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“Don’t you believe it!” he interrupted. “That man who was talking to you was Sam Ward. He’s the smartest newspaper man in New York; he was just leading you on. Do you suppose there’s a reporter in America who wouldn’t know you in the dark? Wait until you see the Sunday paper.”

Sister Anne exclaimed indignantly.

“He did not know me!” she protested. “It quite upset him that I should be wasting my life measuring out medicines and making beds.”

There was a shriek of disbelief and laughter.

“I told him,” continued Sister Anne, “that I got forty dollars a month, and he said I could make more as a typewriter; and I said I preferred to be a manicurist.”

“Oh, Anita!” protested the admiring chorus.

“And he was most indignant. He absolutely refused to allow me to be a manicurist. And he asked me to take a day off with him and let him show me New York. And he offered, as attractions, moving-picture shows and a drive on a Fifth Avenue bus, and feeding peanuts to the animals in the park. And if I insisted upon a chaperon I might bring one of the nurses. We’re to meet at the soda-water fountain in the Grand Central Station. He said, ‘The day cannot begin too soon.'”

“Oh, Anita!” shrieked the chorus.

Lord Deptford, who as the newspapers had repeatedly informed the American public, had come to the Flaggs’ country-place to try to marry Anita Flagg, was amused.

“What an awfully jolly rag!” he cried. “And what are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing,” said Anita Flagg. “The reporters have been making me ridiculous for the last three years; now I have got back at one of them! And,” she added, “that’s all there is to that!”

That night, however, when the house party was making toward bed, Sister Anne stopped by the stairs and said to Lord Deptford: “I want to hear you call me Sister.”

“Call you what?” exclaimed the young man. “I will tell you,” he whispered, “what I’d like to call you!”

“You will not!” interrupted Anita. “Do as I tell you and say Sister once. Say it as though you meant it.”

“But I don’t mean it,” protested his lordship. “I’ve said already what I….”

“Never mind what you’ve said already,” commanded Miss Flagg. “I’ve heard that from a lot of people. Say Sister just once.”

His lordship frowned in embarrassment.

“Sister!” he exclaimed. It sounded like the pop of a cork.

Anita Flagg laughed unkindly and her beautiful shoulders shivered as though she were cold.

“Not a bit like it, Deptford,” she said. “Good-night.”

Later Helen Page, who came to her room to ask her about a horse she was to ride in the morning, found her ready for bed but standing by the open window looking out toward the great city to the south.

When she turned Miss Page saw something in her eyes that caused that young woman to shriek with amazement.

“Anita!” she exclaimed. “You crying! What in Heaven’s name can make you cry?”

It was not a kind speech, nor did Miss Flagg receive it kindly. She turned upon the tactless intruder.

“Suppose,” cried Anita fiercely, “a man thought you were worth forty dollars a month–honestly didn’t know!–honestly believed you were poor and worked for your living, and still said your smile was worth more than all of old man Flagg’s millions, not knowing they were YOUR millions. Suppose he didn’t ask any money of you, but just to take care of you, to slave for you–only wanted to keep your pretty hands from working, and your pretty eyes from seeing sickness and pain. Suppose you met that man among this rotten lot, what would you do? What wouldn’t you do?”

“Why, Anita!” exclaimed Miss Page.

“What would you do?” demanded Anita Flagg. “This is what you’d do: You’d go down on your knees to that man and say: ‘Take me away! Take me away from them, and pity me, and be sorry for me, and love me–and love me–and love me!”