g the night of the party
because her dress didn't set right. That was why she wouldn't dance
any...."

Charity stood absently gazing down at the lacy garment on Ally's knee.
Abruptly she stooped and snatched it up.

"Well, I guess she won't dance in this either," she said with sudden
violence; and grasping the blouse in her strong young hands she tore it
in two and flung the tattered bits to the floor.

"Oh, Charity----" Ally cried, springing up. For a long interval the two
girls faced each other across the ruined garment. Ally burst into tears.

"Oh, what'll I say to her? What'll I do? It was real lace!" she wailed
between her piping sobs.

Charity glared at her unrelentingly. "You'd oughtn't to have brought it
here," she said, breathing quickly. "I hate other people's clothes--it's
just as if they was there themselves." The two stared at each other
again over this avowal, till Charity brought out, in a gasp of anguish:
"Oh, go--go--go--or I'll hate you too...."

When Ally left her, she fell sobbing across her bed.

The long storm was followed by a north-west gale, and when it was over,
the hills took on their first umber tints, the sky grew more densely
blue, and the big white clouds lay against the hills like snow-banks.
The first crisp maple-leaves began to spin across Miss Hatchard's lawn,
and the Virginia creeper on the Memorial splashed the white porch with
scarlet. It was a golden triumphant September. Day by day the flame of
the Virginia creeper spread to the hillsides in wider waves of carmine
and crimson, the larches glowed like the thin yellow halo about a fire,
the maples blazed and smouldered, and the black hemlocks turned to
indigo against the incandescence of the forest.

The nights were cold, with a dry glitter of stars so high up that they
seemed smaller and more vivid. Sometimes, as Charity lay sleepless on
her bed through the long hours, she felt as though she were bound to
those wheeling fires and swinging with them around the great black
vault. At night she planned many things... it was then she wrote to
Harney. But the letters were never put on paper, for she did not know
how to express what she wanted to tell him. So she waited. Since her
talk with Ally she had felt sure that Harney was engaged to Annabel
Balch, and that the process of "settling things" would involve the
breaking of this tie. Her first rage of jealousy over, she felt no fear
on this score. She was still sure that Harney