"Now," he said to the girl, as soon as Henri had left, "tell me about yourself." "You knew about Aunt Kitty?" she asked. "No," he replied hesitatingly, with an uneasy feeling that it was one of those things that he should know about. "She was taken ill here in Paris in February, and died shortly after we reached New York," she explained. What Covington would have honestly liked to do was to congratulate her. Stripping the situation of all sentimentalism, the naked truth remained that she had for ten years given up her life utterly to her aunt--had almost sold herself into slavery. Ostensibly this Aunt Kitty had taken the girl to educate, although she had never forgiven her sister for having married Stockton; had never forgiven her for having had this child, which had cost her life; had never forgiven Stockton for losing in business her sister's share of the Dolliver fortune. Poor old Stockton--he had done his best, and the failure killed him. It was Chic Warren who had told Covington the pitiful little tale. Chic always spoke of the aunt as "the Vamp.," the abbreviation, as he explained, being solely out of respect to her gray hairs. Marjory had received her education, to be sure; but she had paid for it in the only coin she had--the best of her young self from seventeen to twenty-seven. The only concession the aunt had ever made was to allow her niece to study art in Paris this last year. "I have n't heard from Chic since Christmas," he explained; "so I did n't know. Then you are back here in Paris--alone?" Unconsciously he had emphasized that word "alone." "Why not?" she asked directly. She held her head a bit high, as if in challenge. "Nothing; only--" He did not finish. He could not very well tell her that she was too confoundedly good-looking to be alone in Paris. Yet that was what he thought, in spite of his belief that, of all the women he had ever met, she was the best able to be alone anywhere. There were times when he had sat beside her, not feeling sure that he was in the same room with her: it was as if he were looking at her through plate-glass. To-night, however, it was not like that. She looked like a younger sister of herself. "Still painting?" he inquired.