nd ran to her with outstretched arms.

"We were bringing her home, Mrs. Martin," said Laura,
reassuringly. "She's all right; nothing's the matter except that
her dress got torn. We found her playing in our yard."

"I thank you a thousand times, Miss Madison," cried Lolita's
mother, and flutteringly plunged into a description of her
anxiety, her search for Lolita, and concluded with renewed
expressions of gratitude for the child's safe return, an
outpouring of thankfulness and joy wholly incomprehensible to
Hedrick.

"Not at all," said Laura cheerfully. "Come, Hedrick. We'll go home
by the street, I think." She touched his shoulder, and he went
with her in stunned obedience. He was not able to face the
incredible thing that had happened to him: he walked in a trance
of horror.

"Poor little girl!" said Laura gently, with what seemed to her
brother an indefensibly misplaced compassion. "Usually they have
her live in an institution for people afflicted as she is, but
they brought her home for a visit last week, I believe. Of course
you didn't understand, but I think you should have been more
thoughtful. Really, you shouldn't have flirted with her."

Hedrick stopped short.

"`_Flirted_'!" His voice was beginning to show symptoms of
changing, this year; it rose to a falsetto wail, flickered and
went out.

With the departure of Lolita in safety, what had seemed bizarre
and piteous became obscured, and another aspect of the adventure
was presented to Laura. The sufferings of the arrogant are not
wholly depressing to the spectator; and of arrogance Hedrick had
ever been a master. She began to shake; a convulsion took her, and
suddenly she sat upon the curbstone without dignity, and laughed
as he had never seen her.

A horrid distrust of her rose within him: he began to realize in
what plight he stood, what terrors o'erhung.

"Look here," he said miserably, "are you--you aren't--you don't
have to go and--and _talk_ about this, do you?"

"No, Hedrick," she responded, rising and controlling herself
somewhat. "Not so long as you're good."

This was no reassuring answer.

"And politer to Cora," she added.

Seemingly he heard the lash of a slave-whip crack in the air. The
future grew dark.

"I know you'll try"--she said; and the unhappy lad felt that her
assurance was justified; but she had not concluded the
sentence--"darling little boy," she capped it, choking slightly.

"No other little girl ever fell in lov