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overrunning the established quota at the bank and the directors wanted more security.

"I'm sure that's it," breathed Nessie, as if a burden had been lifted from her mind.

For the next thirty or forty minutes their conversation was a trying haphazard talk which covers the intimate jangle between illy paired lovers. The girl, three chairs distant from her suitor, still leaned away from him, and Belshue sat bent forward toward Nessie as if a rope were about his hips binding him to his seat.

As Nessie chattered of this and that, she was really thinking with dismay, "I have told a story. I can no longer say I am a truthful girl." Her sense of wickedness grew and grew; it interrupted her speech. At last she looked at the middle-aged man sitting bound in the stiff green chair and said with entire disconnection, "Mr. Belshue, I told you a story."

Her breath tone, the wideness of her blue eyes gave a serio-comic touch to her confession.

"What was your story about?" asked the jeweller, with the first glimpse of humour he had known during the evening.

"About the dance—somebody did ask me to go with them."

Belshue stopped smiling.

"Who?"

"One of the boys here in the hotel."

The jeweller sat pondering this, also thinking with a thrill how exquisite a thing it would be to have a perfectly truthful wife. Out of his thoughts he said abruptly, "Nessie, I hate for you to stay here. There's no telling who you'll be thrown with. I wish—"

"Goodness, the boarders don't worry me, I'm in my room."

"Yes, but somebody asked you to a dance."

"He wrote me a note."

"A note!" The feeling grew that it really was unsafe for