ra, "because I didn't dare confide
in you. You had no sympathy with me. But you know I never told you
untruths in all my life."

"It's no moth!" reiterated Mrs. Comstock.

"It is!" cried Elnora. "It's from a case in the ground. Its wings take
two or three hours to expand and harden."

"If I had known it was a moth----" Mrs. Comstock wavered.

"You did know! I told you! I begged you to stop! It meant just three
hundred dollars to me."

"Bah! Three hundred fiddlesticks!"

"They are what have paid for books, tuition, and clothes for the past
four years. They are what I could have started on to college. You've
ruined the very one I needed. You never made any pretence of loving me.
At last I'll be equally frank with you. I hate you! You are a selfish,
wicked woman! I hate you!"

Elnora turned, went through the kitchen and from the back door. She
followed the garden path to the gate and walked toward the swamp a
short distance when reaction overtook her. She dropped on the ground and
leaned against a big log. When a little child, desperate as now, she had
tried to die by holding her breath. She had thought in that way to make
her mother sorry, but she had learned that life was a thing thrust upon
her and she could not leave it at her wish.

She was so stunned over the loss of that moth, which she had childishly
named the Yellow Emperor, that she scarcely remembered the blow. She
had thought no luck in all the world would be so rare as to complete
her collection; now she had been forced to see a splendid Imperialis
destroyed before her. There was a possibility that she could find
another, but she was facing the certainty that the one she might have
had and with which she undoubtedly could have attracted others, was
spoiled by her mother. How long she sat there Elnora did not know or
care. She simply suffered in dumb, abject misery, an occasional dry sob
shaking her. Aunt Margaret was right. Elnora felt that morning that
her mother never would be any different. The girl had reached the place
where she realized that she could endure it no longer.

As Elnora left the room, Mrs. Comstock took one step after her.

"You little huzzy!" she gasped.

But Elnora was gone. Her mother stood staring.

"She never did lie to me," she muttered. "I guess it was a moth. And
the only one she needed to get three hundred dollars, she said. I wish I
hadn't been so fast! I never saw anything like it. I thought it was some
deadly, stin