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4
THAT ROYLE GIRL

pressive structure on the north side of the street. It had several doors upon its court, each a core for a cluster of rooms and suites which were identified only by their position in relation to the entrances and to the lighted windows in tiers over each door where the stairways ascended.

Joan Daisy glanced immediately at a window on the second floor, just beyond the second stairway, to see whether by any chance Fred Ketlar was in his flat. She knew it was hardly possible, at this hour; and his window was dark. Her window, which was directly above his, also was dark, as she expected it to be. Many another, besides the windows in the tiers over the entrances, was alight at this midnight; but Joan Daisy had no interest in them. She turned and gazed again at the moon while she reckoned how long it would be before Fred Ketlar would come. Hours, she realized; but she did not go in. She played with the moon, pulling it to and fro behind an opposite chimney. She made it follow her for a few paces back toward the boulevard; then she set off in the other direction past the court of several doors, drawing the moon with her all the way to the end of the street and to the smooth, silvery sands of the lake.

There she lost control of the moon which floated far away from her in the midst of the wide, calm, star-specked sky.

Joan Daisy went along the street at the edge of the beach until she found a gate in the fence between the sand and the sidewalk and she stepped upon the shore and dropped down, with her legs under her. She drew off her gloves, sifting the dry, cool sand through her slim, white fingers.

Still she was alone. This was a beach used by bathers and there were bath-houses near; the apparatus of