There was a silence; the girl’s eyes turned miserably toward the dressing-table, closed with a slow, inward breath which ended like a sob; and again she was in Kathleen’s arms—­struggled from them only to drop her head on Kathleen’s knees and lie, tense face hidden, both hands clenched.  The wave of grief and shame swept her and passed.

After a while she spoke in a hard little voice: 

“It is foolish to say I cannot control myself....  I did not think what I was doing last night—­that was all.  Duane knows my danger—­tendency, I mean.  He isn’t worried; he knows that I can take care of myself——­”

“Don’t marry him until you know you can.”

“But I am perfectly certain of myself now!”

“Only prove it, darling.  Be frank with me.  Who in the world loves you as I do, Geraldine?  Who desires happiness for you as I do?  What have I in life besides you and Scott?...  And lately, dearest—­I must speak as I feel—­something—­some indefinable constraint seems to have grown between you and me—­something—­I don’t exactly know what—­that threatens our intimate understanding——­”

“No, there is nothing!”

“Be honest with me, dear.  What is it?”

The girl lay silent for a while, then: 

“I don’t know myself.  I have been—­worried.  It may have been that.”

“Worried about yourself, you poor lamb?”

“A little....  And a little about Duane.”

“But, darling, if Duane loves you, that is all cleared up, isn’t it?”

“Yes....  But for a long time he and Rosalie made me perfectly wretched....  I didn’t know I was in love with him, either....  And I couldn’t sleep very much, and I—­I simply couldn’t tell you how unhappy they were making me—­and I—­sometimes—­now and then—­in fact, very often, I—­formed the custom of—­doing what I ought not to have done—­to steady my nerves—­in fact, I simply let myself go—­badly.”

“Oh, my darling!  My darling!  Couldn’t you have told me—­let me sit with you, talk, read to you—­love you to sleep?  Why did you do this, Geraldine?”

“Nothing—­very disgraceful—­ever happened.  It only helped me to sleep when I was excited and miserable....  I—­I didn’t care what I did—­Duane and Rosalie made me so wretched.  And there seemed no use in my trying to be different from others, and I thought I might as well be as rotten as everybody.  But I tried and couldn’t—­I tried, for instance, to misbehave with Jack Dysart, but I couldn’t—­and I only hated myself and him and Rosalie and Duane!”

She sat up, flushed, dishevelled, lips quivering.  “I want to confess!  I’ve been horribly depraved for a week!  I gambled with the Pink ’uns and swore as fashionably as I knew how!  I scorched my tongue with cigarettes; I sat in Bunny Gray’s room with the door bolted and let him teach me how to make silver fizzes and Chinese juleps out of Rose wine and saki!  I let Jack Dysart retain my hand—­and try to kiss me—­several times——­”