. So it happened that just now I--I saw
what you were going to do."

For an instant she stood very still, looking at him, as if not quite
taking in the meaning of his words. In the next her face and even her
neck crimsoned darkly as if under the rush of a wave of angry
humiliation. When she spoke her voice shook.

"You forget," she said, "that you have no right either to look into my
room or to interfere with what you see there."

"I know," he told her, humbly, "and I beg your pardon again. The looking
in was an accident, the merest chance, which I will explain to you
later. The interference--well, I won't apologize for that. Surely you
realize that it's--friendly."

For the first time her eyes left his. She looked around the room as if
uncertain what to do or say.

"Perhaps you mean it so," she muttered at last. "But I consider
it--impertinent."

A change was taking place in her. The fire that had flamed up at his
entrance was dying out, leaving her with the look of one who is cowed
and almost beaten. Even her last words lacked assurance. Watching her in
puzzled sympathy, Laurie for the first time wished himself older and
wiser than he was. How could he handle a situation like this? Neither
then nor later did he ask himself how he would have handled it on the
stage.

For a moment the two young things gazed at each other, in helplessness
and irresolution on his side, in resentful questioning on hers. Even in
the high tension of the moment Laurie subconsciously took in the picture
she made as she stood there, defying him, with her back to the wall of
life.

She was very lovely, more lovely than in the mirror; for now he was
getting the full effect of her splendid coloring, set off by the gown
she wore, a thing of rich but somber shades, lit up by a semi-barbaric
necklace of amber and gold, that hung almost to her knees.

Yes, the girl was a picture against the unforgetable background of that
tragic situation. But what he admired most of all was the dignity that
shone through her panic and her despair. She was up in arms against him.
And yet, if he had not come, if that vision had not flashed into his
mirror five minutes ago, she might now have been lying a huddled,
lifeless thing on the very spot where she stood so proudly. At the
thought his heart shook. The right words came to him at last.

"I've had--impulses--like yours," he said. "I've had them twice.
Fortunately, both times there was some one around to