She had come too late for another good; the dead do not answer even the most loving, the sweetest voices, and this girl had joined the mysteries. So, what was left but to offer prayers and tears for the living? While Cherokee talked, the woman sat very still, her face ruled to quietness. At length she said: “She is better dead.” The comforter looked surprised; what a strange way for a mother to speak. “Let us go, now,” urged Frost, impulsively. As they passed out, he placed money in the woman’s hand. “Put her away nicely.” Motioning him back, the woman caught his arm and whispered: “By the right of a life-long debt, I now ask for peace.” “Is that all?” he sneered. “And I hope you will be a better man,” she added. They were on their way home. A flush crept slowly up Willard Frost’s face, then, heaving a sigh and quickly repenting of it, he tried to laugh, to drive away the impression of it. It had been dismal within, but it was lovely without. The gray transparency of the atmosphere lent a glamour to the autumn hues, like flimsy gauze over the face of some Eastern beauty, and the seductive harmony of the colors acted like magic music on the spirit. “That dead girl was once the most exquisite piece of flesh I ever saw. This is truly a legend of the beautiful. She supported herself by posing for artists, as long as her beauty lasted,” so Frost began his story, “but six months ago she was stricken with paralysis, which so misused her that it took the bread from her mouth, and but for me they would have starved. “I had great sympathy for the girl, and from her face I had made many hundreds, so I considered it my duty to look after her in this dark hour of affliction.” “That was just and noble,” said Cherokee, forgetting for a moment the record of the man. He went on: “She loved me devotedly, though she knew I was married, and during her illness she fancied she would be perfectly happy if she convinced herself that I was not ashamed to present her to my wife.” “Then it was your wife she wanted to see, and I was to be presented under false colors,” she demanded, rather sternly. “It would have been all the same to her, she never would have been wiser.” “Mr. Frost, I believe you would do anything, and let me say, just here, my courtesy to you is not real. I do it because, strange to say, my husband likes you.” Just then they reached her stopping place. There was considerable commotion on the car, Frost caught her arm: “Wait a moment, until they put that drunken brute off.” Suddenly, Cherokee wrenched herself away, and stepped quickly, unassisted, to the street. In front of her was the man they had assisted from the car. A gentle arm was passed through his: “Come, Robert, we will go home together.” She never looked back, although Willard Frost stood and watched them, a mingled smile of pity and triumph upon his sinister face. CHAPTER XVIII. TIMELY WARNING. Robert sat in his studio, when presently the door opened.