"But you are afraid," he said. "I am," admitted Molly, furiously; and marched out. As he put her into her car he said: "Write me if you don't change your mind about asking me to Witch-Hollow." "No fear," said the pretty little woman; "and," she added, "I hope you make mischief and raise the very dickens all around. I sincerely hope you do!" "I hope so, too," he said with the ghost of a smile. [Illustration: "A fortnight later Strelsa wrote to Quarren for the first time in nearly two months."] CHAPTER VIII A fortnight later Strelsa wrote to Quarren for the first time in nearly two months. "DEAR MR. QUARREN, "Molly says that she saw you in town two weeks ago, and that she told you how unexpectedly my worldly affairs have altered since I last wrote to you. "For me, somehow or other, life has been always a sequence of abrupt experiences--a series of extremes--one grotesque exaggeration after another, and all diametrically opposed. And it seems odd that such radically material transformations should so ruthlessly disturb and finally, now, end by completely altering the character of a girl whose real nature is--or was--unaccented and serene to the verge of indifference. For the woman writing this is very different from the one you knew as Strelsa Leeds. "I am not yet sure what the outcome of this Adamant affair will be. Neither, apparently, are my attorneys. But it is absolutely certain that if I ever recover anything at all, it will not amount to very much--not nearly enough to live on. "When they first brought the unpleasant news to me my instinct was to sit down and write you about it. I was horribly scared, and wanted you to know it. "I didn't yield to the impulse as you know--I cannot give you the reasons why. They were merely intuitions at first; later they became reasons as my financial situation developed in all its annoying proportions. "I can tell you only this: before material disaster threatened me out of a clear sky, supposing that matters would always remain with me as they were--that I should never know any serious want, never apprehend actual necessity--I had made up my mind to a course of life which now has become impossible. "It was not, perhaps, a very admirable plan of existence that I had conceived for myself, nothing radical or original. I meant, merely, _not_ to marry, to live well within my income, to divide my time between my friends and myself--that is to give myself more leisure for self-development, tranquil cultivation, and a wider and more serious interest in things worthy. "If by dividing my time between my friends and myself I was to lose touch more or less with the lively and rather exacting society in which I live, I had decided on the sacrifice.