trength to go on.

"May I ask if this was before you were married?" queried the poet.

"No."

"After you were married?"

"Yes. My husband was with me."

Penelope's voice sank almost to a whisper, and the unconscious twining
together of her fingers bore witness to her increasing distress.
Everyone in the room felt the poignancy of the moment. If the operation
of soul cleansing involved such stress as this, then even these heedless
members of the Confessional Club drew back disapprovingly.

"Hold on, Pen!" interposed Roberta Vallis good-naturedly, wishing to
relieve this embarrassment. "You're getting all fussed up. I guess you'd
better cut out this story. I don't believe it's much good anyway. If you
think there are any sentimental variations on a Fall River steamboat
theme that we are not fully conversant with, why you've got another
guess coming."

Penelope wavered and again her dark eyes yearned towards Christopher. It
was cruelly hard to go on with her story, yet it was almost impossible
now not to tell it.

"I _want_ to make this confession," she insisted, strong in her purpose,
yet breaking under womanly weakness. "I must cleanse my soul of--of
evil--mustn't I?" her anguished eyes begged comfort of Seraphine.

"You are right, dear child," the medium answered gently, "but wait a
little. Sit over here by me. We have plenty of time. She took her
friend's icy hand in hers and drew her protectingly to a place beside
her on the sofa.

"To cheer you up, Pen," laughed Bobby, "and create a general diversion,
I'll tell a story myself--you'll see the kind of confession stuff we
generally put over in our little group of unconventional thinkers.
Attention, folks! Harken to the Tale of Dora the Dressmaker! Which
proves that the way of the transgressor, as observed on Manhattan
Island, is not always so darned hard."

Then she told her story in the most approved Greenwich Village style,
with slangy and cynical comments, all of which were received with
chortles of satisfaction by the men and with no very severe disapproval
by the ladies--except Seraphine.

"Dora was a pretty, frail looking girl--but really as strong as a
horse," began Bobby gleefully, "one of those tall blondes who can pass
off for aristocrats without being the real thing. She came from a small
Southern town and had married a man who was no good. He drank and chased
after women; and, in one of his drunken fits, he was run over on a dark
night at the