d with sudden heat. "Is there no charity? Isn't it
understood?"

"Of course it is! In the present instance I can offer it and you
can't, or shouldn't. There are unwritten laws governing human
conduct. Who invented them? Nobody knows. But woe to those who
disregard them! Of course, basically it is all wrong; and sometimes
God must laugh at our ideas of rectitude. But to live at peace with
your neighbour...."

Ruth brushed her eyes with one hand and with the other signed for
the spinster to stop. "No more, please! I am bewildered enough. I
understand nothing of what you say. I only know that it is right to
do what I do."

"Well," said Sister Prudence, "remember, I tried to save you some
future heartaches. God bless you, anyhow!" she added, with a
spontaneity which surprised Sister Angelina into uttering an
individual gasp. "Good-bye!"

For a moment Ruth was tempted to fling herself against the withered
bosom; but long since she had learned repression. She remained
stonily in the middle of the hallway until the spinsters' door shut
them from view ... for ever.

[Illustration: _Distinctive Pictures Corporation. The Ragged Edge._
A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.]

CHAPTER VIII

Slowly Ruth entered her own room. She opened her suitcase--new and
smelling strongly of leather--and took out of it a book, dogeared
and precariously held together, bound in faded blue cloth and
bearing the inscription: The Universal Handbook. Herein was the sum
of human knowledge in essence.

In the beginning it was a dictionary. Words were given with their
original meaning, without their ramifications. If you were a poet
in need of rhymes, you had only to turn to a certain page. Or, if
you were about to embark upon a nautical career, here was all the
information required. It also told you how to write on all
occasions, how to take out a patent, how to doctor a horse, and who
Achates was. You could, if you were ambitious to round out your
education, memorize certain popular foreign phrases.

But beyond "amicable agreement in which mutual concessions are
made," the word "compromise" was as blank as the Canton wall at
night. There were words, then, that ran on indefinitely, with
reversals? Here they meant one thing; there, the exact opposite. To
be sure, Ruth had dimly been aware of this; but now for the first
time she was made painfully conscious of it. Mutual concessions!--and
then to turn it around so that it suggested that an act of