ht. After a while his mother
put her head in the door and asked if I was asleep, and then came in
and kissed me. About two o'clock he came back, climbed in the window,
and I vamoosed. It seemed all right, and I couldn't have refused him,
and yet I felt queer."

"I should think you were innocent enough. It seems to me the other boy
had all the responsibility of it," Elsie observed.

"That's just what I thought. And I'm dead sure it would only have
seemed fun last winter. And I'd have to do it again if he asked me.
But--you know that little Howe kid that's trying to stretch himself out
to get big enough to be a boy scout?"

"Yes, indeed, Charles Augustus Howe."

"Well, he's always asking me things, and taking my answers so solemnly,
and yesterday he wanted to know if I thought it was wrong to tell a lie
to yourself in the dark. I tried to reason out the thing with him
and--great snakes, but it made me feel queer all over! Talking to that
kid about truth and honor and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, I
sort of hypnotized myself; but afterward it made me feel cheap.
And--and there you are!"

"But you didn't get anything out of it for yourself, Dick," said Elsie.

"Nothing but feeling cheap before that kid."

"Then I don't believe it's wrong for you--only for the other boy," she
averred.

They turned. Nothing more was said until they reached the parsonage.

"Much obliged, Miss Moss," the boy said quietly. "And that's good to
remember--not getting anything out of it for yourself. Good night."

She heard him whistling cheerily as he went on his way. But her own
heart was heavy. Not to get anything out of it for oneself! Oh, what
would Dick Clinton think, what would every one think, to know that she
wasn't Elsie Moss at all! He had been sadly troubled because he had
played the part of another one night--a silent part that required no
spoken words. What would he think to learn that she was an interloper
at the parsonage? It was in part, it is true, for the sake of another.
But it was also in part--in large part, now--for her own sake.

CHAPTER XXVIII

One evening in the early spring, during the interval between the films
in a motion-picture theatre on lower Broadway, a thrill of excitement
went through the audience, which was of the sort that desires to live
on thrills.

Perhaps to-night, however, there was reasonable excuse for genuine
anticipation. For the song-dance specialty that