ening, then slipped to her
knees beside her with a disregard for her new gown which was unusual,
and put a caressing hand on her forehead, a demonstration which was more
unusual still.

"Your head does feel hot," she said, "but to stay away from a dance at
your age, just for a headache----"

"I went to one last night."

"A high school dance!"

"There won't be any more of them. You needn't grudge it to me." Judith
buried her face in the cushions, and lay very still.

"But the Colonel really arranged this for you. Dancing bores him. He
said you ought to be amused."

"He didn't say so to me."

"Are you laughing? I thought you were crying a minute ago." Judith gave
no further signs of either laughing or crying. "Judith, what does he say
to you? When you went with him to look at that night-blooming flower
with the queer name, last week, and were gone so long, what did he talk
to you about? You heard me. Please answer."

"He's a stupid old thing."

"What did he talk about?"

"I don't remember."

"Judith," Judith's mother stood plucking ineffectively at her long
gloves, and looking at the motionless white figure, very slender and
childish against the chintz of the cushions, soft, tumbled hair, and
hidden face, with a growing trouble in her eyes, "I ought to talk to
you--I ought to tell you--you're old enough now--old enough----"

Judith turned with a soft, nestling movement, and opened her eyes again,
deep, watchful eyes that asked endless questions, and made it impossible
to answer them, eyes that knew no language but their own, the secret and
alien language of youth. Her mother sighed.

"You're the strangest child. Sometimes you seem a hundred years old, and
sometimes--you don't feel too badly to stay alone? Mollie would have
stayed in with you, or Norah."

"No. I would have gone, if I'd known you cared so much, but it won't do
any good to make yourself late, Mamma. Father's calling," said Judith
gravely. Still grave and unrelaxed, she returned her mother's rare
good-night kiss, and watched her sweep out of the room, turning the
rose-shaded night lamp low as she passed.

There was a hurry of preparation downstairs, her mother's low, fretful
voice and her father's high and strained one joined in a heated
argument, and they started still deep in it, for her father did not call
a good-night to Judith. The street door shut, and she was alone in the
house. Carriage wheels creaked out of the yard and there was