uses just then
for Jacqueline's vitality.

She did not understand, however, and sat there shivering uncontrollably,
facing the grim fact of failure. Worse than failure--fear.

From where she sat, she could see her reflection in the mirror, and she
looked at herself with frowning distaste. Jacqueline's beauty was oddly
under eclipse just then. "I'm getting ugly--and whoever heard of an ugly
prima donna?" she groaned in her innocence.

Then, suddenly, she saw what had been in her landlady's mind when,
happening to pass her in the hall that morning, the woman had remarked
casually, "You said you was _Miss_ Leigh, didn't you? or was it _Mrs._
Leigh?"

Jacqueline had answered as casually; but now she understood the
question. With a sharp intake of breath, she realized that the time had
come for her to seek another home in this great, homeless wilderness of
houses, that heeded her unhappy presence "as the sea's self should heed
a pebble cast."

She unlocked a drawer, and proceeded to investigate her finances rather
anxiously. She had come away with nothing but the money that happened to
be in her purse, and her little string of pearls, her one jewel, upon
which a pawnbroker, realizing her utter ignorance of values, had made
her an infinitesimal advance. The lessons she was taking were expensive,
and she knew that she must save for a time of need not far in the
future. It was tantalizing to know that the generous allowance from her
mother was accumulating untouched in a Frankfort bank, because she did
not dare to draw upon it for fear of being traced.

"Though if mother really wanted to find me, she could have done it
without that!" thought the girl, and suddenly buried her head in a
pillow, sobbing for her mother.

She did not allow herself to cry long. "It is not good for me," she told
herself soberly; and presently achieved a quivering smile at the thought
of her mother's face when at last she should send for her and show what
she had to show.

"There won't be any need of forgiveness then," she whispered. "Not for
either of us!"

Of Philip she did not allow herself to think at all. The girl was
gaining a strength of will in those days that exerted itself even over
her thoughts, and her lips had become as firm as Mrs. Kildare's....
Philip was done with her, of course, since he did not come to her--just
as she was done forever with Percival Channing.

In her first revulsion of feeling on learning that her lover h