spicuous on the table, and Judith carried them into the next room,
out of sight. Just then the telephone rang.

Judith started, dropped the candy, ran into the hall, and stood looking
down at the small instrument resentfully, as if it were personally to
blame because she could not see who was calling her without answering
and committing herself. Once she picked it up doubtfully, but finally
put it down, still ringing intermittently, and hurried into the kitchen.
She put a second bottle of ginger ale on the ice, brought a hammered
brass tray and two glasses from the butler's pantry, then substituted a
less ostentatious bamboo tray, hesitated, and then put them all away
again.

Now she went to her own room, turned on an unbecoming but searchingly
clear toplight, and frowned at herself in the mirror, jerked out her
hairpins, shook out her soft hair, and brushed and pulled at it with
unsteady hands. In spite of them, the pale gold braids, rearranged,
looked almost as well as before, if no better, and the heightened colour
in her cheeks was charming. From a corner of her glove-case she produced
the two cosmetics then in favour with the younger set in Green River,
burnt matches, and a bit of scarlet ribbon, which made an excellent
substitute for rouge if you moistened it. The ribbon was an unhealthy
red, and looked peculiarly so to-night. Judith dropped it impulsively
into her wastebasket, but experimented with the matches.

She made both her delicately shaded eyebrows an even splotchy black,
admired the result, then suddenly rubbed it off, turned away from the
mirror without a backward glance, and ran down into the hall. The clock
was just striking ten.

Judith paused for one breathless minute at the library door, pressing
both hands against her heart, then she went into the firelit room and
made the last and most important of her preparations. She switched on
the lights, toplights and sidelights and reading-lamp, all of them, went
to the middle one of the three front windows, crushed the curtains back,
and raised both shades high to the top, so that the light in the room
looked out at the street from this window from sill to ceiling. Judith
slipped quickly out of range of the window, dropped down on one of the
cushions by the fire, and waited.

She had fluttered through her little hurry of preparation excitedly, but
now there was evidence of deeper excitement about the tense quiet of
her, huddled on her cushion, small