and," she added mockingly of herself, "an author, too, if you please. An author in embryo anyhow." She laughed and made a little bow. She was always in an irrepressibly joyous mood when one of her stories had been accepted.
"You must be very proud, Mother and Dad," Constance managed to say steadily enough.
"Yes, yes, yes, we are, we are," her father agreed, nodding at her over the rims of his glasses. "Pretty good records they're making on the whole."
They're making! How casually he ignored her record, how naturally he counted her out of the family honors.
She turned and left the room when she could, groped her way up two flights of stairs to the large luxurious bedroom which she shared with Adelaide. Thank goodness, it was empty! Constance did not turn on the electricity. There was a light in the hall which lit the room sufficiently for her to put away her outside things in their familiar places in the closet. Immediately afterwards she flung herself down on the long couch in the bay window, and lying there, without a flicker of an eyelash or a trace of a tear, she faced a few merciless truths about herself.
"Myrtle's right," she said, "there's no possi-
