"I did," he said, his pale eyes twinkling with delight. "It was easy, too. I dragged in O'Valley's orphan-asylum days and all, and how we both married diamonds in the rough. Woof, how she squirmed!" He rose and went to the absurd little buffet, pouring out two glasses of "red ink" and gulping down one of them. "I wish I had O'Valley's money; I'd put away a houseful of this stuff. I'm going to dig up a few bottles at the club—in case of illness." Trudy did not want her glass, so he drank that as well.

"You take too much of that stuff," Trudy warned, gathering up her debris; "and when you have taken too much you talk too much."

Gaylord rewarded her by consuming a third glass. "Shall we eat out?"

She shook her head. "Too expensive. There's no need for it now. I bought some potato salad and I have canned pineapple and sugar cookies."

She dumped her work into a basket and flew round the dining room until she summoned Gaylord to join her in a meal laid out on the corner of a dingy luncheon table.

The wine dulled Gay's appetite and Trudy's had been taken quite away by Beatrice's proposed visit. Besides, they put the latest jazz record on their little talking machine, which helped substitute for a decent meal. They danced a little while and then Trudy planned what she should wear for the O'Valley dinner party and Gaylord figured how much money he needed before he would dare try buying an automobile, and they finished the evening by attending the nine-o'clock movie performance and buying fifteen cents' worth of lemon ice and two sponge cakes to bring home as a piece de resistance.

* * * * *

Beatrice found herself amused instead of annoyed as she climbed the stairs to the Vondeplosshe residence. At Trudy's request Gay had discreetly consented to be absent. He had pretty well picked up the threads of his various enterprises and what with his club duties, his second-rate concerts, his gambling, and commissions from antique dealers, he managed to put in what he termed a full day. So he swung out of the house early in the afternoon to buy himself a new winter outfit, wondering if Trudy would row when she discovered the fact.

Gaylord's theory of married life was "What's mine is my own, and what's yours is mine." He relied on Trudy to mend his clothes and make his neckties, keep house and manage with a laundress a half day a week, yet always be as well dressed and pretty as when she had slacked in the office and boarded without cares at Mary's house. She must always seem happy and proud of her husband and have her old pep—being on the lookout for a way to make their fortunes. She must also remain as young looking as ever and always be at his beck and call. Gaylord was rapidly developing into an impossible little bully, the usual result of an impoverished snob who manages to become a barnacle-like fixture on someone a trifle more foolish yet better of nature than himself.

Had he been less aristocratic of family and stronger of brawn he would have beaten Trudy if she displeased him. As it was, after the first flush of romance passed, he began to sneer at her in private when she made mistakes in the ways of the smart set into which Gaylord had been born, and when she protested he only sneered the louder. He felt Trudy should be eternally grateful to him. Trudy found herself bewildered, hurt—yet unable to combat his contemptible little laughs and sneers. Trudy was shallow and she knew not the meaning of the word "ideal," but for the most part she was rather amiable and unless she had a certain goal to attain she wished everyone about her to be happy and content. As she had married Gaylord only as a stepping-stone she was fair enough to remind herself of this fact when unpleasant developments occurred. As long as he was useful to her she was not going to seize upon pin-pricks and try to make them into actual wounds.

She decided to wear her one decent tea gown when Beatrice called, pleading a bad headache as an excuse for its appearance. She knew the tea gown was an excellent French model, a hand-me-down from Gay's sister, and her nimble fingers had cleaned and mended the trailing pink-silk loveliness until it would make quite a satisfactory first impression.

She cleaned the apartment, recklessly bought cut flowers, bonbons, and two fashion magazines to give an impression of plenty. She even set old golf clubs and motor togs in the tiny hall, and she timed Beatrice's arrival so as to put the one grand-opera record on the talking machine just as she was coming up the stairs.

Then she ran to the door in pretty confusion, to say spiritedly: "Oh, Mrs. O'Valley, so good of you. I'm ever so happy to have you. I'm afraid it isn't proper to be wearing this old tea gown but I had a bad headache this morning and I stayed in bed until nearly luncheon, then I slipped into the first thing handy.... Oh, no. Only a nervous headache. We took too long a motor trip yesterday, the sun was so bright.... No, indeed; you do not make my headache worse. It's better right this minute.... Now please don't laugh at our little place. Can't you play you're a doll and this is the house you were supposed to live in? I do—I find myself laughing every time I really take time to stand back and look at the rooms.... Put your coat here. Such a charming one, the skins are so exquisitely matched. I do so want to talk to you."

She had such an honest, innocent expression that Beatrice found herself won over to the cause. Trudy understood Beatrice at first sight; she knew how to proceed without blundering.

"Sit here, Mrs. Steve, for I can't call you Mrs. O'Valley with Gay singing the praises of Bea and Beatrice and the Gorgeous Girl."

"Then—er—call me Beatrice," she found herself saying.

"How wonderful! But only on condition that I am Trudy to you. How pleased Gay is going to be! He adores you. You have no idea of how much he talks about you and approves all you do and say. I used to be a teeny weeny bit jealous of you when I was a poor little nobody." She passed the chocolates, nodding graciously as Beatrice selected the largest one in the box.

Trudy chattered ahead: "I was glancing through these fashion books this afternoon to get an idea for an afternoon dress. Of course I can't have wonderful things like you have"—looking with envy at the Gorgeous Girl's black-velvet costume—"still, I don't mind. When one is happy mere things do not matter, do they—Beatrice?"

Beatrice hesitated. Then she fortified herself by another bonbon. This strange girl was both interesting and dangerous. Certainly she was not to be snubbed or ridiculed. Vaguely Beatrice tried to analyze her hostess, but as she had never been called upon to judge human nature she was sluggish in even trying to exercise her faculties.

In China fathers have their daughters' feet bound and make them sleep away from the house so their moans will not disturb the family. In America fathers often repress their daughters' self-sufficiency and intellect by bonds of self-indulgence, and when the daughters realize that a stockade of dollars is a most flimsy fortress in the world against the experiences which come to every man and woman the American girls are the mental complement of their physically tortured Chinese cousins—hopeless and without redress.

"You have made this place look well," Beatrice said, presently, "It is a perfect tinder box. Papa knows the man who built it."

Trudy flushed. "We are merely trying out love in a cliffette," she said, sweetly, "instead of the old-style cottage. We can't expect anything like your apartment. We have that prospect to look forward to. Besides, we have the advantage of knowing just who our real friends are," she added, smiling her prettiest.

Beatrice disposed of another chocolate. She told herself she was being placed in an awkward position. She had occasion to keep thinking so every moment of her visit, for Trudy hastened to add that she had never liked office work and yet Mr. O'Valley had been so good to her, and wasn't it splendid that America was a country where one had a chance and could rise to whatsoever place one deserved; and when one thought of Beatrice's own dear papa and handsome husband, well, it was all quite inspiring and wonderful—until Beatrice was as uncomfortable about Steve's goat tending and her father's marital selection of a farmer's hired girl as Trudy really was of the apartment and her second-hand frock.

Trudy lost no time in introducing the magic vanishing-cream and liquid face power, and before the call ended Beatrice had ordered five dollars' worth of each and some for Aunt Belle, and she had offered to take Trudy to her bridge club some time soon.

As the door closed Trudy sank back in her chair, informing the imitation fireplace joyously: "It was almost too easy; I didn't have to work as hard as I really wanted to." Wearily she dragged off her tea gown for a bungalow apron and then prepared a supper of delicatessen baked beans and instantaneous pudding for her lord and master.

* * * * *

The dinner with the O'Valleys was equally fruitful of results. Despite Steve's protests that he did not wish to know Gay and that Trudy was impossible he was forced to listen to their inane jokes and absurd flatteries and to look at Trudy in her taupe chiffon with exclamatory strands of burnt ostrich, and watch her deft fashion of handling his wife, realizing that people with one-cylinder brains and smart-looking, redheaded wives usually get by with things!

After their guests had departed Steve began brusquely: "Do you like'em?"

"No; I told you before that they amused me. She is fun, and poor Gay is a dear."

"Are you going to have them round all the time? That woman's laugh gets on my nerves, and I want him shot at sunrise. They can't talk about anything but the movies and jazz dancing and clothes."

"What do you want them to talk about? Don't pace up and down like a wild beast." Beatrice came up and stood before him to prevent his turning the corner.

He looked down at her without answering. She was clad in shimmering white loveliness cut along the same medieval lines as the gown another Beatrice had worn when Dante first saw her walking by the Arno; her hair was very sunshiny and fragrant and her dove-coloured eyes most appealing.

He burst out laughing at his own protest. "Am I a bear? Come and kiss me. If you like them or they amuse you just tote 'em about, darling. Only can't you manage to do it while I am out of town? They do fleck me on the raw."

"Hermit—beast," she dimpled and shook her finger at him.

"I just want you," he said, simply; "or else people who can do something besides spend money or sponge round for it."

"Sometimes you frighten me—you sound booky."

"I'm not; I want real things, Bea. I feel hungry for plain people."

"You have them all day long in your office and your shops; I should think when you come home you'd welcome a good time."

"Our definitions differ. Anyhow, I'm not going to find fault with your friends. I've nothing against them except that they are time wasters."

"Trudy boarded at your wonderful Miss Faithful's house."

"In spite of Mary's common sense, and not because of it."

"You think a great deal of that girl, don't you?" she asked, patting his sleeve.

"She deserves a great deal of credit; she has worked since she was thirteen, and she is as true-blue as they come."

"Do you think she will ever marry and leave you?" she asked, laying the sunshiny head on his arm.

"I never want her to; I'd feel like buying off any prospective bridegroom."

"That's not fair." Her hand stole up to pat his cheek. "She has the right to be happy—as we are, Steve!"

He stared at her in all her lovely uselessness. "You funny little wife," he whispered—"fighting over losing a postage stamp one minute and buying a new motor car the next; going to luncheon with the washed of Hanover and spending the afternoon with Trudy; making fun of Mary Faithful's shirt waists and then pleading for her woman's happiness.... Beatrice, you've never had half a chance!"

* * * * *

The next afternoon Mary and Luke Faithful were summoned home. Later in the day Steve received word that their mother had succumbed to a violent heart attack. He found himself feeling concerned and truly sorry, wondering if Mary had any one to see to things and relieve her of the responsibility. Then he wondered if this death would cause a dormant affection to become active love as often happens, causing him to lose his right-hand man. He reproached himself for knowing so little of her private life. When he went into her deserted office to find a letter it seemed distinctly lonesome. It was hard to realize how suddenly things happen and how easily the world at large becomes accustomed to radical changes. Already a snub-nosed little clerk was taking up a collection for the flowers.

For the first time in years Steve felt depressed and weary. The anaesthesia was losing its power.

Within the coming week as vital a mental change was to come to Steve as the death of Mrs. Faithful was to cause in Mary's life. And as Mary, to all purposes, would resume her business routine with not a hint of the change, so would Steve fail to betray the mental revolution that was to take place in his hitherto ambitious and obedient brain.

Briefly what was to happen was this—after visiting Mary in her home and after seeing the Gorgeous Girl during a test of one's abilities, Steve was to realize that there are two kinds of person in the world: Those who make brittle, detailed plans, and those who have but a steadfast purpose. His wife belonged to the former class and Mary to the latter, which he was to discover was his choice at all times!



CHAPTER VIII

The day of Mrs. Faithful's funeral was the day that Beatrice O'Valley had arranged to introduce Trudy Vondeplosshe to her bridge club, the members of which were keen to see Gay's wife in order to prove whether or not Bea's report concerning her was correct—that she was a clever young person quite capable of taking care of both her own and Gay's futures.

Beatrice particularly looked forward to the afternoon. Introducing Trudy served as an attraction, and besides the hostess had telephoned her that she had just received a box of Russian sweetmeats made by a refugee who was starting life anew in New York, and two barrels of china, each barrel containing but three plates and each plate being valued at six hundred dollars. Furthermore, Beatrice was wearing an afternoon costume that would demand no small share of attention, and there was the additional joy of dazzling Trudy by her tapestry-lined winter car. So when Steve reminded her in a matter-of-fact way that the funeral services for Mrs. Faithful were to be at three she stared in amazement.

"My dear boy, I am very sorry your secretary's muzzy has died—but I cannot change my plans. I accepted for both Trudy Vondeplosshe and myself more than a week ago."

Steve wondered if he had heard correctly. "You don't imagine for an instant that Trudy will not go? She boarded there; they did everything for her."

Beatrice shrugged her shoulders. "She was phoning me before lunch and is all agog with excitement. Poor little thing, it means a lot for her. She will be ready at three and I am to call for her."

"I don't think she understands the funeral is to-day. I know she is heartless and shallow, but even she would scarcely omit such a duty."

Beatrice gave a long sigh. "Dear me, you ought to have been an evangelist. I can't understand why you suddenly become punctilious and altruistic. For years you never did anything but try to make money and wonder if I would marry you—you never cared who was dead or what happened as long as you were secure."

"Quite true. But I have made a fortune and married you, and it is time for other things."

"You are welcome to them," she said, quite enjoying the argument. "Besides, I sent my card with the flowers."

"It isn't the same as going yourself, it is your duty to go, Bea. The girl has taken the brunt of business while we played and she has only the reward of a salary. Her mother has died, which means that her home is gone. I call it thick to choose a bridge party instead of paying a humane debt."

"Why am I dragged into it? She isn't working for me! Papa never asked me to go when any of his people had relatives who died. I don't think he ever went himself unless there was a claim to be adjusted."

"I shouldn't ask it if it were any one else—but Mary Faithful is different."

"You are quite ardent in your defence of her. Be sensible, Steve. What does it matter whether I go or don't go? I think it quite enough if you appear. Now if she were in need of actual money——"

"Oh, certainly!" he said, bitterly. "That would give you the chance to play off Lady Bountiful, drive up in state with your check book and accept figurative kisses on the hand! But when a plain American business girl who has served me more loyally than she has herself loses her mother you won't be a few moments late at a bridge party in order to pay her the respect employers should pay their employees. I don't blame Trudy—I expect nothing of her—but I do blame you."

"So my plans are to be set aside——?"

"Plans!" he interrupted. "If someone else were to tell you that they had an East Indian yogi who was going to give a seance this very afternoon you would hotfoot it to the telephone to inform Trudy that you must break your engagement with her, and send word to your original hostess as well. That is about all your plans amount to."

Beatrice's eyes had grown slanting, shining with rage. "I wish you would remember you are speaking to your wife and not to an employee. I would not go to that funeral now if it meant—if it meant a divorce." She pushed her chair back from the table—they were at luncheon—and stood up indignantly.

Looking at her in her gay light chiffon with its traceries of gold Steve wondered vaguely whether or not he had been wrong in selecting his goal, whether he would ever be able really to understand this Gorgeous Girl now that she belonged to him, or would discover that there was nothing much to understand about her, that it could all be summed up in the statement that her father by denying her a chance at development had stunted the growth of her ability and her character into raggle-taggle weeds of self-indulgence and willful temper.

"I shall not ask you to go with me," he knew he answered. It is quite as terrifying to find that one's goal has been wrongly chosen and ethically unsound as to find a boyhood dream merging into gorgeous reality.

Beatrice swept out of the room. Steve made an elaborate pretense of finishing his meal. Then he went into the drawing room in search of a newspaper. He came upon Beatrice sitting on a floor cushion, feeding Monster some bonbons.

"Have you been at her house?" she said, curiosity overcoming the pique.

"Yes. Where is that paper? I dropped it in this chair when I came in for luncheon."

"I had it taken away. I abominate newspapers in a drawing room—or muddy shoes," she added, looking at his own. "What did she say? What sort of a house is it?"

Steve stared at her in bewilderment. "What the devil difference does it make to you?" he demanded, roughly.

She gave a little scream. "Don't you dare say such things to me." Then she began to cry very prettily in a singsong, high-pitched voice. "Monster—nobody loves us—nobody loves us—we can't have a merry Christmas after all."

"I shan't be home for dinner," Steve added more politely. "Miss Faithful's absence just now makes things quite rushed—I'll work until late."

Beatrice sprang up, letting Monster scramble unheeded to the floor. "Oh, you are trying to punish me!"—pretending mock horror. "Stevuns dear, don't mind my not going! Plans are plans, you must learn to understand. And I'll send her a lovely black waist and a plum pudding for her Christmas. Tell her I was laid up with one of my bad heads.... No? You won't let me fib? Horrid old thing—come and kiss me!... Ah, you never refuse to kiss me, nice cave man with bad manners and muddy shoes, wanting to thump his strong dear fists on my little Chippendale tables—and grow so good and booky all in an instant. Forgets he was ever a bad pirate and robbed everyone until he could buy his Gorgeous Girl. Good-bye, story-book man, don't let the old funeral frazzle you!"

Steve left the house, undecided whether he was taking things too seriously and ought to apologize for being rude to Beatrice or whether his intuitive impression was correct—that Beatrice was not the sort of person he had imagined but that he, per se, was to blame in the matter.

Steve chose to take a street car to the Faithful house. He shrank from creating the atmosphere of a generous and overbearing magnate whose chauffeur opened the door of his machine and waited for him to step majestically upon terra firma. He felt merely a sympathetic friend, for some reason, as he walked the three blocks from the street car through slush and ice, and realized that Mary Faithful trudged back and forth this same pathway twice a day.

Unexpectedly he met Mary at the door, rather white faced and grayer of eyes than usual, but the same sensible Mary who did not believe in any of the customary agonies of grieving proper, as she afterward told him. The old house had not assumed a funereal air. There were flowers on the tables and the cheery fire crackled in the grate, and even the face of the dead woman seemed more content and optimistic than it had ever been in life.

Steve was not expected to go to the cemetery so he trudged back through the same slush to the street car. A fish-market doorway proved a haven during a long wait. He lounged idly against the doorway as if he were an unemployed person casting about for new fields of endeavour instead of the rushed young Midas whose office phone was ringing incessantly.

He was thinking about Mary Faithful's pleasant manner, the atmosphere of the old-fashioned house, where there was no effort to be smart or gorgeous or to conceal its shabbiness. He hoped Mary would return to the office within the next few days. He wanted her more than he wanted any one else, but he told himself this was because he was selfish and she was a capable machine. No, that was not it, he decided a moment later as he looked in at the activities of the fish market with passing interest.

Mary no longer seemed a mere machine but a remarkable woman, a womanly woman, too. He liked the old house with its atrocious horsehair sofa and chair tidies and the Rogers group in the front bay window. The fire had been so elemental and soothing, so were the pots of flowers, the shabby piano, and even more shabby books. One could rest there, distributing whole flocks of newspapers where he would. The death awe had not been permitted to take a paramount place. How lucky Luke was, to have such a sister.

Mary was about Beatrice's age. At thirteen she had begun to earn her own living. At thirteen Beatrice had had a pony cart, a governess, a multitude of frocks, her midwinter trip to New York, where she saw all the musical comedies and gorged on chocolates and pastry.

The upshot of it was that Steve decided to call on Mary the following afternoon; it was only courtesy he told himself by way of an excuse. He wanted to talk to her—not of business but of life, of the shabby old house. Outwardly he wanted to ask if he might help her and what her plans were, but in reality he wanted her to help him. He no longer felt displeased that Beatrice had not come with him; he felt positive Mary would understand, that she would dismiss Trudy's slight with proper scorn. Beatrice would have insisted upon arriving in state. By this time the bridge club with its Russian sweetmeats, its six-hundred-dollar china plates, the new afternoon frock, and the spoofing of Trudy must be well under way!

The fish market was not doing a land-office business. Stray purchasers approached and halted before the cashier's cage. Steve began watching them. Suddenly he became aware of the gorgeous young woman presiding behind the wire cage, reluctantly pushing out change and accepting slips, completely preoccupied in her own thoughts, while a copy of the High Blood Pressure Weekly lay at one side. What attracted Steve was the horrible similarity between this young person and his own wife! Both had the same fluffed, frizzled hair and a gay light chiffon frock with gold trimmings. Though it was December the toothpick point of a white-kid slipper protruded from the cage. An imitation Egyptian necklace called attention to the thin, powdered throat. The cashier was altogether a cheap copy of Beatrice's general appearance. She had the same tiny, nondescript features and indolent expression in her eyes; she was most superior in her fashion of dealing with the customers, never deigning to speak or be spoken to. As soon as she spied Steve, however, she smiled an invitation to enter and become owner of half a whitefish or so.

Then the car came and he leaped aboard. It seemed unbearable that a counterpart of Beatrice O'Valley was making change at Sullivan's Fish Market—but more unbearable to realize that women in the position of Beatrice O'Valley dressed and rouged—and acted very often—in such a fashion that women in the position of Trudy and this cashier queen sought industriously to imitate them.

* * * * *

Luke showed his grief in the normal manner of any half-grown, true-blue lad, singularly thoughtful of his sister's wishes, and mentioning everyone and everything except their mother and her death.

"We won't give up having a home," Mary told him the night of the funeral; "we'll move into a smaller place so I can take care of it."

"I guess I'll work pretty hard at school," was all he answered.

"Of course you will. I'm proud of you now, and if you work and show you deserve it I'll help you through college."

Luke shook his head. "Takes too long before I could get to earning real money. You ought to have it easy pretty soon."

"I love my work. Besides, you will live your own life, and so you must grow up and love someone and marry her. I can't depend on any one but myself," she added, a little bitterly.

Luke stared into the fire. Perhaps this tousle-haired, freckle-faced boy surmised his sister's love-story. If so no one—least of all his sister—should ever hear of the facts from his lips.

"I'm never going to get married. I want to make a lot of money like Mr. O'Valley did—quick. Then we'll go and live in Europe and maybe I'll get a steam yacht and we'll hunt for buried treasure," he could not refrain from adding.

"All right, dear. Just work hard for now and be my pal; we'll let the future take care of itself. Another thing—we want to have as merry a Christmas as if mother were with us. It's the only thing to do or else we'll find ourselves morbid and unable to keep going."

Shamed tears were stoically refused entrance into Luke's blue eyes. "I guess I'll buy you a silver-backed comb and brush. I got some extra money."

"Oh, Luke—dear!" Mary made the fatal error of trying to hug him. He wriggled away.

"Trudy never came near us," he said, sternly.

Mary was silent.

"But Mr. O'Valley came like a regular——"

"Don't you think you ought to get to bed?" Mary changed the subject. "Sleep in the room next to mine if you like."

"When are you coming upstairs?"

"Soon. I want to look over the letters."

Luke rose and pretended a nonchalant stretching.

"Are you going to the office right away?"

"Not until New Year's."

Something in the tired way she spoke evoked Luke's pity and sent him away to smother his boy-man's grief by promises of a glorious future in which his sister should live in the lap of luxury.

With its customary shock death had for the time being given Mary a false estimate of her mother and herself, the usual neurasthenic experience people undergo at such a time. It seemed, as she sat alone by the fire, that she must have been a strangely selfish and ungrateful child who misunderstood, neglected, and underestimated her mother, and she would be forced to live with reproachful memories the rest of her days. Each difference of opinion—and there had been little else—which had risen between them was magnified into brutal injustice on Mary's part and righteous indignation on her mother's. This state of mind would find a proper readjustment in time but that did not comfort Mary at the present moment. Her mother was dead, and when a mother is gone so is the home unless someone bravely slips into the absent one's place without delay and assumes its responsibilities and credits. For Luke's sake this was what Mary had resolved to do.

As she could not sleep she rummaged in a cabinet containing old letters and mementos, which added fuel to her self-reproach and misery. She had borne up until now. Mary had always been the sort who could meet a crisis. Reaction had set in and she felt weak and faulty, longing for a strong shoulder upon which to cry and be forgiven for her imagined shortcomings. As she read yellowed letters of bygone days and lives, finding the record of a baby sister who had lived only a few days and of whom she had been in ignorance, a scrap of her mother's wedding gown, old tintypes—she realized that her family was no more and that everyone needed a family, a group of related persons whose interests, arguments, events, and achievements are of particular benefit and importance each to the other and who unconsciously challenge the world, no matter what secret disagreements there may be, to disrupt them if they dare! Now only Luke and Mary comprised the family.

After midnight Mary battled herself into the commonsense attitude of going to bed. Wakening after the dreamless sleep of the exhausted she found low spirits and self-blame had somewhat diminished and though her state of mind was as serious as her gray eyes yet life was not utterly bereft of compensations.

Luke had thoughtfully risen early, clumsily tiptoeing about to get breakfast. Neighbours had furnished the customary donations of cake, pie, and doughnuts, which gave Luke the opportunity of spreading the breakfast table with these kingly viands and doing justice to them in no half-hearted fashion.

The sun streamed through the starched window curtains, and even the empty rocking-chair seemed serene in the relief from its morbid burden. Christmas was only a few days away. Mary decided that they should have a truly Christmas dinner, and that the words she had bravely spoken as a three-year-old runaway, found a mile from home and offered assistance by kindly strangers, should become quite true: "Not anybody need take care of myself," Mary had declared in dauntless fashion.

Later in the day Luke went to the office because Mary thought it best. So when Steve called he found her alone, the same cheery fire burning in the grate, the same posies blooming in their window pots, and the smell of homemade bread pervading the house, Mary in a soft gray frock presiding over the walnut secretary.

"I'm sorry not to be at the office," she began, thinking he had come to persuade her to return. "Sit down. Well—you see," indicating the stacks of addressed envelopes—"I really can't come back until after the New Year. Do you mind? There is a great deal to be seen to here, and I feel I've earned the right to loaf for a week. I want particularly to make the holidays happy for Luke."

"Of course you do. Besides, you never had your vacation."

"We'll call this a vacation and I'll work extra hard to prove to you that it was worth the granting." Still she did not understand that he wanted to talk to her for the very comfort of her companionship, to enjoy the fire, the smell of homemade bread, the atmosphere of shabby, lovely, everyday plain living.

"We'll decide that later. I came to see just—you. Surprised? I wanted to ask if there is anything I can do for you. I want to help if I may."

"I've no exact plans. Just a definite idea of finding a small apartment and making it as homey as possible. I loathe apartments usually," she added, impulsively, "but we must have a home and I can't assume a whole house. We will take our old things and fix them over, and the worst of them we'll pass on to someone needing them badly enough not to mind what they are." She was quite frank in admitting the tortured walnut and the engravings.

"I'm glad you are not going to break up and board—though it's none of my business. I brought some fruit. Do you mind?" He had been trying to hide behind the chair a mammoth basket of fruit.

"No. How lovely of you and Mrs. O'Valley!"

"It was not possible for Mrs. O'Valley to come yesterday," he forced himself to say. "She was very sorry and is going to call on you later."

"Thank you," Mary answered, briefly.

"You have a nice old place here. Mind if I stroll about and stare? I have very seldom been in rooms like this one. An orphan asylum, a ranch, a hall bedroom, star boarder, a club, a better club, the young palace—is my record. How different you seem in your home, Miss Faithful. Perhaps it's the dress. I like soft gray——" he caught himself in time.

Mary was blushing. She called his attention to some wood carving her father had done. Presently Steve changed the subject back to himself.

"You don't know how I'd like a slice of homemade bread," he pleaded. "Must I turn up my coat collar and go stand at the side door?"

"I made it because Luke had eaten nothing but pie and cake. You really don't want just bread?"

"I do—two slices, thick, stepmother size, please."

It seemed quite unreal to Mary as she was finally prevailed upon to bring in the tea wagon with the bread and jam trimmings to accompany the steaming little kettle.

"Man alive," sighed Steve, stretching out leisurely, "I came to console you and I'm being consoled and fed—in body and mind—made fit for work.... I say, what do you think of letting the Boston merger be made public at the banquet on——" He began a budget of business detail upon which Mary commented, agreeing or objecting as she felt inclined.

It was so easy to become clear-headed about work—details became adjusted with magical speed—when one had a gray-eyed girl with a tilted freckled nose sitting opposite. The soft gray dress played a prominent part, too, even if the Gorgeous Girl would have been amused at its style and material. Besides this, there was the wood fire, the easy-chair with gay Turkey-red cushions designed for use and not admiration, and no yapping spaniel getting tangled up in one's heels.

Before they realized it twilight arrived, and simultaneously they began to be self-conscious and formal, telling themselves that this would never do, no, indeed! Dear me, what queer things do happen all in a day! Still, it would always be a splendid thing to remember.

Certainly it was more edifying than to confront a nervous Gorgeous Girl who had discovered that her maid had been reading her personal notes.

"I sprinkled talcum powder on them and the powder is all smudged away, so Jody has been spying. She is packing her things now and I shall refuse any references. But who will ever take such good care of me, Steve? And please get dressed; we are invited to the Marcus Baynes for dinner. They have a wonderful poet from Greenwich Village who is spending the holidays with them—long hair, green-velvet jacket, cigar-box ukulele, and all. A darling! And I am going to take Monster because he does black-and-white sketches and I want one of my ittey, bittey dirl." And so on.

Certainly it was more pleasing than to have a shamed and confused Trudy elegantly attired come dashing in with a jar of vanishing cream as a peace offering, presumably to smooth out any wrinkles of grief, and to explain hastily that it looked like a lack of feeling not to be at the funeral but most certainly it was not—no, indeed; it was just tending to business. She was sure Mary realized how essential it was not to offend the Gorgeous Girl. How dreadful it was for poor Mary. She, Trudy, had cried her old eyes out thinking about it. Did Mary get the flowers she and Gay sent? She wished she could do something nice for Mary. How would she like to have a black-satin dress made at cost price? No? She wasn't going to wear mourning! Well, it was very brave but it would certainly look queer and cause talk.... Gay's moustache was coming on beautifully and no one at the bridge club had dared to spoof her!

At least there was some excuse for the delivery on Christmas Day of a parcel addressed to Miss Mary Faithful. It contained Steve's card, some wonderful new books with an ivory paper knife slipped between them. And when Mary wrote to thank him she found herself inclosing a demure new silver dime, explaining:

"I must give you a coin because you gave me a knife, and unless I did so the old superstition might come true—and cut our 'business affections' right straight in two!"



CHAPTER IX

Mary returned to the office with a premeditatedly formal air toward Steve. She had taken a New Year's resolution to refrain from letting an impulsive expression of sympathy assume false meanings in her heart. On the other hand, Steve felt a boor for having sent the books. He was so used to being called cave man and told not to do this or say that that he now pictured himself an awkward villain who had best confine himself to writing checks and growling at the business world.

He almost dreaded seeing Mary lest she show she considered the gift improper despite her delightful little note of thanks. This demeanour, however, was of short duration. They became their real selves before the morning passed, the medium being the question of keeping John Gager, an old clerk pressed into service during the war period and now superfluous.

"Are you going to let him go?" Mary reproached Steve.

"I think so; he's a doddering nuisance they tell me."

"But he's old and he has always served so faithfully. I don't think it's right to send him away now. He does do what is expected of him."

Mary's vacation had somewhat dimmed her business sagacity.

"I suppose; but we'll be doddering idiots some day, too. No one will keep us. No one can expect to be carried along indefinitely."

"It's the first time I have ever asked you to do such a thing," she insisted, fearlessly. "To see him trying to act as fit as twenty-five, wearing juvenile shirts and ties, struggling to be brisk, slangy, to oblige everyone and step along, you know. Oh, don't turn him away just yet; he is honest and he tries. I can't tell him, and can't you see his old face quiver when he opens his envelope and finds the dismissal slip?"

Steve's resolutions faded like mist before the sun. He found himself saying: "You ought to be a little sister to the poor. I guess we'll keep Gager for a while. He doesn't smoke cigarettes all day and try to lie about it. How did you like those books?" he added, boyishly.

Mary laid a finger on her lips. "Sh-h-h. It's business. But I did like them—so would you."

"I'd read them if I had an easy-chair and some homemade bread and tea. Do you know what I had to do for my Christmas Day?"

"Please—I'd rather not——"

"I must tell someone, and ask if I'm all wrong about it," he said, half humorously, half in earnest. "I told my father-in-law in part and it struck him as a huge joke. He purpled with laughing and said: 'Gad, she'll always have her way!'" Steve was thinking out loud. He was realizing that Constantine was not even conscious he had raised his daughter to be a rebel doll and he, apparently an honourable citizen, encouraged and upheld her in her doctrine.

"Well, what did you have to do?" Mary asked in spite of herself.

"I had to officiate at Monster's Christmas tree, which was in the boudoir, laden with the treasures of the four corners. I presented a diamond-studded gold purse and a sable cape to my wife and received a diamond-studded cigar knife—I have two others—and a mink-lined coat in return. I was dragged to a half-dozen different houses to deliver presents and collect the same, and witness the tragedy of Bea's receiving a vanity case she had given someone else two years before and which had evidently been going the rounds. It was a bit disconcerting to have it turn up.

"I had a ponderous seven-course dinner at Mr. Constantine's, during which I had to kiss Aunt Belle under the mistletoe and pretend to be elated, hear several yards of grand opera torn off on the new talking machine in its nine-hundred-dollar Chinese case, take my father-in-law to the club, return to find Trudy and Gay having a Yuletide word with my wife. Trudy brought a concoction of purple chiffon, jet beads, and exploded hen which was entitled a breakfast jacket, and in return she drew down a pair of silver candlesticks.

"After that we dressed in all our grandeur for the fancy-dress ball at Colonel Tatlock's, Beatrice as Juliet and I as the young and dashing Romeo! Shivering in our finery we drove to the Tatlock's to make fools of ourselves until three A. M. and shiver home again with aching heads and a handful of damaged cotillion favours. About the same sort of thing happened on New Year's." He laughed, but it was not a pleasant sound, inviting a response.

Beatrice dashed in, to Mary's relief, to bestow—over a week late—a Christmas present of perfume and a black-silk waist.

"Mr. O'Valley has explained how rushed I have been with my classes," she began, prettily, "but I have thought of you in all your sorrow. I lost my dear mother when I was too young to remember her, still it means a bond between us.... Oh, you are not wearing black? Dear me, that's too bad.... Well, you may have to go to somebody's funeral where you feel you want to wear it—a black waist is always useful."

She managed to carry Steve off to look at a set of pink glass sherbet cups she was to give her father for his birthday, and Mary was conscious of a certain pity for the Gorgeous Girl—prompted not so much by her present state of affairs as her inevitable future.

The last of January Steve was called away on a business trip through the Middle West. Beatrice had no desire to go with him; she said she simply could not conceive of having a good time in Indiana and Illinois, and what was the sense in bearing with him in his misery? But she was quite willing Steve should stay away as long as he was needed by business entanglements. In fact, Beatrice now betrayed a certain driving quality in trying to make him feel that as their honeymoon was ended and everyone had entertained for them it was high time Steve must retire from social life to a degree, and outdo her own father in the making of a vast fortune. She seldom begged him to ride with her or come home to luncheon to fritter away the best part of the afternoon in a pursuit of silver-pheasant ornaments for the dinner table. That phase of her selfishness was at an end. It was when Steve demanded the luxury of merely staying at home with no chattering peacocks of women and asinine, half-tipsy men playing with each other until early morning that Beatrice refused her consent.

She did not wish any personal domestic life, Steve decided after several experiences along these lines. She could not see the pleasure in a Sunday afternoon hike; walking to see a sunset was absurd! All very well to be whisked by at twenty miles an hour and give a careless nod at the setting golden sphere, but to trudge through wintry roads and up an icy hill and stand, frozen and fagged, weighted down by sweaters, to——Dear me, Steve really needed to see a doctor! Perhaps he had better start to play golf with papa!

Meals tete-a-tete caused her spirits to droop, and she soon fell into the habit of waiting until Steve was away or having her luncheon in her room. She was seldom up for breakfast, and when he protested against this hotel-like custom she would say: "I don't expect you to appreciate my viewpoint and my wishes, but at least be well-bred enough to tolerate them!"

He was on the point of reminding her that his viewpoint and wishes were treated only with argument and ridicule—but as usual he refrained. Silence on the part of one who knows he is in the right yet chooses apparently to yield the point in question is a significant milestone on the road of separation. An argument with Beatrice meant one of two outcomes: A violent scene of temper and overwrought nerves with tears as the conquering slacker's weapon or a long, sulky period of tenseness which made him take refuge in his office and his club.

He wondered sometimes how it was he had never before realized the true worth of his wife, how he had been so madly infatuated and adoring of her slightest whim during the years of earning his fortune and the brief period of their formal engagement. Almost reluctantly the anaesthesia of unreality and distorted values was disappearing, leaving Steve with but one conclusion: That it had been his own conceited fault, and therefore he deserved scant pity from either himself or the world at large.

Mark Constantine, whose activities lessened each month, due to ill health, began prowling about Steve's office at unexpected hours, cornering him for prosy talks and conferences, under which Steve writhed in helpless surrender. Since he realized the true meaning of his marriage he began placing the blame on the culprit—Beatrice's father. As he did so he wondered if it was possible that Constantine did not realize the havoc he had wrought. His wealth and Steve's speedily accumulated fortune via hides and government razors suddenly seemed stupid, inane; and he no longer felt a sense of pride at what he had accomplished. He never wanted to hear details of Constantine's more gradual and bitter rise in the world; there was certain to be slimy spots of which Steve in his new frame of mind could no longer approve. He was weary of hearing about money, just as his good sense caused him to be weary of socialistic prattling and absurd pleas for Bolshevism. It seemed to him that the dollar standard was the paramount means both magnate and socialist used to value inanimate and animate objects. He longed for a new unit of measure.

He was keen on business trips. At least he could have the freedom of his hotel and could roam about without being pointed out as the Gorgeous Girl's husband, the lucky young dog and so on. Neither would he be dragged from this house to that to sit on impossible futurist chairs while young things of thirty-nine clad in belladonna plasters and jet sequins gathered about to tell him what perfectly wonderful times their class in cosmic consciousness was having.

Mary Faithful was keen to have him go. She dreaded any furthering of the personal understanding between them. When one has become master of a heartache and thoroughly demonstrated that mastery it is not sensible to let it verge toward a heart throb, even if one is positive of the ability to change it back at will into the hopeless ache. It is like unhandcuffing a prisoner and saying: "Sprint a bit, I can catch up to you."

On the other hand, Beatrice had any number of activities to take up her time. Her period of being a romantic parasite—the world called it a sweet bride—was ended. She was now bent on becoming as mad and ruthless a butterfly as there ever was, and to the accomplishment of her aim she did not purpose to stint herself in any way. She still drew her own allowance from her father and accepted extra checks for extra things necessary for her welfare and popularity.

More than once Steve counted the monthly expenditures, with the same result—Beatrice was living on her father's income quite as much as on his own. Her position was not unlike that of people who say to their prosperous neighbours possessing a motor car: "We'll furnish the lunch and the gasolene, and you take us to the picnic grounds!" Constantine still owned the figurative motor car, or the substantial end of Beatrice's expenses, while Steve furnished the lunch and the gasolene, trying to delude himself that he was supporting his wife. Beatrice's clothes were beyond his income, for he was not yet a millionaire. Neither could he afford the affairs which she gave, with favours of jewellery; nor the trips here and there in private cars.

Furnishing the lunch and gasolene and perhaps a possible tire or so does not give one the sense of ownership that having the motor car gives; nor was it Steve's notion of being the possessor of a home. He spoke to Beatrice about it, only to be kissed affectionately and scolded prettily by way of answer; or else to have those eternal omnipresent tears reproach him for being cross "when papa wants me to have things and he has no one else in the world to spend all his money on."

After a few attempts he gave it up but resolved to make his fortune equal to his father-in-law's, as Beatrice wished. He saw no other way out of the situation. To do so in his present interests was impossible—he had fancied that half a million was a fair sum to offer a Gorgeous Girl—but he saw it was only a nibble at the line. He must outdo Constantine. He cast about for some unsuspected fields of effort, this time to strike out into work of which Constantine was ignorant. He began to resent the fact that after his lucky strike on the exchange he had played copy cat and gone mincing into the hide-and-leather business, using Constantine's good will as his stepping stone. The same was true of the stock bought in the razor factory; he had merely paid for the stock; he did not know the steps of progress necessary to the business.

This time he would prove his own merit, he would not take Constantine into his confidence. Unknown to any one save Mary, Steve selected a new-style talking machine to promote. He knew as much about talking machines as Beatrice knew about cooking a square meal. But Steve had lost his clear-headedness and he thought, as do most get-rich-quick men, that, possessed of the Midas touch, he could come in contact with nothing but gold.

He began backing the inventor and looking round for a factory site. He sought it away from Hanover, for he wanted it to be a complete surprise. He begrudged his father-in-law's knowing anything of it. He went into the enterprise rather heavily—but it did not worry him, for he was quite sure he possessed the luck eternal, and he must support his own wife. Side speculating was the only way he thought it possible to do so.

Meanwhile, Beatrice found Trudy to be both a good foil and a dangerous enemy, one who was not to be ridiculed or set aside. Trudy had never stopped working since the day Beatrice climbed the rear stairs of the Graystone and had been bullied into buying the vanishing cream. Beatrice scarcely knew the various steps which Trudy had climbed in a figurative sense, dragging Gay after her, grumbling and sneering but quite willing to be dragged.

"You see, aunty," she explained one stormy February afternoon while they were having a permanent wave put in their hair, "Trudy is so obliging and useful, and I'm sorry for her. She tries to do so many nice things for me that I never have a chance to become offended. I've tried! But she just won't break away. And I like to tease Steve by knowing her, Steve is such a bear when he doesn't like people. Rude is a mild term. He particularly hates Gay. Now Gay is quite a dear and he always played nicely with me. I should hate to lose him—so how can I offend his wife; particularly when she takes so well with older men?"

Aunt Belle sniffed. "Men old enough to be her father—you'd think they would appreciate mellowed love instead of a selfish little chicken."

The beauty doctor, who had spent the greater share of the day at the Constantine house, suppressed a smile and stored up the remark for her next customer.

"Oh, I don't know," Beatrice murmured as she consulted a hand glass. "I am beginning to wish I had married a man about papa's age. It would have been much jollier in some ways. Steve is so strenuous and rude. A cave man is fun to be engaged to and keep a record about in your chapbook—but when you marry him it is a different matter. I remember how thrilled and enthusiastic about Steve I used to be when he was working for papa and living in a hall bedroom. I knew he adored me yet had to keep his place, and I used to dream about him and wonder if he really would keep his word and make a fortune so he could marry me. But now he has done it——" She shrugged her shoulders.

"I wouldn't be too disappointed. Elderly men usually have wheel chairs and diets after a little, and you'd feel it your duty to play nurse."

"Oh, it's far better to be disappointed in one's husband than one's friends," Beatrice agreed. "I know that. For you can manage to see very little of your husband; but your friends—deary me, they your very existence."

"Does Trudy ever mention the days she worked in Steve's office?"

"Yes. Clever little thing, she knows enough to admit it prettily every now and then, so there is nothing to badger her about. She has even trained Gay to talk of it occasionally. She has done wonders for him; one of the clubmen is backing him to go into the interior-decorating business. Of course he will make good because everyone will feel morally obliged to go there. So the Vondeplosshes on the strength of this have moved to the Touraine, a different sort of apartment house, I assure you. They are entertaining, if you please; everyone asks them everywhere. Gay is painting garlands of old-fashioned flowers in panels for Jill's boudoir. I think I'll have the same thing done in mine."

"Gay is painting them?"

"Oh, no. Some limp artist who could never get the commission for himself. Gay stands about in a natty blue-serge effect and takes the credit and the check. What's new?"—turning to the beauty doctor. "I'm as dull as the Dead Sea."

Miss Flinks informed them of a labour revolt in the West.

"Horrid creatures, always wanting more! Well, they won't get it. I think Steve is ridiculous with his banquets and bonuses and all, and upon my word, Mary Faithful has as good an Oriental rug in her office as I have in my house. Tell us something really important, Miss Flinks."

Retrieving her error the beauty doctor whispered a scandal concerning the newly married Teddy Markhams, who had had such a violent quarrel the week before that Mrs. Teddy had pushed the piano halfway out the window and police had rushed to the scene thinking it might be another bomb explosion.

"How ripping!"

Beatrice was all animation, and she gave Miss Flinks no peace until she learned all the details, and the rumour about the actress who had rented an expensive town house for the season and a debutante who was being rushed to a retreat to prevent her marriage to a gypsy violinist who had already taught her the drug habit.

Trudy telephoned the latter part of the afternoon, and as it was a gray, blowy day with nothing special to do to revive one's spirits Beatrice urged her to come in for tea—tea to be cocktails and buttered toast.

Within a few moments she appeared—a symphony of blonde broadcloth set in black furs, very charming and chic, and so solicitous about Aunt Belle's recently removed mole and the scar left by the electric needle, and so admiring of the two newly beautified ladies that they were quite won in spite of themselves.

"Were you near here when you telephoned?" Beatrice asked, curiously. "You weren't ten minutes getting here and you look as spick and span as if you had stepped out of a bandbox."

"Look outside and you'll see that Gay and I have had a true case of auto-intoxication!"

Outside the window there proved to be a smart, selfish roadster, battleship-gray with vivid scarlet trimmings.

"Well!" Beatrice said in astonishment. At this identical moment she began to envy Trudy. She was really ashamed of the fact, nor did she understand why she should envy this bankrupt yet progressive little nobody in her homemade bargain-remnant costume. The reason was that Beatrice's latent abilities longed to be doing something, achieving something, capturing, inventing, destroying, earning if need be—but doing something. The daughter of Mark and Hannah Constantine could not help but have the germ of great ability within her, sluggish and spoiled as it might be; and it must perforce duly manifest itself from time to time. Beatrice realized that Trudy felt a greater joy and satisfaction in displaying this not-paid-for cheap machine—having sat up half the night to make the shirred curtains—than Beatrice ever could feel in her tapestry-lined, orchid-adorned limousine. So she began to envy Trudy just as Trudy envied her. Trudy had done nothing but struggle to be able to live, as she termed it; Beatrice had never been allowed to struggle!

"We owe for all but the left back tire," Trudy said before any one had the chance to hint of the fact; "but Gay has to have it for his new business, and it is such a joy! I hope you approve, Beatrice. And what a darling gown!"

There was nothing left for Beatrice but to order the cocktails and toast, and for Aunt Belle to agree smilingly with Trudy's clever suggestions.

Trudy never came to see Beatrice unless she gained some material point or had one in view, and the point she had come to gain this afternoon was of no small importance. In her own fashion she managed to inform her hostess that Gay had received an order from—well, it was a tremendous secret and he would be terribly cross if he knew she told even her dearest Bea and her sweet Aunt Belle, but she just couldn't help it—he had an order from Alice Twill, who thought she was going to beat everyone in town to the greatest sensation of the year: To have the barn of a Twill mansion remodelled, decorated and so on, from coal bin to cupola, until it was an exact copy of a French palace—she really forgot just which one. ... Yes, Alice's aunt in Australia had died and left her everything; Alice said she was not going to wait until she was on crutches before she spent it. Gay was simply out of his head trying to plan the thing and Alice was to move to a hotel for several weeks until a newly furnished wing was ready to be inhabited.

There was no reason why New York persons should have their homes like palaces and chateaux and so on, and turn their noses up at upstate residences. Alice was going to show them. And—this very subtly—Gay had said that if only Beatrice could have the authority to redecorate her father's home into an Italian villa Alice Twill would be the loser when comparisons were made—since the Constantine house had twice the possibilities and so on, and Beatrice twice the taste. And what an achievement it would be; a distinct civic improvement!... Yes, Gay was working with the best firms in New York, and there was no doubt of his success in the enterprise.

Before she left, Trudy had almost secured Beatrice's promise that the Constantine house should be made into an Italian villa and that, if she so decided, Gay should have the commission. There was a place at Frascati she had always admired, and they could use some ideas from a show place in Florida.

Had Trafalgar terminated differently Napoleon would have been no more surprised or jubilant than Trudy, who fairly skidded home to the new and more pretentious apartment, where she found Gay in one of his sneering, sulky moods and quite angry to think Trudy was carrying the day.

"How do I know Alice Twill will really come across?" he began. "And I suppose you've got the machine covered with mud, too. Anyway, what do I know about decorating? I work on my reputation and everyone's sympathies and I'm in fear all the time some real decorator will turn up and show my hand or else refuse to work under me and split commissions. You're too damned optimistic."

"If I wasn't optimistic where would we be? Starving," she said with no attempt at politeness. Common courtesies between them had long since been dispensed with. "I've gotten you nearly everything you have, and if you'll do as I say I'll go right on getting things for you. But you're lazy and jealous—that's what's the matter."

He gave a sneering little laugh. "Why, you poor nobody, people only tolerate you because of me. They roar behind your back."

"Do they? They pity me because I'm married to such a weak fish! Men are nice to you because of me—and there isn't a woman I've met that I have not made afraid of me. Beatrice hasn't the will power of a slug; you can hand her flattery in chunks as big as boulders and she swallows them without choking. It's her husband who sees through us."

"What—the goat tender? Oh, beg pardon—treading on someone else's toes. Or didn't they have goats in Michigan?"

"We'll never hang together another year," she said, recklessly. "The first chance I have to exchange you for a real man your day is over."

"You think any one else would marry you?"

"I don't think. I just go ahead grabbing everything I can, and when a person has to grab for someone else as well as herself it keeps them moving."

"You're a crude and impossible little fool."

Without warning Trudy's hand shot out, and on Gay's cheek rested a red mark for the greater part of the evening.

A half hour later he was trying to apologize, having bucked himself up to it with brandy, in order to borrow enough money to play pool with that same evening.



CHAPTER X

After Gay left, Trudy put on her things and trudged over to Mary's house. Gay had driven off in the car and she was glad he had. Like Steve the day of the funeral, she did not wish to drive but to have the nervous outlet of walking.

Trudy was seldom angry. But when she found Mary in the old library, the same true-blue, good-looking thing with just a little coldness of manner as Trudy tried to enthuse over her, Trudy felt ashamed. And she was angry far more often than she was ashamed.

"Where is Luke?" she asked, taking off her things and lying down wearily on the sofa. "Oh, Mary mine, you don't know how good it is to be here again, to be able to talk—really talk to someone."

"Luke is at basketball——" Mary began, stopping as she discovered that Trudy was in tears. "Why, what is it?" as Trudy sobbed the harsh, long sobs of a tormented and frail mind.

"You ought to hate me—selfish, insincere hypocrite—cheat—liar. Oh, I hate myself! I hate him, and Bea, and all of them! They aren't worth your blessed little finger. Mary, Mary, please stay quite contrary and never change. Never get to be a Gorgeous Girl, will you? ... Nerves, I suppose; and I haven't had the right things to eat." She sat up and began smoothing her injured flounces.

"You're so thin, and there are funny lilac shadows under your eyes. You can't live on nerve energy forever. And I know your delicatessen suppers or else the rich orgies to which you are invited—not enough sleep—and always that eternal upstage pose!"

"Gay wears on me; he is growing strong, with never an ache or pain. I never used to have them but I'm all unnerved and weak. He hates me, Mary. Yes, he does." She began a detailed recital of woes.

"Why not leave him?" Mary asked as there came a pause.

"Without any one else to marry?" Trudy's eyes were wide open in surprise.

"Must you have someone waiting to pay your board bill?"

"I couldn't go to work again."

"I thought you worked rather hard right now."

"That's different. I'm working to have a good time. And I'm a wonder; everyone says so. The clubmen are so nice to me. Beatrice has done a great deal, even if Steve hates us and acts as if we were poison.... He isn't happy."

Mary knew she was flushing. "Tell me some more about yourself."

But Trudy was not to be swerved from the other topic. "Beatrice makes fun of him and she flirts shamefully. She has half a dozen flames all the time. One was a common cabaret singer; she had him for tea when Steve wasn't there. Now she is tired of him. You see, she had to have someone to take Gay's place! I don't think Steve flirts with any one; he isn't that sort. He's so intense he will break his heart in the old-fashioned way and then go and be a socialist or something dreadful. They scarcely see each other, and of course Beatrice's father thinks everything is lovely and they are both perfection. He just can't see the truth. Steve is a cave man and Beatrice is a butterfly—I'm a fraud—and you're just an old dear!

"Yes, I am a fraud," she said, with sudden honesty. "I wouldn't come to see you unless I wanted something. I want to talk to you with all barriers down. I wish you had ever done some terrible thing or were unhappy. I don't know why, Mary dear; it's not as horrid as it sounds. I think it's because I want to know the real soul of you, and if you showed me how you met troubles and trials, you being so good, I'd be the better woman for it in meeting my problems."

It was truly a tired, oldish Trudy speaking. In the last sentence Trudy had touched the greatest depths of which she was capable—causing Mary to hint of her one deep secret.

"You're growing up, that's all. And I'm not good—not a bit good. Why, Trudy, do you know I have had to fight hard—terribly hard about something? I've never told any one before. I can't really tell what it is!"

"Over what? You saint in white blouses and crisp ties, always smiling and working and helping people! How have you battled? Tell me, tell me!"

Mary came over to the sofa and sat beside Trudy, holding the white, cold hands laden with foolish rings. "I loved and do love someone very much who never did and never will love me. I must be near that person daily, be useful to him, earn my own living by so doing—and I've made myself be content of heart in spite of it and not live on starved hopes and jealous dreams.... You see, I'm quite human."

Trudy drew her hands away. She had caused Mary to confirm her suspicions, and she was sorry she had done so. The better part of her knew that she had been admitted into the very sanctuary of the girl's soul, and that the worst part of her, which usually dominated, was not worthy to be trusted with such a secret. She wished Mary had not said the words—since it changed everything and made a singularly pleasing weapon to use against Beatrice O'Valley should occasion rise. Mary was good—and it was safer to slander a good person than a bad one because there was less chance of a come-back. As she tried to make herself forget what she had just heard she knew that in the heat of anger or to gain some material goal she would use this effectual weapon without thinking and without remorse.

"Oh, my poor girl!" was all she said; and Mary, believing that Trudy so reverenced her secret that she was not going to stab it with clumsy words, kissed her and very practically set about getting a lunch.

Trudy went home taking some biscuit and half a cake with her, and by the time she reached the Touraine she was in a cheerful frame of mind once more. The relief of confession, the home food, and the knowledge of Mary's secret had buoyed her up past caring for or considering Gay.

To her surprise Gay was at home, jubilant and repentant. He had won at pool and had also consumed some 1879 Burgundy, which conspired to make him adore his red-haired wife and tell her that he had quite deserved and enjoyed having his face smacked.

The pool money in her safe keeping, visions of a new hat to wear at the next luncheon caused Trudy to equal his elation. Together they ate up Mary's biscuits and cake and talked about Beatrice's remodelling the Constantine mansion at the cost of many thousands.

"We could almost retire," Trudy suggested; "but I'm afraid Steve will never give his consent."

"Don't worry. Bea would never let a little thing like a husband stand in the way of her progress."

In March, just as Steve was returning, Beatrice and her aunt departed for a whirl in Florida, with a laconic invitation that Steve and his father-in-law follow them. Steve declined the invitation with alarming curtness.

Though Constantine worried in his peculiar way because Steve did not rush down to Florida to play with the rest of the snapping turtles Beatrice had about her heels he did not succeed in getting anything but a logical explanation as to a business rush from his son-in-law. More and more Steve was being saddled with Constantine's end of the game as well as his own—and he did not know how to proceed with the double responsibility. So Constantine went to Florida alone, to find his daughter revelling in new frocks and flirtations, both of which she temporarily sidetracked while she made her father give his consent to having the house done over after the manner of a Frascati villa.

"Gad," commented her father, during the heat of the argument, "I thought you were pretty well off as you were. Will Steve like it?"

"He doesn't care what I do," she hastened to assure him. "Of course he will—he ought to—I'm paying for it. He'll have as wonderful a home as there is in the United States. Alice's will be a caricature by contrast. Gay says so. As soon as we go home I'm going to signal them to begin."

"Well, don't touch my room or I'll burn down the whole plant," her father warned. "And if I were you I'd tell Steve first—it's only right."

"But it's my money," she insisted.

"Yes, yes, I know—but you could pretend to consult him. Your mother and I never bought a toothpick that we hadn't agreed on beforehand."

"Dear old papa." She kissed him graciously by way of dismissal.

So Steve received the letter announcing the plans a few days later. It was a semi-patronizing, semi-affectionate letter with a great many underlined words and superlative adjectives and intended to convey the impression that he was a mighty lucky chap to have married a fairy princess who would spend her ducats in rigging up an uncomfortable moth-eaten villa of the days of kingdom come.

As he finished it Gay appeared, having received a letter telling him to hurry ahead with the plans and contracts. Gay was rather obsequious in his manner since he did not know whether it was Steve or Beatrice who was to pay for this transformation.

"If my wife insists, go ahead—but don't move your arts-and-crafts shop into my office. I'm not enough interested to see designs and so on. I never had time to be one of the leisure class, and I'm too old to be kidded into thinking I'm one of them now. But I did make a mistake," he added, slowly, whether for Gay's benefit or not no one could tell—"I thought the world owed me more than a living—that it owed me a bargain. And there never was a bargain cheaply won that didn't prove a white elephant in time."

Gay's one-cylinder brain did not follow the intricacies of the statement. He merely thought of Steve in more than usually profane terms—and concluded that Beatrice was paying the bill.



CHAPTER XI

It was April before Steve found himself visiting with Mary Faithful again and admiring as heartily as Luke had admired the new apartment Mary had chosen for her family.

It had, to Steve's mind, the same delightful air of freedom and attractive shabbiness that he had come to consider as essential for a true home. While Beatrice was launched on her new object in life—making the house into a villa, from upholstering a gondola in sky-blue satin and expecting people to use it as a sofa to having the walls frescoed with fat, pouting cherubs—Mary had selected funny old chairs and soft shades of blue cretonne found in the remnant department, queer pottery, Indian blankets, and a set of blue dishes which just naturally demanded to be heaped with good things and eaten before an open fire at Sunday-night supper.

The whole expense came within Mary's economical pocketbook, yet it seemed to Steve to have the combined richness of a Persian palace and the geniality of a nursery on Christmas Eve.

He deliberately invented an excuse to call, some detail of work which, more easily than not, could have waited until the next day. He was not only using the detail of work as a means to visit Mary but as an excuse to escape a parlour lecture on "What astral vibrations does your given name bring you?" by a pale-faced young woman. The pale-faced young woman boasted of an advanced soul and was making a snug bank account from the rich set in undertaking occult analyses of their names by which to decide whether or not the accompanying astral vibrations harmonized with their auras; and if they did not—and were therefore detrimental and hampering to spiritual development and material progress—she would evolve occult names for them which would be sort of spiritual bits of cheese in material mousetraps baiting and capturing all the good things of this world and the next.

Convinced that Beatrice was not the proper name for her the Gorgeous Girl had ordered a chart of cabalistic signs and mystical statements, the sum total of which was that Radia was the name the astral forces wished her to be called, and by using this name she would develop into a wonderful medium. She paid fifty dollars to discover that she ought to be called Radia and that her aura was of smoky lavender, denoting an advanced soul—according to the pale-faced young woman, who had tired of teaching nonsensical flappers, had no chance to marry, and had hit upon this as her means of painlessly extracting a little joie de vie.

Declining to learn his astral name Steve left Gaylord to mop up the astral vibrations. Beatrice did not mind his absence though he neglected to say that the work was to be done at Miss Faithful's apartment and not at the office. Never having questioned Steve in such details Beatrice merely murmured inwardly that goat tending in one's past strangely enough led to pigheadedness in later life. It was a relief to have him away, for if drawn into an argument he still thumped his fists. For everyday living Beatrice preferred her own pet robins and angel-ducks, as she called the boys of the younger set, who flocked to flirt with her because she was extremely rich and pretty and they were in no danger of being matrimonially entangled.

Of course Gaylord ate up this occult-name affair. It was discovered that Gaylord's was a most hampering name and had his parents only consulted the stars and named him Scintar—who knows to what heights he might not have risen? Trudy's astral title should have been Urcia, which she now adopted, blushing deeply as she recalled the vulgar Babseley and Bubseley of former days. But when Aunt Belle was informed that Cinil was the cognomen needed to make her discover an Indian-summer millionaire waiting to bestow his heart upon her Mark Constantine had packed his bags and departed unceremoniously for Hot Springs.

Meantime, Mary did not know just how to treat this imperious lonesome young man who came boldly into her household without apology or warning.

"You don't know how often I've wanted to come and see you," he said, unashamedly, delighted that Luke was out of the way and he could play in his fashion the same as Beatrice did in hers. "It isn't business, really. I just wanted to talk to you. You assume so much formality at the office that though I admit it may be wise I miss the real you."

"You mean you just trumped up an excuse——"

Then Mary began to laugh.

"I do. The DeGraff muddle can wait. It's nice to be able just to sprawl about—sprawl in a comfortable old chair. I like this little room. We are being turned into an Italian villa, you know. I don't quite see how I'll ever live up to it." As he spoke he took out a plebeian tobacco pouch and a nondescript pipe. "May I?"

"Do! Only you ought not to be here at all"—trying to be severe, and failing.

"Why not?"

"Because you think only of yourself and of what you wish," she surprised him by answering. "Why not think of the other chap occasionally?"

He paused in the lighting of his pipe. "Oh—you mean my coming here." He looked like an unjustly punished child without redress. "You mean to consign me to the gloom of the grill room or one of those slippery leather chairs in a far corner of the club? Come, you can't say that. I won't listen if you do. I just want to be friends with someone."

With unsuspected coquetry she suggested: "Why not your wife?"

"We're not friends—merely married." He lit his pipe and flipped the match away. "Cheap to say, isn't it? Don't look at me like that; you make me quite conscience-stricken. You seem to be aiming at me as directly as a small boy aims his snowball. Why?"

"It wouldn't do the slightest good to tell you what I think."

"Yes, it would; someone must tell me. I've never been as lonesome in my life as now—when I'm a rich man and the husband of a very lovely woman. It sort of chills me to the marrow at first thought. I've been in a delirium, quite irresponsible. These last few months I've been coming down to earth. Only instead of getting my feet planted firmly on the sod I think I've struck a quicksand bed. I say, lend us a hand."

"Why ask me?"

"I don't just know. I don't think I shall ever be quite so sure of anything again. After all, a person has just so much capacity for joy and sorrow, and so much energy, and so much will power, allotted at birth; and if he chooses to go burn it all up in one fell swoop doing one thing—he is at liberty to do so; but he is not given any second helping. Isn't that true? Quite a terrible thing to realize when you know you used up your joy allotment in anticipation—and it has been so much keener and finer than any of the realization. And all my energy went into making money the easiest way I could; but it does not pay."

Mary clasped her hands tightly in her lap; she was afraid to let him see her joy at the long-awaited confession.

"Yet you ask me, a reliable machine, to help you in your perplexities?"

"I don't think of you as a capable machine any more. I used to, that is true enough. I didn't know or care whether your hair was red or your eyes green—but I know now that you have gray eyes, and——"

"You really want to know my opinions?" she interrupted, breathlessly.

"As much as I used to seek out the stock reports."

"Well—I think people who have planned as exactly as you and Mr. Constantine have planned always banish real principle at the start. After a time you are punished by having an almost fungous growth of sickly conscience—you don't want to face the truth of things, yet isolated incidents, sentimental memories, certain sights and definite statements annoy, haunt, heartbreak you! Still, you have lost your principle, the backbone of the soul, and the fungus-like growth of conscience is such a clumsy imitation—like a paper rose stuck in the ground. Mr. Constantine's type—your type—is flourishing and multiplying among us, I fear, and such are the wishbone, or sickly conscience, and not the backbone, or sterling principle, of the nation. After all, fortunes alone do not make real gentility—thanks be! But you know as well as I that all the—the Gorgeous Girls and their kind and you and I and the next chap we meet belong to the great majority, and of that we have every right to be proud.

"Furthermore, we ought to hold to our place in the social scheme and be the backbone of the nation, keep our principle and not be nagged eternally by a sickly conscience after we have gone and sold our birthrights. Gorgeous Girls and their sort have the sole fortification of dollars, endless dollars, endless price tags; their whims bring whole wings of foreign castles floating across the ocean by the wholesale to be reassembled somewhere in good old helpless Illinois or New Jersey. And these people try to be everything but good old American stock—which is quite wrong, for their example causes spendthrifts and Bolsheviki to flourish without end."

"Go on," he said, almost sulkily, as she paused.

"I've watched it for thirteen years from the various angles of the working girl with an average amount of brain and disposition. When all is said and done you really have to work before you have earned the right to pass judgment—work—not read or patronize or take someone else's statements as final. Do you know how I used to identify the kinds of people that rode in the street cars with me?... From seven until eight there were the Frumps. The majority boasted of white kid boots or someone's discarded near-electric-seal jacket, plumes in their hats, and an absence of warm woollens. And everyone yawned, between patting thin cheeks with soiled face chamois, 'What d'ja do las' night?'

"From eight to nine came the Funnies; and the majority had white kid boots and flimsy silk frocks cut as low as our grandmothers' party gowns, and plumes in their hats and silver vanity cases. Their main topics of conversation were: 'He said,' and 'She said,' and 'I don't care if I'm late. I'm going to quit anyway!'

"From nine until noon came the Frills—the wives of modest-salaried men who cannot motor, yet write to out-of-town relatives that they do so.

"And every one of those Frumps, Funnies, and Frills apes the Gorgeous-Girl kind—white kids for shopping, low-cut pumps in January, bizarre coat, chiffon waist disclosing a thin little neck fairly panting for protection, rouged cheeks, and a plume in her hat—and not a cent of savings in the bank!

"Now there's something wrong when we've come to this, and the wrong does not lie with these people but with those they imitate—Gorgeous Girls, new-rich with sickly consciences and lack of principle and common sense; and these Gorgeous Girls in turn take their styles, slang phrases, and modes of recreation, as well as theories of life from the boldest dancer, the most sensational chorus girl—and it's wrong and not what America should be called upon to endure. And it all reverts back in a sense to you busy, unprincipled, yet conscience-stricken American business men who write checks for these Gorgeous Girls—and the heathen in Africa—and wonder why golf doesn't bring your blood pressure down to normal—when your grandfather had such a wonderful constitution at eighty-four! Don't you know that get-rich-quick people always pay a usurer's interest on the suddenly accumulated principle?"

"Keep on," he said in the same surly tone.

"And when I go downtown and view the weary, unwashed females and the overly ambitious painted ones, people in impossible bargain shoes and summer furs; fat men in plaid suits and Alpine hats; undernourished children being dragged along by unthinking adults; stray dogs wistfully sniffing at passers-by in hopes of finding a permanent friend; tired, blind work horses standing in the sun and resignedly being overloaded for the day's haul; fire sales of fur coats; candy sales of gooey hunks; a jewellery special of earrings warranted to betray no tarnish until well after Christmas; brokers' ads and vaudeville billboards and rows upon rows of awful, huddled-up, gardenless homes with families lodged somewhere between the first and twelfth stories—the general chasing after nothing, saving nothing and, saddest of all, the complacent delusion that they have achieved something well worth while—it makes me willing to earn and learn as I do."

"Don't leave me in the quicksand. What can we do about it?"

"Make that sort of American woman realize that she is more needed in the home and can accomplish more with that as her goal than in any other place in the world. You don't know all my dreams for the American woman—don't you think that this Gorgeous Girl parasitical type is a result of the Victorian revolt? Too late for themselves the Victorian matrons said: 'Our daughters shall never slave as we have done; they shall be ladies—and have careers, too, bless their hearts.' The Victorian matrons were emerging from the unfair conditions of ignorance and drudgery and they could realize only one side of the argument—that all work and no play made Jill quite a stupid girl.

"But we must grasp the other side of the matter—that all play and no work make her simply impossible; that culture and self-sufficiency can go hand in hand. The American woman really is—and must continue to be—the all-round, regular fellow of the feminine world. Then she will not only teach a great and needed truth to her backward European sisters but she will produce a great future race. American women have tried frivolity in nearly every form and they have worked seriously likewise; they have intruded into men's professions and careers and in cases have beaten men at their own game. They have successfully broken down the narrow prejudice and limitations which the Victorian era tried making immortal under the title of sentiment—but after they have had the reward of victory and the knowledge of the game, why not be square, as they really are, and do the part the Great Plan meant them to do? Be women first—let the career take the woman if need be, but always thank the good Lord if it needn't be."

"And to think you have been working for me," Steve said, softly.

"I know that culture and enjoyment of life may be yoked with so-called drudgery. I know, too, that women are retiring not in defeat but with honour and victory in its truest sense when they step out of business life back to their homes. Nor are they empty-handed like the Victorian matrons; but with the energy of tried and true warriors, the ballot in one hand, the child led by the other, they are in a position to right old wrongs, for they have won new rights. They will be able to put into practice in their homes all they have gleaned from the sojourn in the world; the ill-given service of unfitted menials will disappear, as will waste and nerve-racking detail.

"And love must be the leavener of it all—with all her progress and her ability, trained talents and clever logic, the American woman must not and will not renounce her romance—for it is part of God's very promise of immortality."

"How often may I come here?" he begged.

Mary shook her head. "You've got me started, as Luke says, and I'm hard to check. But have you never thought that out of all the world the American woman is the only woman who cooks and serves her dinner if it is necessary, adjourns to her parlour afterward and discusses poetry and politics and the latest style hat with her guests? For she has learned how to possess true democracy, not rebellion, courage and not hysterical threats to play the rebel, the slacker.

"And now I'll make you a cup of coffee. And never let me catch you here again!"

When Luke arrived home he found Steve O'Valley basking in the big chair he was wont to occupy, though it was past ten o'clock and he had anticipated questions from Mary as to his tardiness. Instead he found a very rosy-cheeked, almost sunrise-eyed sister who stammered her greeting as the flustered Mr. O'Valley found his hat and the neglected business portfolio and took his leave.



CHAPTER XII

To keep down the rising tide of overweight Beatrice abandoned the occult method of having a good time and turned her interest to new creeds containing continual bogus joy and a denial of the vicarious theory of life. But when she discovered that optimism was no deterrent to the oncoming tide of flesh she began a vigorous course in face bleaching, reducing, massage, and electrical treatments, with Trudy playing attentive friend and confidante and secretly chuckling over the Gorgeous Girl's fast-appearing double chin and her disappearing waistline.

The extensive work of making the house into an Italian villa kept Beatrice from brooding too much over her embonpoint. She enjoyed the endless conferences with the decorators, drapers, artists, and who-nots, with Gay's suave, flattering little self always at her elbow, his tactful remarks about So-and-so being altogether too thin, and the wonderful nutritive value of chocolate.

"Bea will look like a fishwife when she is forty," he told Trudy soon after the villa was under way and the first anniversary drew near. "She eats as much candy in a week as an orphan asylum on Christmas Day. Why doesn't someone tell her to stop?"

Gay felt rather kindly toward Beatrice, for his commissions from the villa transformation made him secure for some time to come; Alice Twill's idea of a French chateau, however, had blown up unexpectedly.

"Well, why don't people tell you that you look an utter fool with that extra-intelligent edition of tortoise-shell glasses that you wear?" Trudy retorted. Gay was her husband and her property as long as she saw fit to stay his wife, and she did not approve of his constant attendance on the Gorgeous Girl. Even her deliberate retaliation by flirting with the gouty-toe brigade did not make amends. She had moments of depression similar to the time she had learned Mary's secret. But she did not go back to Mary in the same abandoned spirit. It would never do. If she were not careful she would begin to think for herself and want to take to sensible shoes and a real job, hating herself so utterly that she could never have any more good times. So she saw Mary only at intervals and tried to do nice trifles for her. Trudy was thinner than ever and she had an annoying cough. She still used a can opener as an aide-de-camp in housekeeping and laughed at snow flurries in her low shoes and gauze-like draperies.

It delighted her to have Beatrice become heavy of figure—it almost gave her a hold on her, she fancied—for Beatrice sighed with envy at Trudy's one hundred and ten pounds and used Trudy as an argument for eating candy.

"Trudy eats candy, lots of it, and she stays thin," she told Steve.

"Yes; but she works and you don't. You don't even pay a gymnasium instructor for daily perseverance, for you could do exercises yourself if you wanted. You sleep late and keep the house like the equator," he continued.

Beatrice looked at him in scorn. "Do I ever please you?"

"You married me," he said, gallantly.

"When I did that I was thinking about pleasing only you, I'm afraid," was his reward. "I wish you would study French—you have such a queer education you can't help having queer ideas. And you can't always go along with such funny views and be like papa. There isn't room for two in the same family."

"Do you know the Bible?" he demanded.

Beatrice giggled.

"There you are! You think I haven't studied in my own fashion. Well, if you did know the Bible intellectually, and Milton——"

"It sounds like a correspondence-school course. Don't, Stevuns! Do you know the latest dance from Spain—the paso-doble? Of course you don't. You don't know any of the romance of the Ming Dynasty or how to tell a Tanagra figurine from a plaster-of-paris shepherdess. You haven't read a single Russian novel; you just glare and stare when they're mentioned. You won't play bridge, you can't sing or make shadow pictures or imitate any one. Good gracious, now that you've made a fortune—enjoy it!"

Steve was silent. It was not only futile to argue—it was nerve-racking. Besides, he had found someone else with whom argument was a rare joy and a personal gain—Mary Faithful. At frequent intervals he had won a welcome at the doorway of the little apartment. He almost wished that Beatrice would find it out and row about it, leaving him in peace. He had not yet assumed unselfish views as to the matter. He was no longer in love with his wife but he was not yet in love with Mary. Instead he was passing through that interlude, whose brevity has made the world doubt its existence, known as platonic friendship. Platonic friendship does exist but it is like tropical twilight—the one whirlwind second in which brilliant sunshine and blue skies dip down and the stars and the moon dash up—and then the trick is done!

But like the thief who audaciously walks by the house of his victim, Steve was never accused of anything worse than using his leisure time to frequent those low restaurants where they serve everything on a two-inch-thick platter. Which, he had retorted, was a relief from eating turtle steak off green-glass dinner plates.

The first wedding anniversary was a rather disappointing affair since Beatrice had to remodel her wedding gown in order to wear it. That fact alone was distressing. And at the eleventh hour Steve was called out of town, which left Beatrice in the hands of her angel-duck brigade, who all felt it their duty to paint Steve in terms of reproach.

"Now Steve felt just as badly about going as you do to have him away," her father said by way of clumsy consolation. "And he bought you a mighty handsome gift."

"But I have one quite as lovely," Beatrice objected. "It was unpardonable of him to go, even if there was a strike and a fire. Let the police arrest everybody."

She laid aside the gift, a glittering head-dress in the form of platinum Mercury wings set with diamonds, fitting close to the head and giving a decided Brunnhilde effect. "I hate duplicates; I always want something different and novel."

"It's a good thing I gave you a check," said her father.

"Yes, because Gay can always find me something"—brightening. "And tell me, how is the salon fresco coming on?"

Her father held up his hands in protest. "Ask something easy. A mob of workmen and sleek gentlemen that tiptoe about like undertakers' assistants—that's all I know. But not one of them touches my room!"

"All right, papa." She kissed him prettily. "And as I'm dead for sleep and aunty is snoring in her chair, suppose you wake her up and run along?"

Summoning Aunt Belle, who was approaching the Mrs. Skewton stage of wanting a continuous rose-curtain effect, Beatrice stood at the window with unusual affection to wave the last of her guests a good-bye.