o be her father." Looking at it, Iris wondered how her mother
could have cared for a man like that--weak and frankly sensuous. Yet
there was an air of gay carelessness about the picture, a sort of
friendly _camaraderie_, distantly related to those genial ways which
stamp a higher grade of man as "a good fellow."

Over the other photograph, she lingered long. The first Iris Temple was
pictured in the panoply of a stage queen. The crown of paste brilliants
upon her head, the tawdry gown, elaborately trimmed with tinsel, and the
gilded sceptre were all discredited by the face. Beneath its mask of
artificiality was a woman, a very human woman, impulsive, eager, and
loving, whose trustful eyes looked straight at Iris with intimate
comprehension. Plainly, the life of the stage was not to her taste; she
hungered, as every normal woman hungers, for the quiet hearthstone and
the simple joys of home.

In all her dreams of her mother, Iris had never imagined her like this,
and yet she was not disappointed. At times, looking back upon her
miserable childhood, she had bitterly blamed her for it, but now, for
the first time, she understood. "Poor little mother," said Iris, "you
did the very best you could."

If things had been different, she and her mother could have had a little
home of their own. Rebellion was hot in the girl's heart, when she
suddenly remembered something Fraeulein Fredrika had said long ago.
"Wherever one may be, that is the best place. The dear God knows."

She folded up the papers and put them back in the box, with the
photographs and the wedding ring. For the moment, she wondered what her
real name might be, for Iris Temple was only a stage name. Then she
dismissed the matter as of no importance, for she certainly would not
care to bear the name of the man who had deserted her mother in her hour
of need.

She wondered why Aunt Peace had never given her the papers before, but,
after all, what good could it have done? What had she gained by it, even
now? In a flash of insight, she saw that she had been given a feeling of
definite relationship with the woman in the tawdry stage trappings, who
had loved much and suffered more--that though an old grave divided them,
she was not quite motherless, not quite alone. For the first time since
Aunt Peace was stricken with the fever, balm came into the girl's sore
heart.

Below, Lynn played unceasingly. "Four hours a day," thought Iris. "One
sixth of life--and for w