in ordered doses."

"All right, Mater!" said Belinda. Then she flung her racquet viciously
on the steps, and groaned, thrusting her hands in the thick, red-brown
clusters on either side of her face:

"French schools or not, Morry is a damn fool!" said she.

Then Mrs. Horton rose in all the severity of step-motherhood.

"You shall go to bed this instant!" said she, pointing. "You shall have
only soup for dinner. You shall not leave these grounds for a week. Nor
play tennis--nor go sailing."

"I couldn't very well go sailing in the grounds," said Belinda, with
inextinguishable pertness. But she rose, and went upstairs to bed as
the maternal finger indicated, making hideous, gargoylish faces all the
way, which she did not dare turn to deliver.

And once, alone in her bedroom, having slammed the door so that the
cottage jarred with it, she flung herself face down upon the floor, and
sobbed furiously. With one clenched hand she beat the matting near her
head. She strangled with this violent sobbing. Her whole body heaved
with it.

"O God ... punish him!" choked Belinda. "O God ... help me to get even
with him some day ... somehow...."

She rose after a half-hour of this frantic weeping; and, hiccoughing
with spent grief, like a passionate child, went and unlocked a little
drawer. She took out a photograph of Morris. Under it was written in her
black, loopy handwriting, "My Hero and my Love." She gazed a moment at
his face, all distorted and magnified by her tears; then she
deliberately spat upon it, tore it in pieces, and ground them under her
heel. "I hate you.... I hate you.... Beast!... Pig!... Liar!" choked the
little fury. All at once, down she flopped, her skirt making a "cheese"
about her, and gathered the desecrated morsels to her lips.

"Oh ... oh...." she moaned. "My heart is broken ... it's broken...."

Balling the fragments in her fist, and still seated on the floor, she
shook her fist with the rags of love in it, at the empty air.

"I'll get even with you, Morry...." she said between her teeth, as
though he were present in person. "I'll get even with you ... if I have
to wait till _I'm_ thirty!... Oh, _I_ know you!... You dared to kiss me
... _like that_...." Her face flamed at the memory. "And then ... in
less than a year ... oh!... But if you tired of _me_ ... after just
_one_ kiss ... you'll tire of _her_ ... after some hundreds.... _Then_,
Mr. Morry...." Her beautiful face was quite savage--a wo