ylvia looked serious.

"Joan is to study music next winter," she said; "haven't you told Pat,
Joan?"

Joan shook her head. She had almost forgotten it herself.

"And live with her people," Sylvia went on and then, noticing Patricia's
pale little face, she burst forth:

"Pat, take that offer from Chicago that you've been thinking about! It's
a big thing--designing for that firm. It will make you independent,
leave you time to scribble, and give you a change. Pat, do be sensible."

Patricia drew herself up. She felt that she was being disposed of simply
to get her out of the way. She resented it and she was hurt.

"I do not have to decide just now," she said, coldly; "and don't fuss
about me, Syl. Now that you and Joan are provided for I can jog along at
my own free will, and no one will have to pay but me!"

"Pat!" Joan broke in, "you and I will stick together. And it's all right
about Syl. What is this one life for, anyway, if it does not leave us
free? Syl, marry your John--your art won't suffer! Pat, where I go you
go next winter."

But Patricia lighted a cigarette, and while the smoke issued from her
pretty little nose she sighed.

What happened was this: Patricia shopped and sewed for Sylvia and made
her radiantly ready for her trip West. And Joan, feeling the break
final, although she did not admit it, forsook her own pleasures while
she helped Patricia and clung to Sylvia.

"Pat has sublet her rooms," she confided to Sylvia one day, "and is
coming here until our lease is up; so you are foot-loose, my precious
Syl, and God bless you!"

In August Sylvia departed and Joan and Patricia set up housekeeping
together. But at the end of the first week, and the beginning of a new
hot spell, Joan found a note on her pillow one night when she came in,
exhausted:

Had to get cool somewhere. I'm not responsible for losing my
breath. Take care of yourself.

"This seems the last straw!" sobbed Joan, for Raymond had told her that
day at the Brier Bush that important business was taking him out of
town.

"He has to catch his breath," poor Joan cried, miserably, quite as if
her own background was eliminated; "but what of my breath? And to-day is
Saturday, and----" The bleak emptiness of a hot Sunday in the stifling
studio stretched ahead wretchedly, like a parched desert.

That night Joan pulled her shade down. She hated the stars. They looked
complacent and distant. She pushed memories of Doris and Nancy