The gong sounded. "I shan't be a second," Miriam promised and fled. The little stair-flight and her landing, the sunset gilded spaces of her room flung her song out into the world. The tie was worse than she had thought, its middle length crushed and grubby. She hesitated over a card of small pearl-headed lace pins, newly bought and forgotten. For fourpence three farthings the twelve smooth filmy pearl heads, their bright sharp-pointed gilt shanks pinned in a perfect even row through the neat oblong of the sheeny glazed card, lit up her drawer, bringing back the lace-hung aisles of the west-end shop, its counters spread with the fascinating details of the worldly life. The pins were the forefront of her armoury, still too blissfully new to be used.... However Eleanor arranged the tie she could not use more than three. "Thank you dear," she said indifferently, as if they were her own things obligingly brought in, and swiftly pinned one end of the unexamined tie to her blouse collar. With lifted chin she deftly bound the lace round and round close to her neck each swathe firmly pinned, making a column wider than the width of the lace. Above her blouse, transformed by the disappearance of its ugly collar, her graceful neck went up, a column of filmy lace. Miriam watched, learning and amazed. "That's better than nothing anyhow," said Miss Dear from her sideways movements of contemplation. Three or four small pearly heads gleamed mistily from the shapely column of lace. The glazed card lay on the dressing-table crumpled and rent and empty of all its pins. 4