Finally she brought her steed to a halt, leaped nimbly to the ground, and resumed her slippers. She walked rapidly back to the porch, and, with a look of positively painful earnestness in her face, demanded:— “Does _that_ make a difference? Does it alter your opinion? Do you still believe in me?” Her tone was so eager, so intense, that it seemed almost angry. Dorothy only answered:— “It makes no difference.” “You know what that means? You guess where I learned to do that?” “Yes.” “And still you do not cast me out? Still you do not command me to go away?” “Not at all. Why should I?” “But why not? Most women of your class and in your position would send me away.” “I am perhaps not like most women of my class and condition. At any rate, as I told you a while ago, I _know you_, I trust you, I believe in you. _You are you._ What else matters? Let me tell you a little life-story. My mother was a musician, who performed in public. Everybody about here scorned her for that. But she was the superior of all of them. She was a woman of genius and strong character. She hated shams and conventionalities, and she was a good woman. When the war came, she set to work nursing the wounded. She was shot to death a little while ago, and the soldiers loved her so that they rolled a great boulder over her grave and carved a loving inscription upon it with their own hands. Many of them were killed in doing that; but whenever one fell, another took his place. Do you think, Evelyn, that I, her daughter, could ever scorn a good woman like you, merely because she was or had been an actor in a show? I tell you, Evelyn Byrd, I _know_ you, and that is quite enough for me.” “Is it enough for Cousin Arthur?” “Yes, assuredly.” “And for—well, for others?” “If you mean Kilgariff, yes. If you mean the conventional people, no. So you had better never say anything about it to them.” At Dorothy’s mention of Kilgariff’s name, Evelyn started as if shocked. But quickly recovering herself, she said with passion in her tones:— “You are the very best woman in the world, Dorothy. I shall not long have any secrets from you.” The girl’s agitation was ungovernable. Emotionally she had passed through a greater crisis than she had ever known before, and her nerves were badly shaken. Without trying to utter the words that would not rise to her quivering lips, she took refuge in the laboratory, where she set to work with the impatience of one who must open a safety valve of some kind, or suffer collapse. Most women of her age, similarly agitated, would have gone to their chambers instead, and vented their feelings in paroxysms of weeping. Evelyn Byrd was not given to tears. Perhaps bitter experience had conquered that feminine tendency in her, though very certainly it had not robbed her of her intense femininity in any other way.