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 possible, you know," he hinted reluctantly, "that your mother may be—that she'll not object to having you—to letting you make your own plans."

"That she'll be glad to have me off her hands? I shouldn't be surprised."

"It would settle all the trouble as far as she's concerned."

"I hadn't thought of that."

"Then you could take your own time about finding something better."

"Well," she agreed, accepting this easy method of postponing her worries. "Now tell me what I'll have to do, meanwhile, in 'The Rajah's Ruby.' " "Miss Morris has left the company," he said. "She played with me. And I'm going to get the stage manager to put you in her place, if I can. You'll have really nothing to do." He described what there was to describe in her part. "We're just to make up the background. It will be all right. Don't worry. You'll see to-morrow night."

She nodded, sunken back in the arm of the rustic bench, looking down at the muddy lip of the lake, where the fallen leaves were black in the water. She was not beautiful in the way that Miss Morris would have been in such a pose; but she was so tenderly fragile, with her small shoulders and the frail lines of her girlish figure—so innocent in the large meditation of her eyes, so appealingly unprotected and so sweet—that Don turned away from the sight of her, trembling with a new sense of the fearful and delicious privilege of being the only barrier between her and adversity.