At a sound behind her Naomi turned and found Mrs. Aldis. Regina wore her cotillon hat, awarded to her in a romp, a Spanish affair of black and red paper; but she carried none of the other trumpery. She stood there dusting her hands together and smiling at Naomi.

"You've caught me," she said. "I've just been hiding our favors so we can pick them up in a moment when we start home. Jim has rustled three more of everything, so we'll have five. Perfect!" Naomi frowned.

"Do you mean to tell me that you and Jim are taking those gimcracks home?" "Why, of course. The other spoke softly. "We're not the only ones. Look around on this porch and in the dressingrooms and you'll find piles, all ready."

"Silly. It's bad enough to wear the stuff here. I could do without cotillons." "I guess you don't understand. The children at home expect them."

Mrs. Aldis came a step closer and laid a hand on Naomi's arm.

"I thought you might be doing the same thing to-night. I heard you and Hamar had taken a youngster from the home."

Naomi looked away quickly. "You are too complimentary, Regina. I took him back to-day."

There followed too much silence. Regina ended the strain.

"Well, it's not for me to say; probably you are right."

The band had begun again inside. Mrs. Aldis turned and ran back to the ballroom door, light as a girl. Naomi found her chair again and sat gazing out across the golf course. Behind her the screened doors snapped and in a moment a man and a woman passed her, carrying a bulging package to a parked automobile. Other couples passed. It was growing late; the party was breaking up. She would find Hamar and drag him away. She could manage the Stark

As she turned toward the lights of the ballroom entrance she was aware of a flurry around the coatrooms and a movement of many people. Good-nights were being shouted, and above them the throb of the music reached her, reminding her of those couples who would stay until the close.

She drew aside to permit a group to hurry past her. It was then that she caught a glimpse of Jessie Starkweather, standing waiting, like a schoolgirl, in the sweater-jacket she had drawn on. held a great pompon of yellow paper.

She

"John will be here in a minute," she said to Naomi. "He found we were short a paper hat for one of the children, so he's trying to buy one from the caterer."

Jessie looked twenty. Naomi knew she was thirty-three. Her eyes were starry. When it came to clutching the youthfulness that seemed to be the passion of the hour, some of these mothers revealed a stronger grip than women like herself, Naomi admitted. Recognizing a great desire, inspired by the sight of Jessie with her pompon, she made a swift calculation. There was Hamar beyond, shrugging into his coat. She recalled the picture of Michael sitting on his knees last night. She did not want to recall it, but it came back to her unbidden. She saw the little boy riding with the little circus whip she had bought him.

Hamar and she had no favors; they had tossed them away. They seemed, suddenly, to be the only ones without them. Naomi felt an appalling loneliness, looking about her at the laughing women.

It was only five miles to the orphans' home. Hamar, who had a way with such people, might be able to get the matron up. Perhaps for money they could get Michael out to-night; take him home with them. She put a hand to her head, giddily sketching the possibility, pushing. forward into the crowded room.

Silly Howard Graham delayed her with some obscure joke. Across the shoulders of the men she spied Hamar's face and raised a hand to him. He did

Hamar raise a bauble, a merry, wrinkled goblin on a stick, and toss it with a laugh into a corner. Without seeing Naomi's white face he pressed through the crowd and disappeared.

Naomi broke away from Graham and pushed through the jam desperately. If Hamar hurried he could get one of everything. She pursued him through the door that had marked his disappearance.

At the corridor that led off toward the locker-rooms she stopped, frozen. For there, in the deep shadow, stood Hamar and with him the Terriss girl, who made

giving the Starkweathers what passed for conversation.

When Hamar climbed in beside her and pressed her hand she found, to her surprise, that the car's mechanism would respond to her paralyzed arms, and the machine moved smoothly down the driveway.

About the way Naomi Widdowson stopped her car at the Aldis home on Mt. Vernon Avenue the next afternoon there was an air of precise leisure. Only one of her careful mind would have sat and

enjoyed for a long moment her satisfaction at having brought up exactly upon the spot her deep-blue eyes had selected on the approach. Her glance into the mirror and the accompanying twist at the brim of her blue straw hat, her slow buttoning of a flawless white glove, and her flick of a grain of dust from her tailored skirt-these were movements inevitably hers.

Having made herself right and locked the car beyond any chance of worry during her call, she stepped out and went quickly up the short flight of steps to the Aldis door. She went quickly, but she had time to notice how smudged was the plate glass of the door and how littered with roller-skates and dolls was the ugly, shallow concrete porch.

She gave Regina an appraising look as the door opened and the strong north light fell on the streaked, harassed face. "Come in, Naomi, if you're not afraid of germs, was the greeting which admitted the caller to the little sitting-room. A night practically without sleep had written its record almost ludicrously on Regina's countenance, and she knew it. As she thrust a lock of her straight dark hair into place and threw aside her apron she was aware of a warm surge of anger. Naomi looked so clean, so composed, so rested.

From a place on the sofa Naomi, without intending to do it, was noting the worn rug, magazines streaked and soiled from childish handling, the antique clock that had stopped. The room was not warm. Evidently, Regina had not had time to think of heat, and the days were growing crisp.

"Which one is it this time?" Naomi began, drawing off her gloves. The mother, who was making a pathetic effort at the mirror over the fireplace to repair the devastation of a morning's nursing and housework, passed her trouble with a matter-of-fact comment.

"Rachel. Got the grippe. She was feverish when we got home last night." She laughed; and Naomi reflected upon her flashes of beauty that care could not defeat. "My cleaning woman and laundress both chose to quit this week," she added. That disaster, evidently, was the source of her amusement.

VOL. LXXVII.—38

The visitor patted her foot on the rug. There was something inefficient about Regina Aldis. If anybody were to be left by cleaning women and laundresses in the midst of sickness it would be she.

"I will not keep you," Naomi said. "I just wanted to explain about Michael. You remember, I told you last night I had. taken him back to the orphans' home."

"Oh." Regina found a seat on the edge of an old Windsor chair and folded her hands.

"Hamar and I threshed it all out. I'm afraid we couldn't adjust ourselves, having been childless so long, to do him justice. Besides, we never could be certain how he would turn out."

The eyes of the hostess were on the floor, but she spoke distinctly and with feeling.

"That last is a conventional excuse, Naomi. It is unworthy of you. People don't know how their own children will turn out, when it comes to that. He was a handsome little fellow. I guess if you had five girls, as Jim and I have, you would appreciate a boy."

"I know," countered Naomi, "but when I look around and see what you parents are going through-see the heroism-I don't know whether I have the moral courage."

Her caller, Regina reflected, raising her eyes, was an authentic beauty. It was hardly possible that she could be more than twenty-four.

"You're what, Naomi-thirty?"

"Thirty-two. So after all, I'm young enough to do it later if we reconsider. Just now the atmosphere of the younger set doesn't encourage me to take it on." A shadow passed across the face of the other woman.

"Younger set? What do you mean by that? Here I am only thirty and I've got five."

"I know, but you've borne yours; the first when you were just a girl. You've never known anything else. I have allowed myself to grow selfish. Hamar is fond of youth and a good time, and in addition he is ambitious. He is determined to get to the top. I've got to keep footloose and attractive."

Her voice was low and husky. The other saw, for the first time, that her caller

was in the hands of an unusual emotion. She went across and sat down beside her, laying a hand on her arm.

"Let's talk sense," she said. "Are you sure you and Hamar Widdowson are not fooling yourselves and fooling each other? You think he wants certain things, a certain mode of life; and he thinks you do. Neither of you actually cares anything about them, but neither is brave enought to admit it to the other. Perhaps you are at cross-purposes about this adoption. Maybe if you really knew Hamar

"I've

"Know him?" Naomi flashed. been living with him for eleven years." "Yes, but you could live with him for fifty and still not know him. I find out new things about Jim constantly."

Mrs. Widdowson looked up, and her eyes held an odd, interested look.

"Well, that's true. I found out something about Hamar last night at the dance; or I think I did. Something that scared me."

Mrs. Aldis rose and crossed the room, her frown suggesting decision.

"Naomi, I don't think you came here to-day to set me right about Michael at all."

She raised a hand to prevent interruption.

"You came here because you couldn't help it. You were drawn. Your true impulse is toward what I have here children, confusion, dirt, tears, and happiness."

Her guest looked away.

"I didn't know it, if I was drawn. Perhaps you are right." She spoke falteringly. After a moment she went on.

"I know I was upset, confused. I wanted something I didn't have at home."

Regina spoke sharply:

"I am going to prescribe for you. Do exactly as I say. Go straight from here to the orphans' home and get that boy again and take him to your house. Have him there when Hamar comes home for dinner. And keep him. Get a girl too; you and Hamar have plenty of money, or you would have if you'd cut out some of the non-essentials."

Naomi smoothed the fabric of the sofa, hiding the bright tears.

"Do as I say," Mrs. Aldis urged. "Try it, anyhow. You and your husband aren't competent to-thresh it out, as you say. What you need is action." The other spoke almost inaudibly.

"I wish I dared tell you what I saw at the club; the fright I had, about Hamar.' "Don't. Don't tell me or anybody. Drive to the home now."

Naomi stood, and moved toward the door.

"It's funny how the game beats you,' she said. "I've devoted myself to keeping young, but while I was doing it a new generation was rushing up, crowding me back."

"Hush." Her hostess slid an arm around her waist and opened the door, pushing her gently into the vestibule. " "When a woman starts thinking like that it's time she did something. You don't really want to say anything more. If you stay any longer you'll tell me something you'll regret."

She stepped back into the room and took from the mantel a plush elephant.

"Take this to the little boy," she said, pressing it into Naomi's arm. "It's nice to take a toy to a child."

The inner door closed.

Outside in the car Naomi sat and pondered. Then, with an odd smile, she reached to the rear seat and got the plush elephant from where she had tossed it. She laid it in her lap and started the car.

Later, with as little time as the coupé needed to cover the miles between town and the orphans' home, she stood in the barren office and searched the face of the nurse in charge.

"And you can't tell me who has him?” She asked in an appalled voice.

"No, I don't know. And even if I did, it's against the rules to tell who takes 'em out on trial. If he comes back you can have the next chance. He's such a promising little fellow he won't want a home long. The party that took him, probably they'll keep him."

The woman turned away. She was used to such scenes. Stricken and embarrassed, Naomi stood hesitating by the desk. She recalled how Michael had taken the hand of a nurse and had trudged down the long, dim corridor toward the