der the first wearing of them to anyone else,
"perhaps not this one--rose is more my color than yours. But
another--a blue silk mull that will be lovely with your blue-gray eyes
and black hair. I've worn it only two or three times, and never in
Shadyville."

"No, I couldn't," said Sheila again. "Grandmother wouldn't let me.
I'm sure she wouldn't."

"I don't see why."

"She wouldn't," persisted Sheila regretfully.

"Now look here, Sheila. She wouldn't _know_. You're going to spend
the night with me and dress after you get here. And _she's_ not coming
to the party."

It was the same form of temptation which Ted had offered Sheila in the
woods three years before, but now it was tenfold stronger. Then a mere
good time was at stake; now the gratification of her young vanity, of
her first girlish desire to make herself charming, was to be gained.
And as she had hesitated that day in the woods, for the sake of the
fun, she hesitated now for the sake of this new, clamoring instinct.

"I'd have to tell her," she temporized.

"Then tell her," assented Charlotte impatiently, "but don't tell her
until afterwards."

It was Sheila's own method of that earlier time--a middle path between
conscience and desire, and lightly skirting both.

"I might do that," she remarked thoughtfully. "If I told her--even
afterwards--it wouldn't be quite so wicked. And I _want_ to wear the
frock dreadfully!"

"Just tell her as if it's nothing at all," advised Charlotte cleverly,
"as if we never even thought of it until after you got here that
evening. Then she won't mind it a bit. You'll see she won't!"

"Yes, she will. She won't like my wearing your clothes. She won't
think it's _nice_. And when I tell, I'll tell the whole thing--the way
it really happened. But"--and Sheila's full-lipped, generous mouth
straightened into a thin line of resolution--"I'm going to do it
anyway, Charlotte!"

Three days intervened before the party, and they were not happy days
for Sheila. Her sense of guilt depressed every moment of the time,
especially when she was in Mrs. Caldwell's trusting presence. For
Sheila was not equipped by nature to sin comfortably.

But when the eventful night arrived, and she beheld herself at last in
Charlotte's blue silk mull, with its short sleeves and little round
neck frothy with lace, and its soft skirt falling to her very feet, she
forgot every scruple that had been sacrificed to that enchanting end.