ad thrown her name recklessly to the winds and who,
to-morrow, would be a byword. . . .

These thoughts ached in her with her bruised flesh.

Meanwhile Barry Elder had been making quick trips about the room and now
he threw down an armful of garments beside her and knelt at her feet,
tugging at her sopping shoes.

"Let me get these off--there, that's better. Now the other one. . . .
Lordy, child, those footies. . . . Now you'd better get into these dry
things as quick as you can. Not a perfect fit, but the best I can do.
I'll take a turn in the woods and be back in ten minutes. So you hurry
up."

He closed the door upon the words that Maria Angelina was beginning to
frame and left her looking helplessly at a pair of corduroy
knickerbockers, a blue flannel shirt, a strange undergarment, plaid golf
stockings and a pair of fringed moccasins.

They were in an untouched heap when her host returned, letting in a cold
rush of the night with him.

"What's this?" he flung out in mock severity. "See here, young lady, you
must get into those clothes whether they happen to be the style or not!
Little girls who get wet can't go to sleep in their clothes. Now I'll
give you just ten minutes more and then if you are not a good girl----"

To her own dismay and to his Maria Angelina burst into tears.

"Oh, come now," said Barry helplessly. "You poor little dud----"

The sudden gentleness of his voice undid the last of the girl's control.
She sobbed harder and harder as he sat down beside her and began to pat
her shaking shoulders.

"You shan't do anything you don't want to," he comforted. "You're tired
out, I know. But you'd be so much more comfy in these dry togs----"

"Oh, please, Signor, not those things. Do not make me. I will get
dry----"

"You don't have to if you don't want to," he told her gently, looking
down in a puzzled way at her distress. Her face was buried in a crook of
her arm; her black hair streamed tempestuously over her heaving
shoulders. "Come closer to the fire, then, and dry out."

He threw more wood upon the flames and piled on brush that shed a swift,
crackling heat.

"Give that a chance at those wet clothes of yours," he advised.
"Meanwhile we'd better wring this out," and with businesslike despatch
he began gathering that dripping black hair into the folds of a Turkish
towel. Very strenuously he wrung it.

"That's what I do for my kid sister when she's been in swimming," he
mentioned. "She's