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“Please!” cried Gail. “You’d think I was a horse.”

“I know just how you feel,” stated Aunt Helen, entirely unruffled; “but you have your future to consider, and I wish to invite your confidence,” and in her voice there was the quaver of much concern.

“Thank you, Aunt Helen,” said Gail, realising the sincerity of the older woman’s intentions, and, putting her arms around Mrs. Davies’ neck, she kissed her. “It is dear of you to take so much interest.”

“I think it’s pride,” confessed Mrs. Davies, naïvely. “I won’t keep you up a minute longer, Gail. Go to bed, and get all the sleep you can. Only sleep will keep those roses in your cheeks. Good-night,” and with a parting caress, she went to her own room, with a sense of a duty well performed.

Gail smiled retrospectively, and tried the blue light under the canopy lamp, but turned it out immediately. The green gave a much better effect of moonlight on the floor.

She called herself back out of the mists of her previous distress. Who was this Gail, and what was she? There had come a new need in her, a new awakening. Something seemed to have changed in her, to have crystallised. Whatever this crystallisation was, it had made her know that she could not marry Howard Clemmens. It had made her know, too, that marriage was not to be looked upon as a mere inevitable social episode. Her thoughts flew back to Aunt Helen. Her eyelashes brushed her cheeks, and the little smile of sarcasm twitched the corners of her lips.