Meantime, you ask, What of her soul? She was trying her best to forget it—in excitements and distractions, in meeting new people, going to new places, buying thousands of dollars worth of new costumes. She would stay late at dances and supper-parties, trying to get weary enough to sleep; but then she would have nightmares, and would waken moaning and sobbing. Always her dream was one thing, in a thousand forms; she was somewhere in captivity, and some person or creature was telling her that she could not escape, that it was forever, forever, forever. Her room had been made into a bower of roses, but she had to send them away, because one horrible night when she got up and walked about, they made her think of the gardens at home, and the pacing back and forth in her nightgown, and the thorns and gravel in her feet. As a child Sylvia had read a story of a circus-clown, who had played his part when ill and almost dying, because of his wife and child at home. Always thereafter a circus-clown had been to her the symbol of the irony of human life. But now she knew another figure, equally tragic, equally terrible to be—the heroine of a State romance. To be photographed and written about, to see people staring at you, to have to smile and look like one hearing celestial music—and all the while to have a breaking heart! § 22 Sylvia fought long battles with herself. “Oh, I can’t do it!” she would cry. “I can’t do it!” And then “You’ve promised to do it!” she would say to herself. And every day she spent more money, and met more of van Tuiver’s friends, and read more articles about her Romance. Then one morning came a hall-boy with a card. She looked at it, and had a painful start. “Tubby” Bates! He came in, cheerful, jolly, reminding her of so many things—such happy things! She had had a bad night, and now she simply could not talk; her words choked her, and she sat staring at him, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. “Why, Miss Castleman!” he exclaimed—and saw such a look upon that lovely face that his voice died away to a whisper—“You aren’t happy!” Still for a while she could not answer. He asked her what was the matter; and then, again, in greater distress, “Why did you do it?” She responded, in a faint voice, “I did it on my father’s account.” There was a long silence. Then with sudden energy she began, “Mr. Bates, there is something I want to talk to you about. It’s something difficult—almost impossible for me to speak of. And yet—I seem to get more and more desperate about it. I can never be happy in my life until I’ve talked to some one about it.” “What is it, Miss Castleman?” “It’s about Frank Shirley.” “Oh!” he said, in surprise. “You know that I was engaged to him, Mr. Bates?” “Yes, I was told that.”