Under the Law

by Edwina Stanton Babcock

"I can't help ... pitying myself.... I've been so—so crazy; and now," shuddering, "I can't play any more."

"You poor little thing, poor little thing," Sard paused, her hand passed over the tousled head. This young face and hand were inexperienced, but Sard was like a pilot trying to pierce mists. "I guess we've always got to play," she said, "even when we—well, that Punchinello idea, you know. But anyway, Minga, you mustn't cry like that because it's wrong; it does something to your nerves. I remember they said it in the psychology class."

"But I've done an awful thing," wept Minga. She sat up suddenly. "Sard, you don't know what I did to-night," Minga lifted her hand and passed it swiftly over her face as if she would brush away some new look of shame and repeated:

"I've done the awful thing; I wouldn't have cared if it had been anyone else, but I felt wild after I had given Tawny back his ring and I thought I'd take a chance and so, oh, Sard, while we were dancing I told Watts Shipman I loved him, and told him in a silly way, a Cinny, Gertrude way, and that's the awful thing; for you see, Sard, I do love him. Oh, I do, I do," cried poor little Minga. "But I told him in that way, and he doesn't respect me."

Sard, rocked by a surprise that bordered very nearly on hysterical laughter, crept up closer to the little sufferer.

"My hat!" she said in awed tones. Her hair swept over her leaning face; she pushed it back. "My hat!"

Minga fell on her friend, burying her face in this long veil of hair. "I did—I did—I couldn't seem to help it—I was wild, you see, and I needed a friend, a sort of fatherly person, don't you know." Minga lifted her face and looked at her chum helplessly. "He is the only person that ever scolded me and made me mind, and so, you see, I loved him." There was a long silence, then, "I think he's wonderful. I thought maybe he could make me—make me—better."

Sard, with a rush of understanding, threw her arms around the forlorn figure.

"Poor little thing," she crooned.

"No," said Minga with a kind of shudder, "not that any more, Sard. I guess I'm different now; I guess I've got to be a nut or high-brow or something. I've got to grow bigger, you see," with a piteous gesture. "I thought he might grow to care if he knew I did, and I told him. It was out by that fountain, you know, and the—the water seemed like tears." Minga's eyes widened over her own poetic thought. "My goodness," she ejaculated, "I'll always think of that now when I see that fountain." Then she went on, "But when I told him," the young voice broke a little piteously, "he just took my two hands as if he was going to sort of hold me from myself and himself. Oh, a terrible way and then he said ... he just said, 'You are a very dear little thing, you are a very dear little thing'—and it was finished," said Minga with her childish gulp. "I couldn't screech or howl and make him come back. I—I didn't even try. He just walked away from me. It was like a play, only awful; he walked right straight toward the mountain—I saw him in the moonlight and now," said Minga, "I—I have this awful ache."