een
"prostrated," unable to support her old mother. She had not, naturally,
yet decided how she would invest her fortune; as for going on the stage,
that had been suggested, but she had made no plans. "Scores of women
sympathizers" had escorted her to a waiting automobile....

Janet, impelled by the fascination akin to disgust, read thus far, and
flinging the newspaper on the floor, began to tidy herself for supper.
But presently, when she heard Lise sigh, she could contain herself no
longer.

"I don't see how you can read such stuff as that," she exclaimed.
"It's--it's horrible."

"Horrible?" Lise repeated.

Janet swung round from the washbasin, her hands dripping.

"Instead of getting seventy five thousand dollars she ought to be tarred
and feathered. She's nothing but a blackmailer."

Lise, aroused from her visions, demanded vehemently "Ain't he a
millionaire?"

"What difference does that make?" Janet retorted. "And you can't tell me
she didn't know what she was up to all along--with that face."

"I'd have sued him, all right," declared Lise, defiantly.

"Then you'd be a blackmailer, too. I'd sooner scrub floors, I'd sooner
starve than do such a thing--take money for my affections. In the first
place, I'd have more pride, and in the second place, if I really loved a
man, seventy five thousand or seventy five million dollars wouldn't help
me any. Where do you get such ideas? Decent people don't have them."

Janet turned to the basin again and began rubbing her face
vigorously--ceasing for an instance to make sure of the identity of a
sound reaching her ears despite the splashing of water. Lise was sobbing.
Janet dried her face and hands, arranged her hair, and sat down on the
windowsill; the scorn and anger, which had been so intense as completely
to possess her, melting into a pity and contempt not unmixed with
bewilderment. Ordinarily Lise was hard, impervious to such reproaches,
holding her own in the passionate quarrels that occasionally took place
between them yet there were times, such as this, when her resistance
broke down unexpectedly, and she lost all self control. She rocked to and
fro in the chair, her shoulders bowed, her face hidden in her hands.
Janet reached out and touched her.

"Don't be silly," she began, rather sharply, "just because I said it was
a disgrace to have such ideas. Well, it is."

"I'm not silly," said Lise. "I'm sick of that job at the Bagatelle"
--sob--"there's nothing