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 close to her cheek. Di slept, as always, curled up and clutching something and she slept very soundly. She looked even lovelier asleep than awake, for she never lost her clear rosiness. Her cheeks were like pink petals and her lips, relaxed, so red and soft; and her long, dark lashes lay in even ovals against her cheek.

The handful of silk, which clothed Di at evening, draped the back of a chair; Di's dress, green and very décolleté, a step-in, a pair of sheer stockings; underneath, a pair of satin slippers. These were familiar items to Ellen but not so the new leopard coat, with red fox collar, which depended from a hanger below the light-bracket beyond the bed. Whose coat was it? Ellen wondered. And had it been lent to Di or bestowed? Ellen gazed at Di, so innocently sleeping, and reconstructed a probable scene of the coat's acquirement:

Di, shivering her soft, white shoulders: "Weeping willows, who'd any time think it could turn this cold?" Next the procurement of the coat, made the more a deed of devotion because of the hour of the night. Its bestowal and Di's protest: "Why, you got this for me? Why, I couldn't dream of wearing it! Why, it's the most mysterious fur I ever saw. So soft and warm and wonderful! But you know I can't dream of keeping it on. You know perfectly well I can perfectly well wind a lap robe around me and be perfectly comfortable. . . ."

Well, here was the coat; here was Di. At what hour had she returned? At what hour had it turned cold? Ellen arose and closed the window, purposely testing with her pink toes the tiny drift of snow on the rug below the sill.

A ship's signal blast beat upon the wind, summoning