ey pay the school. And I shall get other chances, Mr. Coates
says, and--oh, Cousin Julia, I don't dare tell you--you don't"--there
was a catch in her voice--"you don't sympathize. You were so
different! And now you're just like--well, almost as bad as the
others."

Miss Pritchard drew the little rose-colored figure close.

"Yes, I do sympathize, dear little cousin," she said, "only----"

She could not go on. And they went the rest of the way in silence. It
was the first time that anything, recognized by both of them, had come
between them. As the excitement that had buoyed her up for the evening
began to die away, Elsie's heart was like a stone. Later it would
ache. She wondered rather drearily how it would be after she was in
bed. Even now she recognized something that would have been absurd if
it weren't so terribly serious. To think of her demanding sympathy
from Cousin Julia--of appearing almost aggrieved not to receive it--she
who should be cowering beneath her scorn! How was it that she should
so forget, should feel and act as if everything were true--and square?

It was being on the stage, she supposed, a real actress at last. At
last! Why, it was almost _at first_. Who had ever been so fortunate
as she! To be on the stage in New York well within a year of her first
entering the city! And only to think that this might have been the
last night of her engagement! How terrible that seemed now! How would
she ever live without the evening to look forward to? How blissful to
have another week before her--six more appearances before that vast,
applauding throng! How happily would she go to sleep tonight to the
music of the lullaby of the thought: "Another week at the Merry Nickel,
another week at the Merry Nickel! Bliss! Bliss! Bliss!"

And yet it wasn't at all a blissful face which Miss Pritchard bore in
memory to her own room that night after she had kissed Elsie, put out
the light, and opened the windows. Since the girl had been at the
theatre, Miss Pritchard had dropped into the habit of going in to her
the last thing every night and tucking her in as if she had been a
child. For somehow she had seemed, since striking out into
professional life, only the more a child, more innocent, more
appealingly youthful, more than ever to be sheltered and guarded. She
had tried her wings, it is true; she believed she had proved them (and
perchance she had!); but more than ever was she a precious an