Sally ran up the broad, circular staircase to the third floor, scorning to use the “lift” which Courtney Barr had had installed in the Fifth Avenue mansion a few years before. She never entered her own suite of rooms—sitting room, bedroom, dressing room and bath—without first an uneasy feeling that she was trespassing and then a shock of delight that it was hers indeed. Now she passed slowly through the rooms, trying to see them with David’s eyes, or even with the eyes of the forlorn little Sally Ford who had slaved sixteen hours a day on the Carson farm for her “board and keep.” Suddenly a picture flashed across her mind—the two-rooms-and-lean-to shack in which she and David had eaten what was to have been their wedding breakfast. A great nostalgia swept over her—not only for David, but for plain people working together to make a home and to support their children. All her life in the orphanage she had dreamed of delicate foods, skin-caressing, lovely fabrics, spacious, gracious rooms. And now she had them—and she was frightened to nausea, because they were a barrier between her and David and all the realities of life and love which she had so nearly grasped when she was slaving on the farm, working as “Princess Lalla” in the carnival, fleeing from the pursuit of the law with only David to protect her. She dressed listlessly for the sub-deb luncheon at the Ritz, chatted and laughed and pretended to be as frivolous and “wild” as any of her new friends; went to Claire Bainbridge’s tea that afternoon; went to the theater with her mother and adopted father that night, went, went, went during the next few days, but her heart was concerned with only one question: would David come? She had been so sure, so arrogantly, proudly sure that he would come even if he had to walk— On the fifth day after the invitation was despatched his telegram came. Color—all colors swirling together in a mad kaleidoscope of incredible beauty; the muted, insistent throbbing of a violin played by an unseen artist; the rosy glow of light which apparently had no source; the rustling whisper of silks; the polite, subdued buzz of middle-aged conversation; the shrill but musical clamor of very young voices; the subtle, faint odor of French perfumes; the stronger, more sickening odor of too many hothouse flowers— Sally Barr, who had been Sally Ford, was “play-acting” again. She was playing the role of a society debutante. She was “playing-acting” and enjoying it, with a sort of surface enjoyment that made her look the perfect picture of the popular and beautiful debutante.