After hours of wakefulness she slept and dreamed. She and Chrissalyn were dancing in a great and fantastic company. Everybody else wore masks, but their faces were uncovered. Chrissalyn was the partner of a graceful knight in black velvet who whirled her on and on, endlessly. At last they rose into the air together, and Chriss became a veritable butterfly, with beautiful silvery wings. The knight also developed wings, but they were black, like his garments. Cartice called to her friend to come down, but she only laughed and rose higher, and finally flew out of sight. With a wildly beating heart Cartice awoke. Rising, she dressed for the journey. Knocking on Chrissalyn’s door, she received no answer. Then she called her, and with light and jesting words bade her make haste. Still no answer. Opening the door she entered, but started back with a cry whose thrill of horror went to the heart like a knife. The Butterfly had, indeed, spread silvery wings and flown, for there lay her chrysalis, cold, white and pulseless. The black knight of death had taken her out of sight. The delicate, long-ailing lungs had given way, and the inevitable end had come. She who loved the world and its foolish, fleeting pleasures had gone suddenly out of it. Whither? It was a sad heart that Mrs. Doring carried back to New York, in spite of her knowledge that the Butterfly had but spread her wings. Sometimes in the darkness and silence of night she talked aloud to her vanished, yet ever-present, friend. “Where are you, Butterfly? Can you hear me and see me? Do you know how heavy is my heart sometimes? And are you happy in your new world? Is life more beautiful, more perfect there? And do you love me still?” No voice replied, but the light, caressing, electric touches came sometimes, and the stricken heart was comforted. CHAPTER XXII. THE PROP THAT FAILED. “Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought,” he said, and the tale is still to run. “By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer--what have ye done?” --_Rudyard Kipling._ Two years passed, and Mrs. Doring still sat at her editorial desk. Farnsworth had been the kindest and most considerate of employers. The envious said no woman ever had an easier situation. They raised their eyebrows, when they said this, implying the usual sentimental insinuations; but they were mistaken. Farnsworth’s regard for Cartice had no sentimental coloring whatever. He admired her ability and delighted in giving her a chance, and making that chance as pleasant as possible, having views on the unfair, industrial, political and social rulings from which women suffer. He had come to New York, a talented struggler. Now he was a millionaire, chief proprietor of a great publishing house, which had become great under his management, and he loved to make the road a little smoother for those less able and less fortunate.