here wasn't then, Elfie; but I tell you I'm different now. I
don't want to do that sort of thing, and I've been very unlucky. This
has been a terribly hard season for me. I simply haven't been able to
get an engagement."

"Well, you can't get on this way," said Elfie. She paused a moment,
knocking the ashes off her cigarette to cover her hesitation, and then
went on: "Won't Brockton help you out?"

Laura rose abruptly and walked over to the fireplace. With some display
of impatience, she exclaimed:

"What's the use of talking to you, Elfie? You don't understand."

Her legs crossed in masculine style, and puffing the cigarette
deliberately, Elfie looked at her friend quizzingly:

"No?" she said mockingly. "Why don't I understand?"

"Because you can't," cried Laura hotly; "you've never felt as I have."

"How do you know?" demanded the other, with an elevation of her
eyebrows.

Laura made a gesture of impatience.

"Oh, what's the use of explaining?" she cried.

Her visitor looked at her for a moment without making reply. Then, with
the serious, reproachful manner of a mother reproving a wayward child,
she said:

"You know, Laura, I'm not much on giving advice, but you make me sick.
I thought you'd grown wise. A young girl just butting into this
business might possibly make a fool of herself, but you ought to be
onto the game, and make the best of it."

Laura was fast losing her temper. Her eyes flashed, and her hands
worked nervously. Angrily, she exclaimed:

"If you came up here, Elfie, to talk that sort of stuff to me, please
don't. Out West this summer, I met some one, a real man, who did me a
lot of good. You know him. You introduced him to me that night at the
restaurant. Well, we met again in Denver. I learned to love him. He
opened my eyes to a different way of going along. He's a man who--oh,
well, what's the use! You don't know--you don't know."

She tossed her head disdainfully as if the matter was not worthy of
further discussion, and sank down on the bed. Elfie, who had listened
attentively, removed the cigarette from her mouth, and threw it into
the fireplace. Scornfully, she said:

"I don't know, don't I? I don't know, I suppose, then, when I came to
this town from up-State--a little burg named Oswego--and joined a
chorus, that I didn't fall in love with just such a man. I suppose I
don't know that then I was the best-looking girl in New York, and
everybody talked about me? I suppose I don'