ess helped him to the
better understanding of the technical difficulties of a Very
complicated subject. And more especially he herewith acknowledges his
unmeasured obligation and gratitude to Her Who Helped the Most of All.

F. N.

NEW YORK
June 4, 1901.

I

At eight o'clock in the inner vestibule of the Auditorium Theatre by
the window of the box office, Laura Dearborn, her younger sister Page,
and their aunt--Aunt Wess'--were still waiting for the rest of the
theatre-party to appear. A great, slow-moving press of men and women in
evening dress filled the vestibule from one wall to another. A confused
murmur of talk and the shuffling of many feet arose on all sides, while
from time to time, when the outside and inside doors of the entrance
chanced to be open simultaneously, a sudden draught of air gushed in,
damp, glacial, and edged with the penetrating keenness of a Chicago
evening at the end of February.

The Italian Grand Opera Company gave one of the most popular pieces of
its repertoire on that particular night, and the Cresslers had invited
the two sisters and their aunt to share their box with them. It had
been arranged that the party should assemble in the Auditorium
vestibule at a quarter of eight; but by now the quarter was gone and
the Cresslers still failed to arrive.

"I don't see," murmured Laura anxiously for the last time, "what can be
keeping them. Are you sure Page that Mrs. Cressler meant here--inside?"

She was a tall young girl of about twenty-two or three, holding herself
erect and with fine dignity. Even beneath the opera cloak it was easy
to infer that her neck and shoulders were beautiful. Her almost extreme
slenderness was, however, her characteristic; the curves of her figure,
the contour of her shoulders, the swell of hip and breast were all low;
from head to foot one could discover no pronounced salience. Yet there
was no trace, no suggestion of angularity. She was slender as a willow
shoot is slender--and equally graceful, equally erect.

Next to this charming tenuity, perhaps her paleness was her most
noticeable trait. But it was not a paleness of lack of colour. Laura
Dearborn's pallour was in itself a colour. It was a tint rather than a
shade, like ivory; a warm white, blending into an exquisite, delicate
brownness towards the throat. Set in the middle of this paleness of
brow and cheek, her deep brown eyes glowed lambent and intense. They
were not large, but in s