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 smoking more than was good for her—and watched it until it was a heap of fine ash.

But for some curious reason she did not say her prayers that night. She had always done it, even at boarding school, kneeling on the bare cold floor.

"Sh! Kay's at her ablutions!" the girls would say.

Perhaps she felt that night that having taken her life into her own hands, there was not much use appealing to God. Perhaps it was because she had prayed for certain things recently, and they had not been granted. There was no particular revolt in her, if there was no particular hope. And another curious thing; she slept better that night than for months. It rather puzzled her the next morning. It did not occur to her that sleep as well as fainting may be an escape from the unbearable.

The engagement was announced as soon as Herbert had seen her father. She was entirely acquiescent. But she had a new Herbert to deal with after that, a debonair, self-assured Herbert, filled with plans. Henry was giving him a partnership in one of his subsidiary companies, and was setting aside a definite sum for Kay, the income to be paid annually. Herbert took to wearing a gardenia in his buttonhole, and was looking at houses.

"What we need," he said oracularly, "is a good dining room, Kay. We'll be giving dinners, and if we can seat eighteen or twenty it makes it easier."

He found one to his liking one day, and came to take her to see it. But she was not at home. As a matter of fact, it was the anniversary of old Lucius's death, and she had asked to take the flowers. She stayed there for quite a long time, staring at the shaft where Katherine had wanted to put "He has followed the trail into the sunset" and had been voted down. But she was very apologetic when she got home, and quite gay at dinner that night.

On the surface, then, she fooled everybody. But she wakened sometimes to find that she had been crying in the night; that some forgotten dream had dampened her pillow and swollen her eyes. She would get up and bathe them in cold water before she rang her bell, and then the day would