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 beautiful that had led her on. For the beauty music sometimes promised, for the wild delight that a flick of Anthony's eye and the radiance of his rare smile had suggested. Mystery and loveliness.

She began to laugh, for she believed she had been cheated, and this, mixed with her spasmodic moaning, made an uncouth sound that frightened her. She couldn't stop. The spasms of hysterics took her breath. She started up in the blackness thinking there were choking hands on her throat. She tried to tell herself in a peremptory way that she must stop. The ghastly sound continued and she was terrified. 'You must stop or you'll go crazy.' There was no stopping. She got to her feet. A doctor could end this terrible gasping and laughing. But when she stumbled to the head of the stairs to call down to Mrs. Andrews, she realized that she could not summon enough voice to make herself heard, and she would be ashamed that any one should see her in this state. Better die.

Groping, she felt her way back to her room. The stepladder in its white shroud suddenly seemed to lunge out of the darkness. She cried out, then recognized what it was and flung herself down upon the floor. She dashed her head against the bureau and chair legs, rolled over on her back and sank her teeth into her forearm and wrist, but the hysterical sobbing continued. She decided to take out the silk shawls that Anthony had given her and burn them all in the grate. Beautiful, cruel things. But, even as she decided to do this, some portion of her brain must have retained its sense. Through the suffocation of all her