"Why, yes, dearie. I'd never had any children, and I always thought if I could have I'd like 'em all to be girls, that I could dress up, and do for, and bring up nice.... Oh, Gawd, Gawd!" she moaned, suddenly flinging herself across the bed, face down. "Here I am in a grand house, with a limousine, and servants of my own, and a husband like a king, and a young lady daughter in society, and me giving parties to the pick of the land!... And now to go down again, back to the gutter!" She beat the bed with her fists. There was something appalling in the utter abandonment of this woman whom Joan had never before seen otherwise than cheerful and poised. "If I'd never gone to the races! Oh, Gawd! If I'd never gone! I had a hunch. I knew I'd meet up with that skunk Joe again somewheres, and I'd ought to have kept out of his way! There isn't a soul in this town could 'a' told on me unless it was that boy Blair." "Archie?" repeated Joan, surprised. "Yes," she sobbed. "He spotted me the first time he saw me--I don't know how. But I could 'a' kept _his_ mouth shut all right!--I was fixing him so he'd never tell...." In her abandonment Effie May might have said rather more than she meant to say, if at that moment a great honking of horns and shouting of gay farewells had not announced the return of the tallyho from the Derby. She sat erect with a gasp. "It's _him_! For goodness' sake don't let your papa catch me like this!" She flew to her dressing-table, reaching for cold cream, powder, rouge. "Keep him off," she besought the girl. "Quick!--pull down those shades--there, that's better. Help me into a negligée--no, no, not that green one, for heaven's sake!--a pink one. Now some perfume. Tell him he must be very quiet because of my headache--don't forget, that's why we came home. There!--how do I look?" She leaned back languidly in a chaise-longue, with a handkerchief dipped in cologne hiding her swollen eyes. Joan, rather dazed, had assisted at these hasty rites, marveling at the triviality of a mind which could turn in one second from the catastrophe of a wrecked life to considerations of vanity. And then the sheer desperation of the thing struck her. Effie May was not done yet. She meant to go down fighting. There was something in the girl that always responded to gallant effort. "Good luck," she said queerly, and went to the door. "Wait!" gasped the woman. "Joan! _Are you going to tell him right away?_" "Not--right away," said the girl slowly. There came a little rush behind her. Effie May had caught up one of her hands, and kissed it.... CHAPTER XXXVI The girl had a difficult problem before her. She wrestled with it throughout a sleepless night. She felt like Fate, with human destinies in her control.