"Bless you, Electra and I don't live together! I only visit her here half the year, to save my pocketbook. That's another proof of my general unworthiness. I flout her and mad her all the time. She wouldn't do that to me, but she'd drive me to drink trying not to. No, I've got a little apartment in town, like a hollow tree, and I crawl into it in the winter. You come, too, and I'll introduce you to all the people I know, and you can make 'em listen while you sing." Rose was looking at her in a moved warmth and wonder. "How kind you are!" she breathed. "No! no! Only when you said you were a liar, and worse, I suddenly felt the most extraordinary interest in you. I feel as if you might speak my language. I don't know that I want to do anything bad, but I don't want to be kept so nervous trying to decide whether things are bad or not. You come, my dear--unless I marry Billy Stark. I may do that. I must, if it will plague Electra." Rose gave her a quick glance, at once withdrawn, and while she allowed the last possibility to sink into the depths of her mind, Madam Fulton was interrogating her again. "You don't think it is possible," she was urging, with the insistence of one who sees incredible good fortune, "you don't suppose you haven't any moral sense?" She seemed to hang upon the answer. Rose, in spite of herself and the unhappy moment, laughed. "I hoped I had," she rejoined, "but I don't believe I ever thought much about it." Madam Fulton nodded quite gayly. "That's it!" she cried. "Don't you see you haven't? When they have it, they're always thinking about it. It's like a cinder in the eye. My dear, you're just as bad as I am, and I thank my stars I've met you." But all this touch and go was a strange, poor sequel to the task of that confession. It had all turned out very small beer indeed, except so far as Electra was concerned. Electra, Rose was convinced, in a moment of sadly mirthful fancy, was upstairs setting her judgments in order and decorously glad to have been proven right. "I'll go now," she said, rising. She felt very tired with it all. "I've told you." "But come again, my dear," the old lady insisted. "Be sure you come again. You are so understanding, I shall miss you sadly. Come every day." Rose went down the garden path and noted, with some irony, that Billy Stark, still smoking, turned away into the grape arbor. It looked like the shyness of decorum. She could hardly know that Billy felt unable to bear any more revelations from womenfolk. And now she said to herself, "I shall have to tell grannie and I shall have to tell Peter." Opportunity was easy, for Peter was at that moment coming whistling along the road on the way to Electra's. When she saw him, her purpose failed. He looked so boyish, so free and happy-hearted. How could she give him a sordid secret to keep, in place of their admiring comradeship?