not thought of offering her money. There is another way."

Standing where he left her, she heard him run down the stairs and knock at Mrs. Berry's door. Panic seized her. She ran into the hall. He mustn't do that! Mrs. Berry would tell him that she was a good woman!

"Willy! Stop!" she called over the balustrade. But Mrs. Berry's door closed in answer.

It was a long time before it opened and let Farrell out. And he was a long time coming up the stairs and getting from the upper hall into their sitting-room. A long time in closing the door. With the same slow deliberateness he crossed to the fireplace. Presently she caught the aroma of a cigarette. She had thrown herself into a chair and picked up a Dramatic Mirror, turning the pages idly. She did not look up, but she knew that he was moving restlessly about the room, lifting now this, now that from mantel and table and setting it down again with exaggerated carefulness.

"Willy's surprised," the blood pounded in her ears. "He didn't think it was in me!"

At last he paused in front of her with that quiet clearing of the throat peculiar to the actor. When his voice came, there was a new quality in its heavy richness—a curious sort of diffidence, or -her heart eased suddenly-was it deference?

"So," he said, "you've been playing the good Samaritan!"

Playing! She flashed him her mocking little smile.

"You wouldn't have thought of me for the rôle?"

"Perhaps not. But you've filled it capably."

She had "played" a new rôle and filled it "capably"! Actor's praise! But this wasn't all, evidently. He made the round of the room again and came back.

"I thought-what have you been doing to your hand?" he interrupted himself.

She tried to pull it from his suddenly solicitous fingers. Their touch thrilled her. She felt the blood surge under her rouge.

"Oh, that! I cut it on glass, yes!" "You had better take care of it, or it will give you trouble."

"It's all right," she said carelessly. "You thought- -?"

"Oh, yes," he straightened, his eyes still holding hers, though, at her insistence, he had let her hand go. "I thought you were going to buy a ruby bracelet."

"And I thought the price of a good woman was above rubies." A curious smile, part wistful, part mocking, shone through the childishly blue eyes. "I told you I knew some Bible."

He was silent a while; then, in a voice strange to her ears in all the years they had lived together, though she had heard it sometimes on stage, when the heavy had played opposite a virtuous heroine: "So that is why you did it!" he mused, as if speaking to himself.

She lifted brimming eyes, at once childish and maternal, wistful with timid appeal, yet yearning with unsatisfied womanhood.

"I hadn't parted with my heart to the usurer, Willy," she said with reproachful dignity.

He stooped suddenly, the blue spiral of smoke from the cigarette between his fingers wreathing her head like a halo, and, for the first time in many months, kissed her on the lips.

"You're a good sort, Edna," he said sincerely, "after all." After all!

ULIE LECOUR came to the Frederick House River camp from the God-knowswhere border-land of the North while the rush into the Porcupine mining district was flooding the country with adventurers from the wind's twelve corners. Beneath the gusty flame of yellow torchlights pack-laden men were pouring down the embankment from the railroad to the tent city that sentinelled the watercourse to the gold towns when the girl with the banjo threaded her way through underbrush tangles to a log at the shore. Against the blackness of the forest the lights of the camp gleamed daringly before her until the moon of June, rising above the rim of the pines, limned the blackness of the unfinished railway bridge with etcher's art and dimmed the golden flare of the torches with encompassing radiance. The harsh noises of the camp died down from the raucous shrieks of phonographs and the hoarse shouts of maudlin men to a hush of silence through which came the purl of the northwardflowing river. Julie Lecour thrummed the preluding chords of the song that the North Country was to know for her own. Then, soft as the pine-odored air, rose the rich tone of her voice, pouring into the night a passionate cry of love and life, that song of Old France that the bush heard with the passing of the first voyageurs.

As she sang she saw Nora Grayne, standing at the door of one of the tents, looking out upon the night; and she saw Stephen Crews, who had been walking restlessly between the torches, come down. the path past the woman in the doorway. Julie watched his coming, knowing that he halted close to her, but giving no sign of her knowledge until she had lingered over the ending of "A la claire Fontaine."

Then she rose from the log, flinging her banjo over her shoulder by its broad ribbon, and laughed with a low, throaty sound that echoed the sob in the song. The man leaned forward, almost touching her. In the moonlight Julie Lecour saw how young, and fine, and fair he was. "Are you a ghost?" he asked, a little burr of accent softening his speech while his boyish voice trembled as if in terror of his daring. Julie Lecour laughed again. Something of his young eagerness flamed in a brand to light the fires of her venturing spirit. "Ghosts are of the past,' she told him, "and I am of to-night. You're English?" He nodded. "And you seek the golden fleece?"

"I have just caught its gleam."

"The sentimentalists of the world. When did you come to this district? Her manner changed swiftly as she looked past him toward the tent up the path where Nora Grayne stood, silhouetted against the yellow lights. A big man had paused there, lifting his broad-brimmed hat in apparent deference to the stranger. Julie Lecour watched the two above her as she listened to the Englishman's answer: "On to-day's train."

"Then you met her?" She nodded toward the tent.

"Miss Grayne? No. We came on the same liner out of Bristol, and on the same train from Montreal, but we didn't meet."

Julie Lecour's laughter held a note of bitterness. "And yet," she said, "you spoke to me?"

"I'm sorry," he responded quickly, "but I wanted to know you when I heard you sing."