a likes you, when you're willing to
say the things you do?"

Madame Beattie was still not moved except by mild amusement. Anne left
the chair and took a step nearer.

"Madame Beattie," she said, "you don't believe a word I say. But I mean
it. You've got to go out of this house, or I shall put you out of it
with my hands. With my hands, Madame Beattie--and I'm very strong."

Madame Beattie was no coward, but she was not young and she had a sense
of physical inadequacy. About Anne there was playing the very spirit of
tragic anger, none of it for effect, not in the least gauged by any idea
of its efficiency. Those slender hands, gripping each other until the
knuckles blanched, were ready for their act. The girl's white face was
lighted with eyes of fire. Madame Beattie rose and slowly assumed her
cloak.

"You're a silly child," she said. "When you're as old as I am you'll
have more common-sense. You'd rather risk a scandal than tell Jeff he
has a debt to pay. By to-morrow you'll see it as I do. Come to me in the
morning, and we'll talk it over. I won't act before then."

She walked composedly to the door and Anne scrupulously held it for her.
They went through the hall, Anne following and ready to open the last
door also. But she closed it without saying good-bye, in answer to
Madame Beattie's oblique nod over her shoulder and the farewell wave of
her hand. For an instant Anne felt like slipping the bolt lest her
adversary should return, but she reflected, with a grimness new to her
gentle nature, that if Madame Beattie did return her own two hands were
ready. She stood a moment, listening, and when the carriage wheels
rolled away down the drive, she went to the big closet under the stairs
and caught at her own coat and hat. She was going, as fast as her feet
would carry her, to see Alston Choate.

XXXVII

Alston Choate was working, and he was alone. Anne, bright-eyed and
anxious, came in upon him and brought him to his feet. Anne had learned
this year that you should not knock at the door of business offices, but
she still half believed you ought, and it gave her entrance something of
deprecation and a pretty grace.

"I am so troubled," she said, without preliminary. "Madame Beattie has
just been to see me."

Alston, smiling away her agitation, if he might, by a kind assumption
that there was no conceivable matter that could not be at once put
right, gave her a chair and himself went back to his judicia