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that beyond that door H, whom I had invented and who therefore simply did not exist, was asking for my Hand. I made up my mind at once to run away and go on the stage, and I had even got part way up the stairs, when I remembered that, with a dollar for the picture and five dollars for the violets and three dollars for the hat pin I had given Sis, and two dollars and a quarter for mother's handkercheif case, I had exactly a dollar and seventy-five cents in the world.
    I WAS TRAPPED.
    I went up to my room, and sat and waited. Would father be violent, and throw H. out and then come upstairs, pale with fury and disinherit me? Or would the whole Familey conspire together, when the people had gone, and send me to a convent? I made up my mind, if it was the convent, to take the veil and be a nun. I would go to nurse lepers, or something, and then, when it was too late, they would be sorry.
    The stage or the convent, nun or actress? Which?
    I left the door open, but there was only the sound of revelry below. I felt then that it was to be the convent. I pinned a towel around my face, the way the nuns wear whatever they call them, and from the side it was very becoming. I really did look like Julia Marlowe, especialy as my face was very sad and tradgic.
    At something before seven every one had gone, and I heard Sis and mother come upstairs to dress for dinner. I sat and waited, and when I heard father I got cold all over. But he went on by, and I heard him go into mother's room and close the door. Well, I knew I had to go through with it, although my life was blasted. So I dressed and went downstairs.
    Father was the first down. HE CAME DOWN WHISTLING.
    It is perfectly true. I could not beleive my ears.
    He approached me with a smileing face.
    "Well, Bab," he said, exactly as if nothing had happened, "have you had a nice day?"
    He had the eyes of a bacilisk, that creature of Fable.
    "I've had a lovely day, Father," I replied. I could be bacilisk-ish also.
    There is a mirror over the drawing room mantle, and he turned me around until we both faced it.
    "Up to my ears," he said, referring to my heighth." And Lovers already! Well, I daresay we must make up our minds to lose you."
    "I won't be lost," I declared, almost violently. "Of course, if you intend to shove me off your hands, to the first Idiot who comes along and pretends a lot of stuff, I----"
    "My dear child!" said father, looking surprised. "Such an outburst! All I was trying to say, before your mother comes down, is that I--well, that I understand and that I shall not make my little girl unhappy by--er--by breaking her Heart."
    "Just what do you mean by that, father?"
    He looked rather uncomfortable, being one who hates to talk sentament.
    "It's like this, Barbara," he said. "If you want to marry this young man--and you have made it very clear that you do--I am going to see that you do it. You are young, of course, but after all your dear mother was not much older than you are when I married her."
    "Father!" I cried, from an over-flowing heart.
    "I have noticed that you are not happy, Barbara," he said. "And I shall not thwart you, or allow you to be thwarted. In affairs of the Heart, you are to have your own way."
    "I want to tell you something!" I cried. "I will NOT be cast off! I----"
    "Tut, tut," said Father. "Who is casting you off? I tell you that I like the young man, and give you my blessing, or what is the present-day equivelent for it, and you look like a figure of Tradgedy!"
    But I could endure no more. My own father had turned on me and was rending me, so to speak. With a breaking heart and streaming eyes I flew to my Chamber.
    There, for hours I paced the floor.
    Never, I determined, would I marry H. Better death, by far. He was a scheming Fortune-hunter, but to tell the family that was to confess all. And I would never confess. I would run away before I gave Sis such a chance at me. I would run away, but first I would kill Carter Brooks.
    Yes, I was driven to