it true? . . . Those clear, sharp-cut features, those bright, keen
eyes with the gay smile! . . . Was it true---or was she dreaming?

Instinctively she dropped her hand and let her hair like a black curtain
shield her face. The blood seemed to stand still in her veins waiting
that dreadful instant of recognition.

Confusedly, with some frantic thought of flight, "I must go--Oh, I must
go----"

She sat up, still hiding, like Godiva, in her hair.

"You lie down and rest," said the authoritative voice. "If there's any
going to be done I'll do it. Is there some other Babe in the Woods to be
found?"

"Oh, no--no, but I must go----"

"You get a good rest. You can tell me all about it and who you are when
you're dry and warm."

She yielded to the compulsion in his voice and to her own weakness, and
lay very still and inert, her cheek upon her outflung arm, her eyes
watching the red dance of flames through the black strands of her hair.
It was the final irony, she felt, of that dreadful night. To meet Barry
Elder again--like this--after all her dreams----

It was too terrible to be true.

And he did not know her. He had come to that place of his, in the
Adirondacks, of which he had spoken, and had never given her a thought.
He had never come to see her. . . .

A great wave of mortification surged over Maria Angelina, bearing a
medley of images, of thoughts, of old hopes--like the wash from some
sinking ship. What a fool of hope she had been! How vain and silly and
credulous! . . . She had dreamed of this man, sung to the thought of
him--quickened to absurd expectancy at every stir of the wheels. . . .
And then she had pictured him at the seashore, beneath the spell of that
gold-haired siren--and here he was, quite near and free--utterly
unremembering!

She had suffered many pangs of mortification this night but now her
poor, shamed spirit bled afresh.

But perhaps he had just come. And certainly he would remember to come
and see his friends, the Blairs, and possibly he would remember that
foreign cousin of theirs that he had danced with--just remember her with
pleasant friendliness. She would give herself so much of balm.

And who indeed was she for Barry Elder to remember? Just a very young,
very silly goose of a girl, a little foreigner . . . some one to
nickname and pet carelessly . . . a girl who had been good enough for
Johnny Byrd to make love to but not good enough for him to marry. . . .

A girl who h