“Because you laughed at me,” she answered.
“But I did not mean it. You are beautiful, Sis, indeed you are very beautiful.”
“Oh no, I’m not,” she said. “I know what beauty is now.”
He could say nothing for a time. He hardly knew why he said what he did when he spoke.
“Sis,” he asked her gently, “tell me, why did you want to be beautiful?”
“Because—because I loved you,” she answered slowly and with a sob.
And when her father got home that afternoon and walked gayly into the little adobe house, he found them still together, one dead—one weeping.
A BRIEF BURLESQUE.
As Performed Upon the Modern Stage.