"I belong to myself," thought Geraldine proudly, forcing back some stinging drops, salt as the vast waters before her. "I don't need anybody, I don't." She fought down again the memory of her lover's embraces. Ever afterward she remembered those few minutes alone on the piazza at Rockcrest, overwhelmed by the sensation of contrast between herself on sufferance in her cheap raiment, and the indications all about her of the opposite extreme of luxury--remembered those moments as affording her a poignant unhappiness. "I won't ask you to come into the cottage," said Mrs. Barry, approaching at the close of her interview. "The rugs haven't been unrolled yet, and it is all in disorder. Isn't that a superb show of sky and sea, and never twice alike?" "Superb," echoed Geraldine. "You are shivering," said her hostess. "It is many degrees colder here than over in the sheltered place where Miss Upton has her shop. I have quite finished. Let us go back." They went down to the car and were soon speeding toward Keefe. Beside Lamson sat the imposing hatbox. Somehow it added to Geraldine's unhappiness, as if jeering at her for an effort to appear what she was not. She must talk. Her regal companion would suspect her wretchedness. "What are you going to make your curtains of, Mrs. Barry?" she asked. The commonplace proved a most felicitous question. The lady described material, took her measurements out of her purse, and discussed ruffles and tucks and described location and size of windows, during which talk the young girl was able to throw off the spell that had held her mute. She did not suspect how her companion was listening with discriminating ears to her speech, and the very tones of her voice, and watching with discriminating eyes her manner and expression. Ben had told his mother to take her magnifying glass and she had begun to use it. When the motor entered the home grounds at Keefe, Geraldine resisted the associations of her last arrival there. A faint mist of apple blossoms still clung in spots to the orchard. Lamson carried her poor little effects and the hateful, grandiose hatbox into the living-room where one day she had regained her scattered senses. "You may take these things up to the blue room," Mrs. Barry said to the maid who appeared, "and you will give Miss Melody any assistance she requires." Geraldine followed the girl upstairs to the charming room assigned to her. Every dainty convenience was within its walls. The pleasant maid's manner was all alacrity. It was safe to believe that she knew more than her mistress about Geraldine, and the attitude toward her of the young master of the house. The guest looked about her and recalled her room at the Carder farm, the patchwork quilt at the Upton Emporium, and her last shakedown under the eaves of the Keefeport shell house.