NOT quite seventeen years later, on a fine June morning, Ruth Warham issued hastily from the house and started down the long tanbark walk from the front veranda to the street gate.

She was now nineteen--nearer twenty--and a very pretty young woman, indeed.

She had grown up one of those small slender blondes, exquisite and doll-like, who cannot help seeming fresh and sweet, whatever the truth about them, without or within.

This morning she had on a new summer dress of a blue that matched her eyes and harmonized with her coloring.

She was looking her best, and she had the satisfying, confidence-giving sense that it was so.