oven belt of silver, and an
embroidered shoe of silvery gleam peeped from under the white folds.

No, it was not the same 'Tana. And the little gray-haired lady, who
slipped ivory knitting needles in and out of silky flosses, watched her
with troubled concern as she asked:

"And what do you intend to make of your life, Montana?"

"You are out of patience with me, are you not, Miss Seldon?" asked the
girl. "Oh, yes, I know you are; and I don't blame you. Everything I have
ever wanted in my life is in reach of me here--everything a girl should
have; yet it doesn't mean so much to me as I thought it would."

"But if you would go to school, perhaps--"

"Perhaps I would learn to appreciate all this," and the girl glanced
around at the fine fittings of the room, and then back to the point of her
own slipper.

"But I do study hard at home. Doesn't Miss Ackerman give me credit for
learning very quickly? and doesn't that music teacher hop around and wave
his hands over my most excellent, ringing voice? They say I study well."

"Yes, yes; you do, too. But at a school, my dear, where you would have the
association of other girls, you would naturally grow more--more girlish
yourself, if I may say so; for you are old beyond your years in ways that
are peculiar. Your ideas of things are not the ideas of girlhood; and yet
you are very fond of girls."

"And how do you know that?" asked 'Tana.

"Why, my dear, you never go past one on the street that you don't give her
more notice than the very handsomest man you might see. And at the
matinees, if the play does not hold you very close, your eyes are always
directed to the young girls in the audience. Yes, you are fond of them,
yet you will not allow yourself to be intimate with any."

And the pretty, refined-looking lady smiled at her and nodded her head in
a knowing way, as though she had made an important discovery.

The girl on the couch lay silent for a while, then she rose and went over
to the window, gazing across to the park, where people were walking and
riding along the green knolls and levels. Young girls were there, too, and
she watched them a little while, with the old moody expression in her dark
eyes.

"Perhaps it is because I don't like to make friends under false
pretenses," she said, at last. "Your society is a very fine and very
curious thing, and there is a great deal of false pretense about it.
Individually, they would overlook the fact that I was accused