d tender
nestling.

As she sat by her window in the darkness, Miss Pritchard shook her head
sadly. She said to herself this couldn't go on--this state of things
couldn't continue. Despite Elsie's elation over the fact that she was
booked for another week at the theatre, she looked more mournful and
wistful and worn than ever. Some strain was wearing the child out. It
wasn't the work, nor yet the excitement, for she lived on them, and not
altogether unhealthily. There was no other possible explanation: it
was nothing less than the strain of combating her own disapproval,
tacit or expressed. Elsie was too warm-hearted to enjoy her legitimate
happiness alone, too sensitive not to suffer from want of sympathy.

The change in the girl had begun to be apparent directly after
Christmas. Elsie hadn't been herself since that time, which proved
beyond peradventure that Miss Pritchard's suspicion was correct. The
joyous, sparkling little creature whom she had found in her room on the
day after Christmas, bubbling over with excitement, eager to share her
good news, had become thin and wan. Her charmingly brilliant little
face was not only peaked, but in repose was generally wistful or
plaintive. Many a time one could have looked on it without suspecting
the existence of dimples. Only in the evening did she resemble her
real self. From dinner until the moment she lay in her bed, she was
the Elsie Marley she had been (with negligible interruptions) since the
night when she had walked straight into Miss Pritchard's heart before
she had known who she was. At other times she was a pale shadow, the
little ghost of the girl she had been or should be.

Miss Pritchard sighed deeply. If it were for want of
sympathy--approving sympathy--the child drooped and pined, must she not
have it, willy-nilly? But again she sighed, and yet more deeply.
Whatever her effort, was such a thing possible?

As for Elsie herself, the lullaby didn't prove a lullaby at all, and,
as usual these days, the girl cried herself to sleep. Every night, of
late, the reaction came. Every morning she awoke with a sense of a
heavy burden weighing her down. All day her heart ached, though dully
and vaguely for the most part; for if the pain threatened to become
acute, she could still drug it with anticipation of the excitement of
the evening.

In the weeks that had passed, Elsie hadn't once faced her conscience.
She had never squarely confronted the si