Helen did not answer. She did not like to admit even to herself that her husband's greatest effort was a failure. Yet she was a terribly honest woman, and there was no glow in her heart. Indeed, the school and all about it had become unpleasant to her, covered as it was with sordid memories of her husband's efforts to get the work. Latterly there had been added to these the almost daily bickerings with the trustees, which the architect reported. The plans had not been accepted easily. "All the same, Jack's got some good advertising out of it," Venetia continued encouragingly, noticing Helen's silence. "The newspapers are throwing him polite remarks, I see. But I want to talk to you about something else. Mamma has been losing a lot of money; bad investments made in boom times; sure things, you know, like copper and steel. She's very much pressed, and she wants to put my money up to save some of the stocks. Uncle Harry is raging, and wants me to promise him not to let her have a cent. Stanwood has come home--there doesn't seem to be anything else for him to do. It's all rather nasty. I don't know what to say about the money; it seems low to hold your mother up in her second youth. And yet the pace Mrs. Phillips keeps would finish my money pretty soon. It's a pity Mrs. Raymond won't die and give mother a chance to make a good finish." "Venetia!" "What's the harm in my saying what all the world that knows us is saying? It's been a ten years' piece of gossip. I feel sorry for her, too. It must be rough to get along in life and see you have muckered your game.... Do you know, I am terribly tempted to let her have the money, all of it, and skip out myself. Perhaps some of these days you'll read a little paragraph in the morning paper,--'Mysterious Disappearance of a Well-known Young Society Woman.' Wouldn't that be original? Just to drop out of everything and take to the road!" "What would you do?" "Anything, everything--make a living. Don't you think I could do that?" She embroidered this theme fancifully for a time and then lapsed into silence. Finally she burst forth again: "Good Lord, why can't we get hold of life before it's too late? It's going on all around us,--big, and rich, and full of blood. And folks like you and me sit on the bank, eating a picnic lunch." "Perhaps," mused Helen, "it would be different if one had to earn the lunch." "Who knows? Will you try it? Will you cut loose from Jackie?" A rather sad smile crossed the older woman's face, and Venetia seizing her arm impulsively gave it a little squeeze. Just then Coburn strolled into the room with the boys, whom he had found in the corridor, and nodding abruptly toward Helen, stood before the plans, studying them with his sharp, black eyes. His little ironical smile hung on his parted lips. Turning to Venetia, he said good-humoredly:-- "Thinks he's doing something, don't he, Venetia?" Helen rose and called the boys.