If in the morning there was no word from Chrystie she would have to do something and she could not think what this should be. Mayer had not needed to warn her against giving her sister up to the tongue of gossip. The most guileless of girls living in San Francisco would learn that lesson early. But what could she do? To whom could she go for help and advice? She thought of her mother's friends, the guardians of the estate, and repudiated them with a smothered sound of scorn. They wouldn't care; would let it get into the papers; would probably suggest the police. And would she not herself--if Chrystie did not come back or write--have to go to the police? That brought her to a standstill, and with both hands she pressed on her forehead pushing back her hair, sending tormented looks about her. If there was only someone who would understand, someone she could trust, someone--she dropped her hands, her eyes widening, fixed and startled, as a name rose to her lips and fell whispered on the stillness. It came without search or expectation, seemed impelled from her by her inward stress, found utterance before she knew she had thought of him. A deep breath heaved her chest, her head drooped backward, her eyelids closing in a relief as intense, as ineffably comforting, as the cessation of an unbearable pain. She stood rigid, the light falling bright on her upturned face, still as a marble mask. For a moment she felt bodiless, her containing shell dissolved, nothing left of her but her longing for him. Like an audible cry or the grasp of her hand drawing him to her, it went out from her, imperious, an appeal and a summons. Again she whispered his name; but she heard it only as the repetition of a solace and a solution, was not aware of forces tapped in lower wells of being. After that she felt curiously calmed, her wild restlessness gone, her nightmare terrors assuaged. If she did not hear from Chrystie by midday she would call him up at his office and ask him to come to her. She seemed to have found in the thought of him not only a staff to uphold, but wisdom to guide. She drew the curtains and saw the first thin glimmering of dawn, pearl-faint in the sky, pearl-pale on the garden. The crystal trimmings of her bodice gave a responsive gleam, and looking down she was aware of her gala array. She slipped out of it, put on a morning dress, and denuded her hair of its shining ornament. It seemed long ago, in another life, that she had sat in Mrs. Kirkham's box, rejoicing in her costly trappings, glad to be admired.