d a better actress than the youngest, prettiest,
and cleverest among them. While these pampered daughters of wealth went
awkwardly through their parts, and chatted in subdued tones among
themselves, Julia rattled her speeches off easily, laughed and talked
with all the young men in turn, posed and pirouetted as one born to the
footlights. If Julia fancied that any girl was betraying a preference
for any particular man, against that man she directed the full battery
of her charms. Carter Hazzard came to every rehearsal, and was quite
openly her slave. He did not offer to walk home with her again, but
Julia knew that he was conscious of her presence whenever she was near
him, and spun a mad little dream about a future in which she queened it
over all these girls as his wife.

It was all delightful and exciting. Life had never been dark to Julia;
now she found the days all too short for her various occupations and
pleasures. Mark was assuming more and more the attitude of a lover, and
Julia was too much of a coquette to discourage him utterly. She really
liked him, and loved the stolen hours in Pomeroy and Parke's big piano
house, when Mark, flinging his hair out of his eyes, played like an
angel, and Julia nibbled caramels and sat curled up on the davenport,
watching him. And through the casual attentions of other men, the
occasional flattering half-hours with Carter Hazzard, the evenings of
gossip at Mrs. Tarbury's, and round the long table at Montiverte's,
Julia liked to sometimes think of Mark; his admiration was a little
warm, reassuring background for all the other thoughts of the day.

At the end of the fourth or fifth rehearsal Julia noticed that pretty
Barbara Toland was trying to manage a moment's speech with her alone.
She amused herself with an attempt to avoid Miss Toland just from pure
mischief, but eventually the two came face to face, in a garishly
lighted bit of passage, Barbara, for all her advantage in years and in
position, seeming the younger of the two.

"Oh, Miss Page," said Barbara nervously, "I wanted to--but were you
going somewhere?"

"Don't matter if I was!" said Julia, airily gracious, but watching
shrewdly.

"Well, I--I hope you won't think this is funny, but, well, I'll tell
you," stammered Barbara, very red. "I know you don't know us all very
well, you know--it's different with us--we've all been brought up
together--but I didn't know whether you knew--perhaps you did--that
Carter Hazz