The Flirt

iptoe to turn out the gas-light in the hall; but for a time the key resisted the insufficient pressure of her finger-tips: the little orange flame, with its black-green crescent over the

y of a damsel of rank. Next moment, her expression flashed in a brilliant change, like that of a pouting child suddenly reme

y in Cora's hand, proved the door itself not so hospitable. There was a br

at have you been doing? Something's the matter with you. I know what it is," she added, laughing,

" observed Laura. "

for the vocal wall which had so effectively sheltered her earlier in the evening. "He's li

y near the light he

himself among women for the way he gets sat on at the club. But he has his use: he shows off the other men so, by contrast. Oh

gently, "I've al

ra peevishly, "with me? I didn't mean

rse-I do,"

strange trouble; then this glance wandered moodily from the face of her sister

as she went on: "Laura, you don't know what I had to endure from him to-night. I really don't think I can stand it to live in the same house any longer with that frightful little devil. He's been throwi

ra looked startled.

and-and he took off his hat and set it on the pavement at my feet and told me to kick it into the gutter! Everybody stopped and stared; and I couldn't get by him. And he said-he said I'd kicked his heart into the gutter and he didn't want it to catch cold without a hat!

ne!" said L

because I got bored to death with his everlasting do-you-love-me-to-day-as-well-as-yesterday style of torment, and couldn't help liking Richard better. Yes, ever

ay that," pr

ot to go through, I suppose!" She pounded the yielding pillow desperately. "Oh, oh, oh! Life isn't worth living-it seems to me sometimes as if everybody in the world spent his time trying to think up ways to make it harder for me! I couldn't have worn the pendant, though

out Mr. Corliss

xactly. But after you'd gone, he asked me--" She stopped with

e wants me to marry him next month and take some miserable little trip, I don't know where, for a few weeks, before he invests what he's made in another business. Oh!" she cried. "It's a horrible thing to ask a girl to do: to settle down-just housekeeping, housekeeping, housekeeping for

breathing quickly. In this crisis of emotion the two girls went to each other

iny pearl button which had detached itself at her touch. "This w

He's so used to being called `the most popular man in town' and knowing that every girl on C

or

ean that's the reaso

aura hurriedly. "I on

e glad, free ring fancy attaches to the merry

she extended three of the tiny buttons in her hand. "They're always lo

good old thing," she said.

eneer loosened and peeling, the mirror small and flawed-a piece of furniture in keeping with the room, which was small, plain and hot

ok ever so pretty

e Assembly in March. Coming down the stairs, I heard a man from out of town say, `That black-haired Miss

imed: "You know he's gorgeous!" And with a feverish little ripple of laughter,

occupied a corner; and between two gilt gas-brackets, whose patent burners were shielded by fringed silk shades, stood a cheval-glass six feet high. The door of a very large clothes-pantry stood open, showing a fine company of dresses, suspended from forms in an orderly manner; near by, a rosewood cabinet exhibited a delicate co

girls. All the rest were sterner. Two or three were seamed across with cracks, hastily recalled sentences to destruction; and here and there remained tokens of a draughtsman's over-generous struggle to confer upon some of the smooth-shaven faces additional manliness in the shape of sweeping moustaches, long

in one; pulled up her dress, where it was slipping from her shoulder, rested an arm upon the back of the other chair as, earlier in the evening, she had rested it upon the iron railing of the porch, and, leaning forward, assumed as exactly as possible the attitude in which she had

he glass, she forgot how and what she had looked to Corliss; she forgot him; she forgot

d been unimaginative, for the name means only,

ional vacuum like a silence at the dentist's. Co

ake her. As she reached the last window, a sudden high wind rushed among the trees outside; a white flare leaped at her face, startling h

far away and almost indistinguishable, Cora started more violently than at the lightning; she spra

y its fringe; but the rain pattered sharply upon the thick foliage o

d and hoarse-and not quite human, s

g nearer; and the gay little air-wrought to a grotesque of itself by t

ie, a bonnie,

as the lily

came and sang just under Cora's window. There it fell silent a moment

ly, slowly

y she cam

e drew the

I think you

aura, barefooted, stole to the bed and put

'd like nothing better than headlines in the papers: `Ray Vilas arrested at the

way," whispered Laura

ar

an to mumble incoherently; then it

ou merciful to me! Be Thou me

reasing loudness, and to such nerve-racking effect that Cora, gaspin

ed from the bed, ran to the door, and opened it. Their mother, wearing a red wrapper, was standing at the

e abrupt anti-climax of a phonograph stopped in the middle of a record. There was the

rowned again at half a word, as by a

t each other wanly during a hushed interval like that in a sleeping-car at night when the train sto

ot looking up. "He heard him as he came along the street, and dressed

mopping his damp gray hair with hi

ered sufficient poise to realize, with the shuddering gratitude of adventur