Bengal flushed and looked down, maintaining an obstinate silence.

“Please, won’t you, Bengal dear?” coaxed Agony in her most irresistible manner.  “Will you do it for me if you won’t do it for Miss Peckham?”

Bengal could not hold out against the coaxing of her adored one, but she still hesitated, bargaining her promise for a reward.  “If you’ll let me wear your ring for the rest of the summer, and come and kiss me goodnight every night after I’m in bed—­”

“All right,” Agony agreed hastily, with a sigh of resignation for this departure from her fixed principles regarding the lending of jewelry and about promiscuous demonstrations of affection, but peace in camp was worth the price.

Bengal claimed the ring at once, and then, after pawing Agony over like a bear cub, said a little shamefacedly, “I wish I were as good as you are.  You’re so honorable.  How do you get such a ‘nice sense of honor’ as you have?  I think I’d like to have one.”

“Such a nice sense of honor as you have!” Agony jerked up as though she had been jabbed with a red hot needle.  “Such a nice sense of honor as you have!” The words lingered in her ears like a mocking echo.  The smile faded from her lips; her arm stiffened and dropped from Bengal’s shoulder.  The frank admiration in the younger girl’s eyes cut her to the quick.  With a haggard look she turned away from Bengal and wandered away to the other part of the island, away from the girls.  Just now she could not bear to hear their gay, carefree voices.  What would she not give, she thought to herself, to have nothing on her mind.  She even envied rabbit-brained little Carmen Chadwick, who, if she had nothing in her head, had nothing on her conscience either.

“Who am I to talk of a ‘nice sense of honor’ to Bengal Virden?” she thought miserably.  “I’m a whole lot worse than she.  She’s only a mischievous child, and doesn’t know any better, but I do.  I’m no better than Jane Pratt, either, even though I told Mrs. Grayson about her going out at night with boys from Camp Altamont.”  This matter of Jane Pratt had tormented Agony without ceasing.  True to her contemptuous attitude toward Agony’s plea that she break bonds no more, she had refused to tell Mrs. Grayson about her nocturnal canoe rides and thus had forced Agony to make good her threat and tell Mrs. Grayson herself.  She had hoped and prayed that Jane would take the better course and confess her own wrong doing, but Jane did nothing of the kind, and there was only one course open to Agony.  It was the rule of the camp that anyone seeing another breaking the rules must first give the offender the opportunity to confess, and if that failed must report the matter herself to the Doctor or Mrs. Grayson.  So Agony was obliged to tell Mrs. Grayson that Jane was breaking the rules by slipping out nights and setting a bad example to the younger girls if any of them knew about it.