The docility of the home life, the eagerness to be pliant and sweet, fell from her wholly. An old influence had been brought to bear upon her, and she was now Bonnie May the actress again. For the moment benefits and obligations were forgot, and the old freedom was remembered. “We don’t know the people in that house,” retorted Baron. “That isn’t my fault. I happen to know two of them. If you like I’ll introduce you. Very clever people.” Her tone was almost flippant. Baron was astounded. “You’ve found friends!” he said. He couldn’t help speaking with a slight sneer. “You don’t do it very well,” she said. “I could show you how, if you cared to learn--though it’s rather out of date.” “Bonnie May!” he cried reproachfully. “You made me do it!” she said, suddenly forlorn and regretful. “I didn’t do anything. That’s a rooming-house over there, and I happened to see two old friends of mine at the window. They were glad to see me, and I was glad to see them. That’s all.” Her expression darkened with discouragement. She added: “And I wasn’t quite untruthful. I _had_ been talking to Thomason.” Baron meditatively plucked his lower lip between his finger and thumb. “I was wrong,” he said. “I admit, I was in the wrong.” He tried to relieve the situation by being facetious. “You know I’ve been an invalid,” he reminded her. “And people are always patient with invalids.” “It’s all right,” she said. And he had the disquieting realization that she had grown quite apart from him, for the moment at least, and that it didn’t matter to her very much now whether he was disagreeable or not. She sighed and walked absent-mindedly from the room. She remembered to turn in the doorway and smile at him amiably. But he felt that the action was polite, rather than spontaneous. And he reflected, after she had gone away, that she hadn’t volunteered to say a word about the people she had talked to through the window. CHAPTER XXVI A GATHERING IN THE ATTIC When Bonnie May went down-stairs and learned that Mrs. Baron had gone out calling, she entered her own room and pushed her door partly shut, so that she would be invisible to any one passing. Her most earnest wish, for the moment, was to see her two friends next door. Of course, she would see them before long, but she did not like to leave the matter to chance. There was no reason why she should not simply go to their front door, and knock and ask for them. No reason; but undoubtedly a prejudice. The Barons wouldn’t approve of such a thing. She really hadn’t been aware of the existence of the house next door until now. She realized that there were worlds between the people who lived over there and the people who lived in the mansion. So far as she was concerned, the Barons were a Family, while Heaven only knew what those other people were.