an expensive process
and not to be thought of.

"How did you pay for your piano lessons?" he asked.

"I paid twenty-five cents an hour. My mother left a little money for
me when I was a baby. I spent it all that way."

"Every bit of it?"

"Yes. I had $500. It lasted me seven years--from the time I was ten to
now."

"_Are_ you seventeen? You don't look it."

"I know I don't. My teachers tell me that my mind is very quick but my
body is slow. It annoys me to be mistaken for a child of fifteen. And
I have to dress that way, too, because my dresses still fit me and
clothes are very expensive."

"Are they?"

Dulcie became confidential and loquacious:

"Oh, very. You don't know about girls' clothes, I suppose. But they
cost a very great deal. So I've had to wear out dresses I've had ever
since I was fourteen and fifteen. And so I can't put up my hair
because it would make my dresses look ridiculous; and that renders the
situation all the worse--to be obliged to go about with bobbed hair,
you see? There doesn't seem to be any way out of it," she ended, with
a despairing little laugh, "and I was seventeen last February!"

"Cheer up! You'll grow old fast enough. And now you're going to have a
jolly little salary as my model, and you ought to be able to buy
suitable clothes. Oughtn't you?"

She did not answer, and he repeated the question. And drew from her,
reluctantly, that her father, so far, had absorbed what money she had
earned by posing.

A dull red gathered under the young man's cheek-bones, but he said
carelessly:

"That won't do. I'll talk it over with your father. I'm very sure
he'll agree with me that you should bank your salary and draw out what
you need for your personal expenses."

Dulcie sat silent over her fruit and bon-bons. Reaction from the keen
emotions of the day had, perhaps, begun to have their effect.

They rose and reseated themselves on the sofa, where she sat in the
corner among gorgeous Chinese cushions, her reconstructed dress now
limp and shabby, the limp madonna lily hanging from her breast.

It had been for her the happiest day of her life. It had dawned the
loneliest, but under the magic of this man's kindness the day was
ending like a day in Paradise.

To Dulcie, however, happiness was less dependent upon receiving than
upon giving; and like all things feminine, mature and immature, she
desired to serve where her heart was enlisted--began to experience the
restless desire