you again?" But the question was obviously not
one of sympathy, for Ted's voice was sharp now. At the mention of
Lisbeth he had recalled his grievance.

"No," repeated Sheila. "I meant I ought to remind you about--_me_."

And as Ted stared at her with no gleam of comprehension in his eyes,
she was forced to become explicit: "I mean--the way I let Lisbeth
believe what wasn't so."

Ted looked at her speculatively for a moment, wondering if he had
better rebuke her again for her folly, so that she should not commit it
a second time. She would be capable of doing the whole thing over,
under the impression that she was benefiting Lisbeth. She was so queer!

"You were very silly," he said finally.

"I was wicked!" she exclaimed in a fervor of repentance.

Ted continued to regard her with that speculative gaze. "Well, you
_are_ a queer one!" he ejaculated slowly.

Sheila flushed. She had abased herself in penitence, and he only
thought her queer. He _always_ thought her queer! She turned on him
with a flare of temper that burned up her humility so far as he was
concerned:

"How _dare_ you call me queer? How _dare_ you call me silly? I hate
you, Theodore Kent! I never want to see you again as long as I live!
You're--_you're an abomination in the eyes of the Lord_!"

And with this scriptural anathema, plagiarized from the Presbyterian
minister's latest sermon, she flung away from him in a fit of wrath
that did much to restore her normal self-respect.

However, though she felt no further uneasiness in the presence of
Ted--whom she forgave the next day with the readiness that is the
virtue of a quick temper--she continued her vigil over herself until
time softened her impression of her iniquity. And even then, when her
self-criticism had relaxed, her consciousness of her individual
temperament remained. She had discovered herself, and this self, like
her shadow which she had discovered with wild excitement in her
babyhood, would be her life companion. After she ceased to fear it, as
a possible moral monster, she began to take a profound interest in it
and its behavior.

"What will you be doing next?" she would inquire of it quaintly, "what
_will_ you be doing next, Other-Sheila?"

She did in fact credit this newly realized self of hers with a very
distinct and separate personality. All her caprices, her unexpected
and unexplainable impulses, her mystic imaginings, she laid at its
door, and in her fa