"I wouldn't mind so _very_ much except for--" And Sheila's eyes, wandering sadly toward Charlotte's chiffon, finished the sentence. But Charlotte's dismay had already vanished. "You won't have to wear your white muslin either," she announced in her positive, capable way. "You can wear one of my frocks, Sheila. You must! Why"--this in a burst of generosity--"why, you can wear this one!" "Oh, no, I couldn't do that. Not your new frock, Charlotte! But you're a dear to offer it!" And Sheila gave her friend a grateful hug, though Charlotte never encouraged caresses. "Well, then, perhaps not this one," agreed Charlotte, to whom, used though she was to her pretty clothes, it would have been something of a hardship to surrender the first wearing of them to anyone else, "perhaps not this one--rose is more my color than yours. But another--a blue silk mull that will be lovely with your blue-gray eyes and black hair. I've worn it only two or three times, and never in Shadyville." "No, I couldn't," said Sheila again. "Grandmother wouldn't let me. I'm sure she wouldn't." "I don't see why." "She wouldn't," persisted Sheila regretfully. "Now look here, Sheila. She wouldn't _know_. You're going to spend the night with me and dress after you get here. And _she's_ not coming to the party." It was the same form of temptation which Ted had offered Sheila in the woods three years before, but now it was tenfold stronger. Then a mere good time was at stake; now the gratification of her young vanity, of her first girlish desire to make herself charming, was to be gained. And as she had hesitated that day in the woods, for the sake of the fun, she hesitated now for the sake of this new, clamoring instinct. "I'd have to tell her," she temporized. "Then tell her," assented Charlotte impatiently, "but don't tell her until afterwards." It was Sheila's own method of that earlier time--a middle path between conscience and desire, and lightly skirting both. "I might do that," she remarked thoughtfully. "If I told her--even afterwards--it wouldn't be quite so wicked. And I _want_ to wear the frock dreadfully!" "Just tell her as if it's nothing at all," advised Charlotte cleverly, "as if we never even thought of it until after you got here that evening. Then she won't mind it a bit. You'll see she won't!" "Yes, she will. She won't like my wearing your clothes. She won't think it's _nice_. And when I tell, I'll tell the whole thing--the way it really happened. But"--and Sheila's full-lipped, generous mouth straightened into a thin line of resolution--"I'm going to do it anyway, Charlotte!" Three days intervened before the party, and they were not happy days for Sheila. Her sense of guilt depressed every moment of the time, especially when she was in Mrs. Caldwell's trusting presence. For Sheila was not equipped by nature to sin comfortably.