"Just try it and see what will happen."

"I will, kind sir." Dropping him a curtsy, Trudy repaired to do the dishes and swiggle an oil mop about the floor briefly. Then she burnt some scented powder and pulled down the window shades. This constituted getting the establishment in order, the slavey having gone tootling off on a party some days before.

Trudy did not refer to the breakfast-table discussion before she left the apartment. She was dangerously sweet, and even went into Gay's room, where he was donning his gray-velvet studio blouse for the morning's labours. She told him she was quite sure of securing a fairly good-sized order for some window shades. Gay did not think it necessary to answer. He did not glance at her; instead he yawned and sprinkled toilet water profusely on his pink lawn handkerchief.

After a moment's hesitation she went her own way. When she had lingered about the jewellery counter like a wilful yet not quite wicked child—peering down at the wonderful, enchanting things which mocked her empty purse; recalling Gay's first flush of romance and devotion; her own clever, untiring methods of pushing him into the front ranks; Mary and Mary's little secret, so unsafe in Trudy's keeping; Beatrice, who did not know quite how many rings she possessed; the whole maddening and really uninteresting tangle—she wondered if she could force Gay to buy her a ring. Should she boldly order such-and-such a stone and pick out a setting and present him with the bill? Why she hesitated she did not know; she was like all her wilful sisters who gaze and sigh, pity themselves, and then steal away to Oriental shops to appease the hunger by a near-silver ring with a bulging near-precious stone set in Hoboken style.

This Trudy did not do. For some reason or other she let her errands go by and took a car to Mary's office, stopping at the corner to buy her a flower. Instinctively one connected Mary and flowers as one associated Beatrice and jewellery.

She found Mary had gone into the old office building to see about something and that Steve, who was always as restless as a polar bear when forced into a tete-a-tete with Trudy, was alone in his office. He was obliged to ask her to sit down and wait for Mary. Trudy peered curiously about the rooms. She had never lost that rare sense of triumph—returning as a fine lady to the very place where she had once worked for fifteen per. Smiling graciously at former associates she imagined that she created as much excitement as Beatrice's visits themselves.

"It seems so good to come back here," she began without mercy.

Steve had to lay aside his work and wonder why Miss Lunk ever let this creature into his private domain. He would see that it did not happen twice.

"Ah—I suppose," he knew he answered.

"You are such a busy man; you don't know how I admire you." Trudy tried fresh tactics.

"Um—have you seen the morning papers?"

"Thank you but Gay read them to me at breakfast.... You never come to our little home, do you? Too busy, I presume. Or are you one of those who can forgive everyone but the interior decorator?" This with an arch expression and a slight twinkle of the blue eyes—it could not quite be called a wink.

"I'm afraid so, Mrs. Vondeplosshe. I leave such things to Beatrice."

"Oh, I understand." Trudy took her cue quickly. "It is out of your province. You can't do big, gigantic things if you bother with doll-house notions. Now I really prefer—oh, far prefer—men like yourself, who——"

Steve started the electric fan whirring.

"Don't you ever long for camping trips or long horseback rides—something away from the everlasting fuss and feathers? I do. Would you believe it?" she fibbed glibly.

Had Steve been seventy-five he might have believed her. But he merely nodded and said that if there was a draft from the fan she could sit outside.

Piqued, Trudy turned to Mary Faithful.

"Mary is a wonderful girl, isn't she? Of course you have a Gorgeous Girl, too—but she is for playtime. I should think it would mean a great deal to have Mary for your chief confidante—she is so good, and yet human and——"

Steve stood up abruptly and wondered why no kind friend saw fit to enter at this moment. He would have really welcomed Trudy's husband. He looked at Trudy briefly, it did not take Steve long these days to look at Gorgeous Girls and Gorgeous Girl seconds and realize the whole story of their purpose and struggle—things, to have more gayly coloured or delicate coloured, gold, silver, velvet, carved, perfumed or whatever-the-mode-dictated things, flaunting these priceless sticks and stones in each other's faces with pretended friendship.

He did not answer this last lead at conversation, but, not discouraged, Trudy went on down the list of her resources.

"How is dear old Mr. Constantine?"

"The same." Steve thanked fortune his father-in-law was paralyzed and could furnish a neutral topic of debate.

"Poor dear. So hard for Bea, too. She says she will not do much this season. She feels if—if it should not be much longer, you understand"—a lowered tone of voice and a sigh—"that she wants to have nothing on her conscience. Still, a sick room is wearing, but of course love makes any task easy."

Steve suppressed a smile. It was surprising how well this funny little person managed to ape the jargon and chatter of Bea's set as well as their mode of appearance. She did it mightily well, everything considered, and when she proceeded to offer to go and sit with the old dear or bring her game board and play with him Steve released a broad grin as he pictured Constantine in his helpless captive state welcoming Trudy as an entertainer about as much as he would have begged for a tete-a-tete with a lady major bent on conquest.

"She would even marry him if she could dispose of Gay," he thought, and rightly, as he watched her.

As she was telling him of the head-dress party she intended to give for Gay's birthday and how he must come because she wanted him to wear a pirate turban, in came Mary, much flurried over a mistake made in a shipment, and her nose guilty of a slight but unmistakable shine.

"Oh, Trudy! Run home—your house is on fire! Your cretonnes will burn!" she said, half in earnest. "My dear child, I'm mighty busy. It is so stupid of Parker!" She turned to Steve. "He made the original error and I have to keep cross-examining everyone else to prove to him that I know he is at fault and that he must 'fess up. But he won't—people never want to say: 'Yes, it is my fault and I'm sorry,' do they?"

"Sort of habit since the Garden of Eden, I guess—you can't expect it to change now." Steve had lost his listless air. All unconsciously he had the same animated, interested attitude that he had had during the days of being engaged to the Gorgeous Girl. Trudy saw at a glance that Mary had not only realized her starved hopes but that she was quite ignorant of the fact that she had done so. To Trudy's mind it was a most stupid situation; also an inexcusable one. Here was Mary, the good-looking thing who deserved a love such as Steve O'Valley's yet never dared to hope he would ever think of her twice except if she asked for a raise in salary. This Trudy knew, also. And since it is inevitable that a cave man cannot exist on truffles, chiffon frocks that must not be rumpled, and an interior decorator with a ukulele at his beck and call, Steve had been forced into realizing Mary's worth and loving her for it, giving to her the mature and steady love of a strong man who, like Parker, had made a mistake and not yet 'fessed up. Why Mary did not realize that happiness was within her reach, and why Steve did not realize that Mary adored him, and why they were not in the throes of talking over her lawyer and my lawyer and alimony but we love each other and let the whole world go hang—was not within Trudy's jurisdiction to determine. She only knew what she would have done and be doing were she Mary—and Steve O'Valley loved her.

She felt the situation was as unforgivable and stupid as to have Gay offer her a two-carat diamond ring and to have her say: "No, Bubseley; sell it and let us use the money to start a fund for heating the huts of aged and infirm Eskimos. The Salvation Army has never dropped up that way."

The great miracle had happened. And, envying Mary a trifle and pitying Steve for not having won his cause, Trudy justified a hidden resolve of long ago: To use Mary's secret in case Beatrice became overbearing or impossible. It was mighty fine plunder, upon which she flattered herself she had a single-handed option.

So she released Steve from the agony of conversation, and watching the tender, happy look as he talked to Mary over some other detail of the cropper, she went inside to Mary's office to powder her own little nose and realize that she was no nearer to obtaining a diamond ring than when she first began to crave for one.

"I'm going to bundle you off," Mary informed her. "I really must—or was it anything special?"

It was all Trudy could do not to offer to play the confidential bosom friend and urge Mary to show Beatrice where she stood. But somehow the brisk business atmosphere, which was very real and brusque, prevented her from saying anything except that she had wanted to talk to her. She was lonesome—she was going to come some evening and have a good, old-time visit.

"Of course—just let me know when."

"Oh"—archly—"are you busy on certain evenings?"

"Sometimes. French lessons; theatre; general odd jobs."

"No particular caller?"

"No," Mary laughed.

"I thought perhaps—you know, one time I came in and——"

"You came one time and found Mr. O'Valley," Mary hastened to add. "Yes, I remember, but that was an unusual occurrence. He came in on business and when he discovered I did not object to a pipe—he stayed."

Trudy was disappointed. "Did Beatrice ever know?"

"Don't know myself." Mary was determined to win out. "I can't see why she should—it would not interest her. She never listens to things that do not interest her.... You won't know Luke. He grows like a weed."

Trudy found herself dismissed. She did not know just how it had come about but Mary was smiling her into the elevator and Trudy was sinking to the ground floor feeling that though it was none of her business unless she got a diamond ring she was just going to make other people unhappy, too.

Why this conclusion was reached was not at all clear to Trudy any more than to the rest of the world. But after all, it is only fair to leave something for the psychologists to debate about. At all events, it was the definite conclusion at which she arrived.

She could not resist paying a fleeting return visit to the largest of the jewellery stores. After which she told herself that it was little short of going without shoes or stockings through the streets to have been married the length of time she had been married and to possess not a single diamond.

Returning home for a canned luncheon she discovered Gaylord humming a love song and strumming on his ukulele.

"I say, old dear," he began, "I have had the greatest luck! I call it nothing short of a fairy tale." He pointed at his neckscarf. Coming near, Trudy bent over and gave way to a shrill scream. A handsome diamond pin reposed in the old-rose silk.

"Where—where did you get it?" she managed to articulate.

"Beatrice really—the result of the raffle for the children's charity. You remember we took tickets? She donated this scarfpin, and this morning Jill Briggs came in and presented the trophy. My number was the winning one: 56."

"She made you win it. You know she did, you toadying little abomination! You fairly lick her boots—and she has to tip you occasionally. And you sit there wearing that pin and never offering to have it set in a pin for me. You dare to keep it—you dare?" She lost her self-control.

Gay sprang up in alarm, the ukulele being the only weapon handy, holding her off at arm's length. "How low!" he chattered. "How d-disgustingly low——"

"Is it? I'll show you—I'll show you whether or not you can wear diamond stickpins while I have to endure a wedding ring like a washwoman's!"

Before Gay knew what was happening Trudy had left the house. A half hour later a suave clerk's voice from the jewellery store was asking him to step down at once, his wife had requested it, she had decided on a ring for herself but wished his seal of approval—so did the store—and a small deposit—would he be able to be with them shortly?

He would, struggling with a man-size rage. After all, the little five-eighths-carat stone he had so proudly adorned his bosom with would be dearly paid for in the end. That was what came of marrying beneath him, he reproached himself as he locked up the apartment and went down to the store. To make a scene in a fifty-cent cafe was not worth the effort, Trudy had once proclaimed, but to run the gauntlet of real rough-house emotion in a jewellery store frequented by his clientele would be social suicide. The only thing was to make Beatrice pay a larger commission on the things for her new tea house so that he could pay for this red-haired vixen's ring. But this would not in the least dim the red-haired vixen's triumph, which was the issue at stake. From that moment he began really to hate Trudy.

To her amazement he greeted her in honeyed tones, approved the ring, and suggested that the wedding ring be turned in for old gold and replaced by a modern creation and so on, produced a deposit, and walked out with Trudy, who wore the new symbol of triumph on her finger, proposing that they lunch downtown. He was determined to carry it through without a moment's faltering.

Even Trudy was nonplussed. Once the treasure was secure in her possession she told herself it had been so easy that she was a fool not to have tried it before—she even complimented Gay on his scarfpin. But she began hating him also. No one would have suspected it, to watch these diamond-adorned young people guzzling crab-meat cocktails and planning fiercer raids on Beatrice O'Valley's pocketbook.

Moreover, Trudy did not change in her decision to make someone unhappy. She found that possessing a diamond ring did not remove her discontent—and a shamed feeling stole over her, causing her to wonder how loudly she had screamed at Gay and how she must have looked when she started to strike him in her blind rage; how horrible it was to go off on tangents just because you wanted rings on your fingers and bells on your toes when all the time the world did contain such persons as Mary Faithful, who did not choose to claim a paradise which longed to be claimed.

Trudy was unable to keep her fingers out of the pie. She found herself naturally gravitating over to see Beatrice. Ostensibly she wanted to display her new ring and talk about Gay's luck and the daring gypsy embroideries he had just received from New York but really to tell her Steve O'Valley, supposedly enslaved cave man, loved another and a plainer woman than her own gorgeous self.

She found Beatrice in a neglige of delicately embroidered chiffon with luxurious black-satin flowers as a corsage. She had seldom seen her look as lovely; even the too-abundant curves of flesh were concealed behind the lace draperies. She seemed this day of days to fit into the background of the villa, as if some old master had let his most adored brain child come tripping from a tarnished frame—a little lady in old lace, as it were.

Beatrice had taken up a new activity since her father's stroke. At first the stroke had frightened, then bored, then amused her. She really liked having what she termed a "comfortable calamity" in the family. It was something so new to plan for and talk about, such a valid excuse if she did not wish to accept invitations, and an excellent reason for runaway trips to Atlantic City or New York "to get away from it all for a little—poor, dear papa."

So she sat with her father rather more than one would have expected, made him listen to opera records which drove him to distraction, talked to him of nothing, and tried to be a little sister to the afflicted in a pink-satin and cream-lace setting.

She had lost her interest in Trudy—Trudy no longer amused or frightened her. And Gay had become so useful and attentive that had the truth about the raffle been known it would be the astonishing information that as Beatrice donated the tie pin she decided she should pick the future owner—and Gay was the logical candidate to her way of thinking.

Also she was quite contented with Steve. He let her alone and he adored her—she never doubted that. He wanted her to have everything she wished—and that was the biggest, finest way to show one's love for another. It was the only way that she had ever known existed. Of course all brides have silly notions of perpetual adoration, that sort of thing, and Steve was a cave man first and last, bless his old heart, but they had passed any mid-channel which might exist and were happy for all time to come. They seldom quarrelled, and she no longer tried to make Steve over to her liking in small ways, and he seldom offered her suggestions. Moreover, he was so good to her father—and of course everything was as it should be. It was simply the rather drab fashion in which most lives are lived, and Beatrice was quite contented. She had never gotten another toy dog, not even as a contrast to Tawny Adonis. Really, Gay answered a multitude of needs!

But Trudy was a real person—and a constant reminder of what Beatrice herself might have been, and therefore Beatrice never ceased to envy her or to picture how much better she could do were she in Trudy's place. She preferred not having her about. Besides, Trudy was impossible in Italian villas—she belonged in a near-mahogany atmosphere with cerise-silk drapes and gaudy vases. Age-old elegancies did not harmonize with her vivid self.

So she was not overly cordial in greeting Trudy. But Trudy with an eye to mischief managed to draw her little lady-in-old-lace hostess into a heart-to-heart talk. And before the afternoon ended Beatrice had experienced the first real shock of her life. Her husband smoked a pipe in Mary Faithful's living room and never told her; and Mary Faithful admitted she loved someone very much and was with him each day in business and so on; and Trudy had seen the smile pass between them which signifies the perfect understanding! And oh, she did not know a tenth of it, deary; not a tenth of it! It was one of those subtle, hidden things, nothing tangible or dreadful—like a purgatorial state of mind which may result in brimstone or lovely angels with harps. Neither could she do anything about it since they were both perfect dears and always would be. Not for worlds, in Trudy's estimation, would they ever take it upon themselves to prove the brittleness of vows.

After which Beatrice thanked Trudy, wishing her a speedy death by way of gratitude, going to her room to decide what her attitude should be.

To accuse Steve was crude; besides, she must be positive that it was true. To get up an affair herself would be no heart balm since she had never ceased having affairs—well-bred episodes, rather, perfectly harmless when all is said and done, quite like Steve's, for that matter! She could not find a new interest in life until she had reduced at least twenty pounds, since her dieting and exercises required all surplus will power and thought. She would go away only her plans were made for months ahead. She could not tell her father—the shock might kill him.... There was really nothing left to do but suffer—be wretched and wonder if it was true. A horrid state of uncertainty—to ask herself how it could ever have happened and what would be the end, and terrible things—just terrible things! No matter how large a check she might write to buy herself a new toy it would have no bearing whatsoever upon the matter. She wished to heaven Trudy had confined her gossip to the funny little manicure with champagne eyes who flirted with someone else's husband! This was her reward for having taken up with a shopgirl person!

The final conclusion she reached was that she did not believe a word Trudy had told her.



CHAPTER XVIII

Beatrice took occasion to go to see Mary within the next few days. In a particularly fetching costume of green satin with fly-away sleeves steadied by silver tassels and a black hat aglow with iridescent plumes she surprised Mary at an hour when Steve would be absent. On this occasion Beatrice dressed to dazzle and intimidate one of her own sex. But the result was unsatisfactory. She found Mary quite passable in cloud-blue organdie, a contented look in her gray eyes.

Her own satin costume and plumed bonnet seemed a trifle theatrical. She wished she had worn her trimmest tailored effect to impress upon this tall young woman that no one else could wear tailor things so well as Mrs. Beatrice O'Valley if she chose to do so.

"What can I do for Mrs. O'Valley?" Mary said, almost patronizingly, Beatrice fancied.

"I came in to say hello. I've neglected you lately. But you have been so horrid about not coming to see my gardens that you deserve to be neglected." Her dove-coloured eyes watched Mary closely. "Besides, I want to get something for Mr. O'Valley's desk—as a surprise. You must help me because, as I have realized, you know so much more about him than I do.... There, am I not generous?"

"Very." Mary surmised that something of greater importance lay behind the call than showing off the satin costume or selecting a surprise for Steve.

"What do you suggest? I'm such a frivolous person my husband never tells me his affairs or wishes. The rugs might be in rags and he would never ask me to replenish. I understand now so much more clearly than ever before why business men and women are prone to fall in love with each other; they see each other so constantly under tests of each one's abilities. They have to ask each other favours and grant them. Sometimes it is a loan of a pencil sharpener, more often it must be the aid of the other fellow's brain to help solve a problem. And they are so shut away from my world. I'm just the pretty mischief-maker who squanders the dollars, and by and by, when self-pity sets in, they find there is a mutual bond of admiration and sympathy. Quite a step toward love, isn't it? As I came in here to-day I could not help thinking of how beautifully you keep business house for my husband. Why, Mary Faithful, aren't you afraid I am going to be jealous?" She was laughing, but the intention was to have the laugh blow away and the sting of the truth remain.

Mary knew this—and Beatrice knew that she did. So trying to make herself as formidable as a bunch of nettles Mary took heed to answer:

"I'm afraid you have been reading novels—the ones where the business woman grows paler and more interesting looking each day and somehow happens to be wearing a tempting little chiffon frock when the firm fails and the young and handsome junior partner takes refuge in her office and proceeds to brandish a gun and say farewell to the world. You see, you don't come down to play with us enough to know what prosaic rows there are over pencil sharpeners or who has spirited away the drinking cup or why the window must be six inches from the top because So-and-so has muscular rheumatism. I don't think you are fair, Mrs. O'Valley, and I'm going to risk being quite unpopular by telling you that you have no right to say such things even in jest."

Mary's eyes were very honest and her face seemed even firmer of chin as she leaned her elbows on her desk, looking up at this pretty figurine in satin and plumes.

"Do you fancy it is any fun to go to work at thirteen or fourteen? To rush through breakfast to stand in a crowded car, to have to make your heart very small as the Chinese say, in order to appreciate the pennies and keep them until they become dollars—when all of you longs to play Lady Bountiful? To rub elbows with untruthful mischief-makers, coarse-mouthed foremen, impossible young fools who wish to flirt with you and whom you do not dare to rebuke too sharply; to take your hurried noon hour with little food and less fresh air and come back to the daily grind; to walk home or hang on to the tag end of a street-car strap and finally get to your room or your home so tired in body and mind that you wish you had no soul, protesting faintly against girls and women having to be in business?

"No, I don't think you do realize. Or to run errands icy-cold days, down slushy streets or slippery hills? To carry great bundles of such daintiness as you are wearing and leave them at the doors of big houses such as your own, numbed, hungry, envious—and not understanding the wherefore of it? To catch glimpses of warm halls, the sound of a piano playing in a flower-scented salon, to see girls your own age in dainty silk dresses sitting in the window and looking at you curiously as you go down the steps? Oh, I could tell you a great deal more, Mrs. O'Valley."

"Well?"

"Eventually some of us survive and some do not—which is another story! Those of us who do, who endure such days that we may go to night school, and who wear mended gloves and queer hats, forgoing the cheap joys of our associates—we do forge ahead and grow grimmer of heart and graver of soul. We realize that we are earning everything we are getting—perhaps more—only we cannot get the recognition we deserve. We are quite different from what you stay-at-home women fancy. Tempting chiffon frocks and love affairs de luxe with handsome junior partners are farthest from our thoughts. We plan for lonely old age—a home and an annuity, a trip to Europe or some other Carcassonne of our thwarted selves. We revel in things as you women do—but we revel in them because people are shut away from us. You women shut away people that you may revel in things.

"All this time the handsome junior partners and so on for whom we keep business house and through propinquity are supposed to love—they have fallen in love with sheltered girls such as your own self, and everything is quite as it ought to be. Now do you really think the capable business women of to-day are letting their abilities be spent in useless rebellion against their fate and loving the members of the firm in Victorian fashion or doing their work intelligently and earning their wage? I hardly think there is room for an argument. You must understand that the years of errand girl, night school, underpaid clerk have taken out of us a certain capacity for enjoyment which you women have had emphasized. But thank God it has also taken from us a capacity for hysterical suffering, for going on the rocks when we see some joy we crave yet know can never be ours!"

"Oh!" Beatrice murmured, wishing Steve would come in or else Mary be called to the telephone. "Oh——"

"But I do think there is a certain justice developed among modern business women which home women do not comprehend as a rule. Oh, not that I underestimate the home women or the sheltered women. There is a distinction between the two—but I say that the business woman who earns a man's wage and does his work has a certain squareness, for want of a better term, which makes her say, 'If I earn something it is mine and I shall not hesitate thus to label it. Look out—any one who tries to take it from me!' Do you see?"

Mary paused, annoyed at what she had been prevailed upon to say, and wondering if by good fortune her opinions had been delivered to empty ears.

"So you think you would fight for something to which you felt entitled?"

"Perhaps." The gray eyes had a warrior's strength in them. "Fight, win it, and then spend no time in sentimental regrets. We learn one thing that all women should learn in this great age of selection: That you must earn the things you win, and that if you do so you will most likely keep them."

"And if you felt that you had earned something—and another woman had not—you would play off the conqueror and take the spoils?"

"If I felt it the right thing to do."

Feeling as confused as a bank cashier when caught studying a railroad map Mary hastened to suggest a picture of Beatrice handsomely framed as a surprise for Steve. She was sure he would like nothing any better.

Beatrice felt chirked up upon hearing this. She told herself that Trudy was an inveterate gossip and this queer young person must be thinking aloud about revolutions in Russia or something like that; anything else was too absurd. So she repeated her invitation to come to see the gardens with their jewel-like pools and riotous masses of colour, and went on her way to select a most gorgeous frame for a most gorgeous portrait of herself.

Steve expressed his thanks for the surprise picture quite properly, and after giving it a few days of prominence on his desk he relegated it to a shelf beside a weather-beaten map of the Great Lakes which had always been in the office.

And here another phase of the Gorgeous Girl's effort to do something and exercise her faculties occurred. Though she regarded Trudy's gossip as absurd she did not forget it. No woman would. It lay in waiting until the right moment.

Her father's illness and Steve's worried look as he came home each night caused Beatrice to cast about for something noble and remarkable to do. The conclusion she reached was that it was her duty to retrench; she was not going to have floor-scrubbing duchesses corner all the economy feats. She would make it the mode to live simply, even be penurious in some ways—now that she had the Villa Rosa and a season's budget of frocks. She began looking over the monthly bills in deadly earnest. The result was a blinding headache which prevented her going in to see her father. She retired to her room in cream lace with endless strings of coral, and left word for Steve to drop in on his way to his own room.

"Deary, I've been too extravagant," she began faintly as he opened the door. She reached out her hand to find his.

He brought a chair over beside the chaise-longue and sat down obediently, holding the small, fragrant fingers in his own. "I'd be mighty glad if you felt you could live more simply."

"You duck! Just what I'm about to do. I'm going to be the loveliest Queen Calico you ever did see—I've no doubt but what I'll be making you a beefsteak pudding before long."

Steve smiled. "Who will take this castle of gloom from under us?"

"Oh! We may as well stay here—I don't mean that sort of retrenching—I mean in other ways. I'm not going to give expensive bridge parties or keep three motors and a saddle horse—I can't ride any more, anyway—and I'm not going to have a professional reader for papa. Aunt Belle, you, and I can manage that—that will take fifteen dollars a week from the expenses. Besides, I am going to have three-course dinners from now on—no game, fish, or extra sweet. That will make a difference—in time. I shall not buy the new dinner set I had halfway ordered—it was wonderful, of course, but I have no right to use money for nonsense. Papa can give it to me for my birthday if he wants to. Gifts don't count, do they, Stevuns?

"Then there is the servant question. Now cook is seventy-five dollars a month; the three maids are fifty each, besides all they steal and waste; the laundress and her helper, the chauffeur and all the garden men; the food, light, heat—to say nothing of extra expenses; my parties and trips and the enormous bills for taxes and upkeep that papa pays—I'm afraid to say how much it comes to each month. But it is going to stop! Then my clothes—I'm just ashamed to think—while you, poor dear, exist on nothing——Oh, thank you, Elsie." A maid had brought in a supper tray.

"I didn't want to come downstairs, so I sent for some lunch." She watched Steve's amused expression. "Aunt Belle gets on my nerves and unless we are having people in, the room is too big to have a family meal."

On the tray was a dish heaped with tartlettes aux fruits, cornets a la creme, babas au rhum, petits fours, madeleines, and Napoleons. There was another dish filled with marrons glaces and malaga grapes preserved in sugar. A few faint wedges of bread and butter pointed the way to the pot of iced chocolate and the pitcher of whipped cream.

"Well," Steve ventured, looking at the tray, "I'm afraid I don't agree——"

"I know your ideas. You think I ought to be frying chops for you and giving praise because I have a nineteen-dollar near-taffeta dress. I can just see you walking round a two-by-four back yard measuring the corn and putting the watermelons into eiderdown sleeping bags so they won't freeze; then telling everyone at the shop what an ideal home life you lead! No, deary, I'm retrenching because it's a novelty, and you would like to retrench——"

"Because I may be forced to do so. I hate to worry you—I never mean to unless there is no other way out—but I must warn you that the abnormal war conditions are no longer inflating business and everyone is watching his step. I cannot take your father's place; he carved it out step by step. I fairly aeroplaned to the top and found that while I was sitting there in fancied security other people were busy chopping down the steps and I should find myself having a great old fall down to earth. Now——"

"Don't tell any more things," she murmured, deep in a fruit tart. "I can't understand. You are a big, strong man. Go keep your fortune; let me play. I'll retrench for fun, and you must love me for it."

"But you are not sincere," he protested. "You don't earn anything. You don't save anything——"

Beatrice sat upright, laying aside her plate and fork. "So you believe that, too," she half whispered.

"See here," Steve added, in desperation. "I wish we were back in the apartment—or a simple house. I wish we kept a cook and a maid and you had a simple outfit of clothes and a simple routine. I wish we were just folks—you know the sort—you don't find them any place else but America—it's a tremendous chance to be just folks if you would only realize. I feel as if this were a soap-bubble castle, as if we were deliberately playing a wrong game all round."

"You tell papa," she begged; "and if he thinks I'm unhappy he will write me another check."

"Then the retrenching is to be the elimination of the fifteen-dollar-a-week professional reader, who needs the work and earns the money, and two courses from our already aldermanic meals? What else?"

"I shall send the silver to the bank and use plate. The smartest people do that. I shall make aunty embroider my monograms; she can as well as not—the last were frightfully expensive. I'm going to bargain sales after this, and take cook and drive out to the Polish market. Why, things are two and three cents a pound cheaper——"

Steve rose abruptly, tipping over the dainty chair as he did so. He tried to straighten out the pinky rug and set the chair properly upon it. Then he squared off his shoulders and dutifully stooped to kiss his economical little helpmate.

"All right, darling," he said, glibly, feeling that Gorgeous Girls were get-rich-quick men's albatrosses, "that will be very amusing for you. It will tide you over until the horse-show season. Now if you don't mind I'm going below to ask what the chances are for some roast beef!"

Toward Christmas, when Beatrice had gone to New York with friends and Mark Constantine discovered that dying is ever so much harder than death, Mary told Steve that she was considering a new position, with a firm dealing in fabrics, a firm of old and honourable reputation.

She laid the letter from her prospective employers on his desk, in almost naive fashion. It was as if she wanted to show this was no woman's threat but a bona-fide and businesslike proposition. And if she blushed from sheer foolish joy at the disappointed and protesting expression that came into his face it was small solace after the struggle she had undergone before she made herself take this step.

"You are not going," he began, angrily. "I'm damned if you do!"

"Oh, my dear, my own dear," she murmured within. Outwardly she shook her head briskly and added, "Yes, I am. The hours—the salary——"

"The deuce take that stuff! How much more money do you want me to pay you? How few hours a day will you consent to work? You know so well it has been you who have done your own slave driving. Besides, I can't get on without you."

"You must; I haven't the right to stay."

Steve stood up, crumpling the letter in his hand. "You mean because of what I said—that time?"

"Partly; partly because I find myself disapproving of your transactions."

"They are a safe gamble," he began, vehemently.

"Are they? I doubt it. Don't ask me to stay. I want to remain poised and content. If I cannot be radiantly happy I can be content, the sort of old-lavender-and-star-dust peace that used to be mine."

"Have I ever said things, made you feel or do——"

"Oh, no." As she looked at him the gray eyes turned wistful purple. "But it is what we may say or do, Mister Penny Wise."

Steve looked at the crumpled letter. "So you are going over to staid graybeards who deal in cotton and woollens, and play commercial nun to the end—is that it?"

"Yes."

"And you do care?" he persisted, brutally.

"Yes," she answered, defiantly.

"Well, I don't care about fool laws—they are mighty thin stuff. I love you," he told her with quiet emphasis.

Mary did not answer but the purple of the eyes changed back to stormy gray.

"Why don't you say something? Abuse me, claim me——"

"I haven't the courage even if I have the right," she said, presently. "Besides, the last year I have been loving an ideal—the Steve O'Valley who existed one time and might still exist if other things were equal. But in reality you are a prematurely nerve-shattered, blundering pirate; not my Steve." She spoke his name softly. "The failure of my ideal—and it's a little hard to live with and work with such a failure. My hands are tied, yet my eyes see. Besides, there is Luke to think about and care for until some other woman does it. I cannot endure this tangle; neither can I get you out of it. So I am going away. And I'll keep on loving my ideal and find the old-lavender-and-star-dust sort of peace."

"You are not going!" he repeated, sharply, taking her hand. "Do you hear? I love you. I have loved you enough to keep silent about it ever since that day. Does it mean nothing to you?"

"Don't say it again—it is so hopeless, part of the tangle. You haven't the faintest idea how hopeless it is; you are so involved you cannot judge. My boy, don't you see that the whole trouble lies in getting things you have never earned? The sort of joy you people indulge in and try to hold as your own is a state of mind and emotion from which no lessons may be learned—calm, stagnant pools of superlative surface pleasure. No one learns things worth while when he is too happy or too successful. That is why success is a wiser and more enduring thing when it comes at middle age. The young man or woman has not been tried out, has not had to struggle and discover personal limitations. It's the struggle that brings the wisdom.

"But when you have a ready-made stock-market fortune handed to you, and a Gorgeous Girl wife, and the world comes to fawn upon you—you soon become intoxicated with a false sense of your own achievements and values. It does not last—nor does it pay. Such joy periods are merely recuperative periods. By and by something comes along and bumps into you and you are shoved out into the struggling seas—the learning and conquering game. It is not a sad state of affairs—but a mighty wise one. Then how can you, who have never earned, expect a joy to be yours forever?"

"You have struggled and earned. You have the right to love me!"

"Perhaps—but you cannot hide behind my skirts and claim the same right. I shall give you up. Why, this is no tragedy—it is the way many commercial nuns find their lives are cast. Commercial nuns, like their religious sisters, serve a novitiate—their vocation being tested out. We who find that the things of our fancy are husks leave them behind and go on in our abilities. We are needed women to-day; we must have recognition and respect. We possess a certain unwomanly honesty according to old standards, which makes us say such things as I have said to you. I love you, the ideal of you; yet I am hopeless to realize it. I refuse to keep on making my petty moan for sympathy when all the time the bigger part of me demands work and contentment—and things just like Gorgeous Girls."

"But there must be a way out. I can't lose you. Do you know what it will mean?"

"I fancy I do." The gray eyes were so maternal that Steve felt comforted.

"Are you pushing me out of a stagnant joy pool?" he tried saying lightly.

"Perhaps I'm heading that way when I stop serving you before all else."

"Mary, Mary, quite contrary"—he gave her a gentle little shake—"say it all again. Then tell me if this is a mood and you'll change your mind and stay. You must stay—or else you don't love me."

"Eternal masculine! That we love to be beaten, cry loudly, tell our neighbours, but we must prove our affections by crawling back to have you kiss the bruises." She shook her head. "You cannot believe that the world recognizes a difference between women with sentiments and sentimental women! Why, my boy, do you know that convictions, real convictions, do make a convict of a man, put a mental ball and chain on him which he can never deny? I have told you my convictions—I am convinced I should be doing wrong to both of us to stay. I shall go—and love my ideal and spend my salary in soothing things."

"I'm not afraid of a divorce," he found himself insisting.

"Nor I. But should you get one I would not marry you."

"Not ever?" he asked.

Unconsciously they both looked at the photograph of the Gorgeous Girl smiling down on them in serene and frivolous fashion.

"Not ever," she told him, turning away.

There was a directors' meeting, which Steve was obliged to attend. He knew he sat about a table smoking innumerable cigars without a coherent idea in his head as to what was being said or considered. When he rushed back to the office Mary had gone home and left a note tucked in his blotter. He did not know that Beatrice had dropped in and discovered it, reading it with great satisfaction and carefully replacing it so as to have the appearance of never having been disturbed. All it said was:

"I shall go to the Meldrum Brothers on the fifteenth.—M. F."

He tore the note up in a despairing kind of rage and wrote Mary as impetuous a love letter as the Gorgeous Girl had ever received. Five minutes after writing it he tore that up, too. Then he called himself several kinds of a fool and dashed out to order an armful of flowers sent to her apartment. He had his supper in a grill room, to give him a necessary interlude before he went home. He walked round and round a city square watching the queer, shuffling old men with their trays of needles and pins, wrinkled-faced women with fortune-telling parrots, and silly young things prancing up and down, bent on mischief. Something about human beings bored him; he regretted exceedingly that he was one himself; and at the same tune he wished he might countermand the florist's order. He took a taxi home and wondered what apology he should make for being late. He had forgotten that there was a dinner party!

In silver gauze with an impressive square train Beatrice greeted him, to say he might as well remain invisible the rest of the evening, it would look too absurd to have him appear an hour late with some clumsy excuse—and as there was an interesting Englishman who made an acceptable partner for her everything was taken care of. Papa, minus the professional reader, was lonesome. He had discovered an intricate complaint of his circulation and would welcome an audience.

With relief Steve stole away to Constantine's room and amid medicine bottles and boxes, air cushions, hot-water bags, and detective stories, he listened with half an ear to the reasons why his blood count must be taken again and what horse thieves the best of doctors were anyhow!



CHAPTER XIX

The fifteenth of December Mary Faithful left the office of the O'Valley Leather Company, carrying the thing off as successfully as Beatrice O'Valley carried off her wildest flirtation. As Mary had often said: "When you can fool the letter man and the charwoman you have nothing to fear from the secret service."

And no employee of the office suspected that anything lay beneath the surface reasons given for changing firms. She accepted the handsome farewell gift with as much apparent pleasure as if she were to be married and it were a start toward her silver chest. Mary, too, had learned how to pretend. Nor did she permit Steve to come snarling—masculine fashion of sobbing—at her in vain protests trying to shake her from her resolve.

During the last days of rushed work to help her successor find the way comparatively easy Mary kept Steve at arm's length. The same strange joy at having told him her secret and released the tension was being relived again in knowing that she was to leave the tangle with the Gorgeous Girl in command of it, and go live her commercial nun's existence in the offices of unromantic old graybeards who merely thought of her as a mighty clever woman who would not demand an assistant.

Mary felt that she had truly passed her commercial novitiate; she made herself admit that a commercial life was hers for all time. She would leave a forbidden world of romance, watching Luke become a six-footer and an embryo inventor as her special pride and pleasure. It was good to have it settled, to have it a scar, pale and calm, throbbing only under extreme pressure. She even welcomed Beatrice's hurried visit to the office and met with gentle patience her half-veiled reproaches for leaving her husband's employ.

"I can't see why you go," Beatrice protested, undecided whether it was because Steve and Mary had come to some understanding, as Trudy hinted, and it would be wiser for Mary to be removed from the everyday scene of action; or whether Mary had never thought of Steve except as a man who would not pay her such and such a salary and therefore, being tailor-made of heart as well as dress, she coolly picked up her pad and pencil and was walking off the lot. With the complacent conceit of all Gorgeous Girls who fancy that clothes can always conquer, Beatrice really inclined toward the latter theory. But being a woman she could not resist having a few pangs of unrest and trying out her fancied detective ability upon Mary.

She brought her a farewell gift also—a veil case which had been given to Beatrice two summers ago. A fresh ribbon had made it quite all right, so she acted the Lady Bountiful as she presented her offering and listened carefully to Mary's sensible reply.

"I can't go running off to Bermuda and Florida like you people can. I am forced to find my recreation in my work—and hides and razors are a queer combination for a woman who really likes gardens and sea bathing." She laughed so genuinely that Beatrice told herself that Trudy was an unpardonable little fool. "I have stayed at the post for some time, and now that I've the chance to change my recreation to fabrics—I'm tempted to try it. I'm sure you do understand—and it is with great regret that I leave the office."

"It will make it hard for Mr. O'Valley," Beatrice continued, blandly. "Of course I have realized what an unusual man my husband is—his phenomenal rise and all that; and papa has always said he never met any one who was so keen as Steve. I have always tried to be diplomatic in whatever I said to Mr. O'Valley about his business; I never encourage his discussing it at home since it is not fair to ask him to drag it into his playtime. So I can't talk over actual details with you. But I know it will be hard for him and he will have quite a time getting readjusted. He says this Miss Coulson is a nice girl but temperamentally a Jersey cow."

Beatrice smiled at this; she had viewed Miss Coulson immediately upon the news concerning Mary's resignation, and had felt more than satisfied. Even Beatrice realized that Miss Coulson was a nice pink-and-white thing who undoubtedly had a cedar chest half filled with hope treasures and would at the first opportunity exchange her desk for a kitchen cabinet and be happy ever after.

When Beatrice tried discussing the matter with Steve he responded so listlessly and seemed so apathetic about either Miss Coulson or Mary that Beatrice became vastly interested in fall projects of her own, telling Aunt Belle that her theory was correct: It was easier to be disappointed in one's husband than in one's friends, and that Steve was the sort who was never going to be concerned about his wife's disappointment; in fact, he would never realize it had occurred.

The night Mary left the office for good and all, leaving clean and empty desk room for Miss Coulson and the little tea appointments as a token of good will, Luke met her at the corner and they walked home together.

"Are you sorry?" Luke asked, curiously. He had been too busy in technical high school to be office boy for some time past.

"No; only you grow accustomed to things. You remember how mother felt about the old house." Somehow the thing was harder to discuss with Luke as a questioner than with any one else.

"I guess they'll miss you a lot."

"Everyone's place can be filled, we must never forget that. And I think the change is wise. The new firm seems agreeable."

"Did Mr. O'Valley give you anything?"

Mary flushed. It had been Luke who received the armful of flowers sent anonymously.

"The firm gave me the wonderful desk set; you saw it before it was sent to be monogrammed."

"Yes, but I mean Mr. O'Valley himself." Luke was quite manly and threatening as he strode along. "Something for a keepsake because you've worked so hard for him."

They paused at a corner to wait for the traffic to abate. Mary felt faint and queer, as if she had lost her good right hand and was trying to tell herself it wasn't such a bad thing after all because she would only have to buy one glove from now on. Never to go into Steve's office, never to talk with him, listen to him, advise and influence him! She wanted to forget the sudden burst of affection, the protests of love, for she could not believe them true. What she wanted was to return to the old days of guarded control.

Beatrice's cab whirled by just then and Mary caught a glimpse of the Gorgeous Girl in a gray cloak with a wonderful jewelled collar, and Steve beside her. As the cab passed and Mary and Luke struck out across the street Mary experienced a sense of defeat. As she talked to Luke of this and that to turn his mind from the too-fascinating question of who sent the flowers, she began to wonder if she, too, would not wish to be a Gorgeous Girl should the opportunity present itself? What would her brave platitudes count if she could wear bright gold tulle with slim shoulder straps of jet supporting it? Away with sport attire and untrimmed hats! To have absurdly frivolous little shoes of blue brocade; to wear the brown hair in puffs and curls and adorned with jade and pearls; to have a lace scarf thrown over her shoulders and a greatcoat of white fur covering the tulle frock; to go riding, riding, riding, at dusk through the crowded streets filled with envying shop-girls and clerks, hard-working men and women. To ride in an elegant little car with fresh flowers in a gold-banded vase, a tiny clock saying it was nearly half after six, outside a gray fog and a rain creeping up to make the crowds jostle wearily that they might reach shelter before the storm broke. To have Steve, handsome and adoring, beside her, laughing at her indulgently, excusing her frivolous little self, adoring the fragile, foolish soul of her. At least it would be worth while trying.

"I can get a construction set for six dollars," Luke was saying. "That will make the bridge models I told you about last week. I'm going to get one."

"Yes, dear, I would," she punctuated the conversation recklessly, and then another crowd swept about them and more elegant little cabs with more Gorgeous Girls and their cavaliers whirled by. Mary hated her stupid sophistry about commercial nuns, novitiates and all, her plain gray-eyed spinster self doomed to a Persian cat and a bonus at sixty. Empty, colourless—damnable!

She realized that she had merely given herself an anaesthetic, just as Steve had done, one of unreality and indifference, and that no one stays dormant under its power for all time. That all so-called commercial nuns try hard to convince themselves that watching the procession pass by is quite the best way of all. Yet there is scant truth or satisfaction in the statement. At some time or other the hunger for being loved crashes through the spinster's brave little platform, the hunger for becoming necessary to someone in other ways than writing letters or adding figures—to be home, beside the hearth, keeping the fires burning, with woes and cares and monotonous incidents of such a narrowed horizon. It was for this we were created, Mary Faithful told herself—to be the dreamers and the ballast and the inspiration of the race. And if commercial nuns have managed to tell themselves otherwise—well, who shall be brutal enough to cry "I spy" on their little secret? She understood now the abnormal restlessness that she had seen in others of her friends—the marriages with men beneath them in class who earned but half what they did; unwise flirtations, even the sordid things that occasionally creep into the horizon. And she blamed none of them for any of it.

She knew now that should the chance come she would want to be a Gorgeous Girl. Gorgeous Girls have the faculty of being loved, even if they do not merit the emotion. Tailor-made nuns only love, and finally set their consciences to work to convince themselves that a new firm and more severe collars will be the best way to forget.

Luke was still talking about the construction set and the new invention and patent rights and heavy wool sweater with a bean cap for the summer vacation. Mary was saying: "Yes, of course," and "How interesting!" at intervals; and so they reached home, where Mary could plead a headache and go to her room to battle it out alone.

She felt, too, that the town crier could truthfully announce that milady was returning to tea gowns for an indefinite period. And she felt a passionate hunger to be one of them. That women were going to rejoice, the majority of them, to take off their lady-major uniforms, stop driving tractors and wearing overalls, and with the precious knowledge of the experience they would evolve quite a new-old standard, as charming as lavender and lace and as old as Time—the gentlewoman! They would no longer accentuate their ugliness with that unlovely honesty of the feminist which has been quite as distressing as the impossible Victorian lack of honesty and everlasting concealment of vital things. They would no longer be feminists or ladies, but gentlewomen who sew their own seam, who neither struggle unseen nor flaunt their emotions in the face of sex psychologists.

And that both commercial nuns and Gorgeous Girls must be on the wane. Yet it was too late for Mary Faithful.

* * * * *

For many reasons Steve stayed away from Mary. At intervals he sent her flowers without a card, such a schoolboyish trick to do and yet so harmless that Mary sent him no word of thanks or blame. She merely dreamed her gentlewoman's dreams and did her work in the new office with the same systematic ability as she had employed for Steve's benefit, causing the new firm to beam with delight. She had an even more imposing office than formerly, spread generously with fur rugs, traps for the weak ankles of innocent callers. She was treated with great respect. One time Steve came to see about some civic banquet in which the head of Mary's new firm was concerned, and Mary made herself close her door and begin dictating so as to appear to be occupied. The next day he slipped a love letter into the bouquet of old-fashioned flowers he selected for her benefit, and Mary forced herself to write a card and forbid his continuing the attentions.

In March Gaylord Vondeplosshe telephoned Mary, about nine o'clock one evening, that Trudy was quite ill and wanted to see her. Would Mary mind coming over if he called in the roadster? There was a fearsome tone in his voice which made Mary consent despite Luke's protests.

Gay was even more pale and weaker eyed than ever when he came into the apartment, his motor coat seeming to hang on his knock-kneed, narrow-chested self.

It seemed Trudy had not been really well for some time. She was such an ambitious little girl, he explained, excusing himself in the matter at the outset. He had begged her to rest, to go away, even commanding it, but she was so ambitious, and there was so much work on hand that she stayed. It all began with a cold. Those low-cut waists and pumps in zero weather. She would not take care of herself and she dragged round, and refused medicine, and he, Gay, had done everything possible under the circumstances; he wanted Mary to be quite clear as to this point.

They finally reached the apartment house, where Gay clambered out and offered Mary his left little finger as a means of support on the icy walk. When she came into the front bedroom of the apartment—a shabby room when one looked at it closely—and looked at Trudy she saw death written in the thin white face bereft of rouge, the red curls lying in limp confusion on the silly little head.

"Oh, Mary," Trudy began, coughing and trying to sit up, "I thought you'd never come. Why, I'm not so sick——Gay, go outside and wait for the doctor and the nurse. Just think, I'm going to afford a nurse. Oh, the pain in the chest is something fierce." She had lapsed into her old-time vernacular. "Every bone of me aches and my heart thumps as if it was awful mad at me. I guess it ought to be, Mary. How good it is to have you. Take off your things. Gee, that pain is some pain! Um—I wonder if the doctor can help."

"Do you want me to stay all night?"

Mary was doing some trifle to make her more comfortable. Trudy seemed too weak to answer but she smiled like a delighted child. She pointed a finger, the one wearing the diamond ring, to a chair beside the bed. Mary drew it up closer and sat down.

"Now, my dear, you must put on a warm dressing gown and something to pad your chest—this nightgown is a farce," she said, sternly, rising. "Where shall I find something? Oh, Trudy—don't!"

Trudy had halfway lifted herself in bed with sudden pain, moaning and laughing in terrible fashion. Mary caught her in her arms. Trudy lay back, quite contented.

"My, but I've been a bluff," she said, tears on the white, shiny cheeks. "Gee, but that doctor takes his time, too. I had to beg something great before husband would go for you. He's awful mean, but I always told you he was, and he would have a fine time if I should die, wouldn't he?" More terrible little laughs as Trudy still nestled in the warm curve of Mary's arm.

"You mustn't talk," Mary said. "That's an order."

Gay tiptoed in to say that the doctor had returned but no nurse was available. They might get one in a few days.

"I'll stay," Mary offered.

Trudy smiled again. "Rather—have—Mary," she managed to gasp.

The doctor was a preoccupied man who did not fancy late calls on foolish little creatures wearing silk nightgowns when they were nearing death. He gave some drastic orders and Gay was dispatched with a list of articles to be bought while Mary hunted high and low in the disorderly apartment, finally wrapping Trudy in thick draperies, the only sensible things she could discover.

Trudy lay very still for a few minutes. Mary thought she was dozing until she said in an animated voice: "Did you see the ring? It's a wonderful stone." Wilfully she thrust her skeleton-like fingers out from the bed covers.

Mary nodded. But Trudy was not to be discouraged.

"Gee, but that ring made a lot of trouble. Mary, come here, deary. Will you forgive me? They say you forgive the dead anything. Listen, I was awfully discouraged and Gay was so mean and I was all wrong, anyway—you know—foolish—see? Beatrice was mean, too.... I want you to marry Steve because he loves you, and a divorce won't break her heart—you just see if it does. I always knew he was the one you liked—and he does care now. Sure, he does. You can tell. Even I can tell, Mary.... I just told her so—and my, she is wild but won't admit it. She never asked me to her house after that if she could get out of it. And now I'm sorry—and I want you to have the ring. That will help some, won't it? You tell Gay what I said. You must have it. Your fingers are thin and long and can carry it off well. And so you do forgive me, don't you? I shouldn't have told her, but I couldn't help it, she was so mean. And now he cares—and you can be happy——"

"You told Mrs. O'Valley?"

Trudy was panting. Perspiration stood on the white forehead as she managed to finish: "I said you always loved her husband and now he loves you—and I am sorry. But I was mad at them all; you can't understand because you're not my sort.... But you can be happy now. Marry him and make him happy."

She dozed into a contented sleep. A little later it was all over.



CHAPTER XX

Gay's course of action was exactly what his wife had prophesied. He displayed all the proper symptoms of mourning and grief as far as his clothing and stationery went. After a brief period of retirement from the world, during which he chattered with fear when he wrapped Trudy's gay little possessions in bundles and gave them away, he emerged in the satisfactory role of a young widower on the loose who feels that "Perhaps it was all for the best; an idyl of youth, y'know; someone quite out of my sphere," and was welcomed by the old set enthusiastically.

Beatrice particularly saw to it that he was petted and properly cared for regarding invitations and dainties to eat and drink. In this new role, with a well-established business and no shrewd red-haired wife to point out his meannesses and try to make him go fifty-fifty with the profits, Gay felt at peace with all the world.

He did not even miss Trudy's work after a little. The only thing that bothered him was an occasional memory of the white, thin face and those limp, red curls, the hacking cough and the way her big eyes had stared at him that last night. He hated anything connected with suffering of any kind, let alone death itself.

Before long Gay found himself back at the club and running a neat shop on a prominent corner with deaf mutes from charity institutions ensconced in the back rooms to do the work. Memories of Trudy and of their life together became as remote as the menu of a dinner eaten twelve months past.

He had her ring set over for himself, Mary never having mentioned the matter. In fact, he avoided Mary as he avoided Steve, for it was Mary who had spent the last moments with Trudy, and whatever was said remained a most uncomfortable mystery, to Gay's way of thinking. She had remained at the apartment to help Gay through his sorrow, looking at him with brief scorn as he stammered inane thanks, scantily concealing his impatience to sample a basket of wine just sent in.

As Easter Sunday came slipping into the calendar, with Mary and Luke sightseeing in New York in plebeian fashion and not ashamed of it, there came a great though not unexpected crash in Steve O'Valley's fortunes. Steve's unreckoned-with enemies were about to have their innings; they succeeded in bringing Steve down to the level of being forced to ask his father-in-law for aid and admit that he could not handle Constantine's affairs or what remained of them.

This was exactly what the enemies desired. A number of things combined to make the crash a mighty one. Steve still speculated, secure, he fancied, in his surplus savings; his speculations all ended disastrously and his factories were no longer hustling places of commerce. It was a case of keen competition for orders, and closing round Steve relentlessly was a circle of enemies forming a gigantic trust which played the big-fish-swallow-the-little-fish game. Knowing of Steve's disaster on the stock exchange, as well as the thin ice on which his industries were managing to survive, the trust now invited him to become one of them—at a ridiculous figure—or else be squeezed out of the game overnight.

Steve's first emotion upon receiving the offer was nonchalance and determination to appear unconcerned and weather it through—so he held out as long as he could, plunging in the stock market, with the result that he was beaten as if he had been a street vendor whose wares were confiscated by the police authorities.

It was not a time to do some new devil-may-care thing. Fortunes were not achieved as they had been from 1914 to 1919, and Steve told himself in vain that since it was luck that had made him it must be luck that should again bring him out on top of the heap. All at once luck seemed no jaunty chap with endless pockets of gold but rather a disgruntled, threadbare old chap who said: "None of you ever treats me rightly when I do smile on you; now go take care of yourselves any way you like, for you have ruined me, too."

With this pleasant state of affairs Steve came home to the Villa Rosa one April day, half of him wondering if Mary would let him come and tell his story and the other half trying to hope that the news of his failure would prove the saving grace between the Gorgeous Girl and himself, that she would accept his plea of becoming "just folks" and starting anew, her father's wealth in the background, entirely removed from Steve's new field of endeavours.



It did not take long to disillusion Steve as to this. Beatrice accepted the news of the stock failure and the new trust so easily that he saw she was incapable of changing her viewpoint.

"Why gamble so, my dear Stevuns?" she began, almost petulantly. "And do you know that every time I make engagements for you you are late? You are nearly a half hour late to-night."

"I am losing the factory as well. I'll have to sell out for a song. I can't compete with cutthroats——"

"Are you going to hurry and dress so we can go?" She smiled her prettiest.

At one time Steve would have noted only that white tulle and pearls spun witchery, and her skirt possessed the charm of a Hawaiian girl's dancing costume. Even at this juncture he recalled and smiled at past blindness.

"You don't seem to understand what I am saying, and all that is happening. First I played Arizona copper until they taught me not to monkey with the band wagon; then I played Cobalt until the same thing took place." He sank impolitely into an easy-chair. "Then I got the chance to come in with the gang—an insulting proposition any way you want to figure—a paltry sum for everything I have and the statement in veiled terms that I need not expect to have that unless I did as they dictate."

"Well—sell your business to someone else before this happens!"

"I couldn't even if I wished to cheat; it is quite the talk of the town."

"Well—manage. Papa will tell you how. Why do you come running to me? Goodness, don't stare like that. It's nothing unusual to manage! I don't know about business—you made a lot of money once and I should think you could do it again."

"It doesn't bother me as much as you think," he said, almost breathlessly, eager to know the worst. "It means I am a poor man in your estimation. I can sell out to these people, who have thrown a steel ring round their game, so to speak, and had to do it until your father was out of the running. I can never buck them—I'm not fool enough to be goaded on to try. Your father could not win out the way things are now—but he could have prevented their ever getting the upper hand—because he knows every last turn of the wheel. They could not have fooled him. I didn't know what was coming until it was too late. A get-rich-quick man always pays for his own speed!"

"Stevuns, you'll make me so nervous I can't go to-night. It's a lovely party. You stay home and tell papa all about it, but leave me in peace."

"Thank you, I will. And is this the sympathy and the understanding you give me when I say we are being ruined?"

"Don't keep saying it." She stamped her little foot. "Papa has lots of money in English and Chinese securities and I don't know what-all. Why, that factory of his was the least of his fortune."

"That is why your father deliberately lifted three fourths of his money from the business just before he was taken ill. He was not going to risk cutthroats getting together. He overestimated my ability to keep clear of disaster. But after all, I'm not sorry—I don't want anything more than I have earned. For you always pay for it in some way. The world may not know but these snap-judgment profiteers, these get-rich-quick phenomena, always have to pay. But you don't understand," he added, gently, "do you? You must not be blamed for not understanding anything unless it comprises a good time!"

"I shall not try," she said, petulantly, "and if you love me you will hurry to change your things and tell papa briefly. To-morrow will be time enough to go into detail and have him start you into something new."

"I didn't take your father's money to marry you with, and even if I stole it in a sense it was my own efforts that brought it to pass. I took no help from him until I was established. And I shall not sneak back to let my wife's father support me now. I'm going to drop out of this game, Beatrice. It is for you to decide whether you go with me or stay at the Villa Rosa." He stood up suddenly and came close to her, looking down at her, in all her fragile loveliness, wondering, half hoping, halfway expecting that a miracle might happen even as he had hoped for the miracle of his fortune—that at this late hour she might cease to be a mere Gorgeous Girl and understand.

Beatrice frowned, playing with her fan. "You look shabby and tired," she complained; "not my handsome Steve. You don't mean such things, because you do love me and you know I could never be happy living any other way. I'm all papa has and he wants me to have everything I want. Of course I want this dear house and you and all that both of you mean, so be a lamb and get dressed and papa will help you into some nice safe business that can never fail."

She stood on her tiptoes, about to kiss him. But he pushed her away.

"You mean you won't begin with me, you won't take our one chance for happiness? Just to begin together to learn and earn, be real? Do you think for one instant I will be like Gay Vondeplosshe, subsisting on a woman's bounty? No. I shall support my wife; it was never my wish that we come here to live, and you insisted upon luxuries my purse could not afford. In the main, to the outsider, I have supported you. But we both know it is not true; I have merely been a needful accessory. From now on I shall either support you or else not live with you. I ask you to stop having a good time long enough to give me your decision."

"Oh, Stevuns—you funny old brutish dear!"

"If it were a direct loan of money from your father it would be a different matter—but it is one of those intricate, involved deals that mean more than you or I choose to admit. It means that I have learned the hollow satisfaction in being a rich man and husband of a Gorgeous Girl. I want to be a plain American with a wife who is content with something else save a Villa Rosa and pound-and-a-half lap dogs. I am going to be a mediocre failure in the eyes of your set, since it is the only way in which I can start to be a true success in other than dollar standards. The two elements that collect a crowd and breed newspaper headlines are mystery and struggle; remove them and you find yourself serene and secure. That is what I propose to do. I ask if it is too late for you to come with me or are you going to linger in the Villa Rosa? Answer me—I want something real, common, definite—can't you understand?"

"If you ever dare treat me like this again——" she began, whimpering.

Steve brushed by her and up the stairs. He went into Constantine's room, where the old man lay in helpless discontent, his dulling eyes looking at the sunken gardens and the chattering peacocks and his heart longing for Hannah and the early days together.

"Why, Steve," he said in a pleased tone, "you look as if they were after you. Thought you'd forgotten me. That nurse Bea engaged has a voice like a scissors grinder in action."

Briefly Steve told him what had taken place, not mentioning Beatrice's name. It had an astonishing effect; as a mental tonic it was not to be surpassed, for the fallen oak of a man throbbed anew with life, as much as was possible, his hands twitching with rage, his teeth grinding, and the dulled eyes bright with interest.

"The dogs! I knew it! Why didn't you tell me long before? Blocked 'em off—snuffed 'em out. Meddling with wildcat stocks—asinine any way you figure it! Well, I don't know that I blame you. The first success was too sweet to leave untried again, eh?" He chuckled as if something amused him. "We'll close out to 'em. We'll start again——"

"I don't want another fortune handed me," Steve interrupted. "I want to earn it, if you please. I'm not a pauper in the true sense of the word; I am merely trained down to the proper financial weight for a man of my age and experience to carry, and I can now enter the ring with good chances. The other way was as absurd as the four-year-old prodigy who typewrites and is rather fond of Greek. But I loved your daughter and I thought it quite the right thing to do. I asked your daughter just now if she was willing to live with a poor man, according to her standards, as your wife lived with you—to give me her help and her faith in me.

"Do you know what she answered? She told me to come to you and truckle for another big loan, which I am not capable of handling, to cheat legally and never hint to the world the truth of the affair. She hadn't the most remote idea that I was in earnest when I told her I was going to be a failure in the eyes of the world—but I was not going to have my wife's father support me. I'm not sorry this has happened—feel as if the Old Man of the Sea had dropped off me. But this is the thing: either my wife and I will live in a home of our own, and such a home as I can provide, being an independent and proper family and keeping our problems and responsibilities within our gates; or else your daughter is going to stay with you and lose her one chance of freedom while I leave town."

The Basque grandmother and the Celtic grandfather lent Steve all their passionate determination and keenness of insight, as they once lent him chivalry, humour, and charm. He stood before the old man taut with excitement and flushed with sudden fury.

"It is you I blame," he added before Constantine could make answer. "You kept her as useless as a china shepherdess; it is not her fault if she fails to rise to the occasion now."

Constantine's face quivered; what the emotion was none but himself knew.

"You poor fool boy!" he said, thickly. "Don't you know I made you a rich man all along the line? You never did anything at all. It wasn't luck on the stock exchange—it was Mark Constantine back of you. Gad, to have made what you did in the time you did you'd have had to do worse than dabble your hands in the mud. You'd have had to roll in it—like I did." He gave a coarse laugh. "That was what I figured out when you said you wanted Beatrice and what you were going to do to try to get her. I liked you, I wanted you for her husband. I hated the other puppies. So I wasn't going to have Beatrice's husband a cutthroat and a highbinder as he would have to be if he had turned the whole trick.

"You young fool, don't you suppose I made the stock exchange yield you the sugarplums? Gad, I knew every cent you spent and made. It was for my girl, my Gorgeous Girl, so why wouldn't I do it? I saved your ideals and kept your hands white so that you would be good enough for her; that was what I figured out the hour after you had told me your intentions. I followed you like the fairy books tell of; I brought you your fortune and your factory and scotched all the enemies about you—and gave you the girl. And you thought you killed the seven-headed dragon yourself.... I don't blame you for the foozle, Steve; I cotton-woolled you all along—it was bound to come. But, damme, you'll come down to brass tacks and take more of my money now and keep her from being unhappy and stop this snivel about earning what you get and needing responsibilities—or you'll find you've put your foot into hell and you can't pull it out!"

White-heat anger enveloped Steve's very soul, yet strangely enough he felt not like sinning but rather like Laertes crying out in mental anguish: "Do you see this, O God?"



CHAPTER XXI

Steve knew he brushed by Aunt Belle, who was coming in to see what her brother was roaring about, and down those detestable gilded curlicue stairs to seek out his wife and try again to make her realize that for once he was determined on what should come to pass as regarded their future together, to force her to realize even if he created a cheap scene.

Whatever blame fell upon Constantine's shoulders was not within his province to judge—Constantine was a dying man and Steve was not quite thirty-five. So that ended the matter from Steve's viewpoint. It was his intention not to try to evade his personal blame in the matter but to make reparation to his own self and to his wife if he were permitted. If he could once convince his wife that their sole chance of future happiness and sanity lay in beginning as medium-incomed young persons with all the sane world before them it would have been worth it all—excepting for Mary Faithful.

Even as Steve tried in a quick, tense fashion to dismiss Mary from his mind and say that Beatrice was his wife and that love must come as the leavener once this hideous wealth was removed, he knew the thing was impossible. The best solution of which he was capable was to say that he owed it to both Mary Faithful and Beatrice to play the game from the right angle and that in causing Beatrice to disclaim her title of Gorgeous Girl and all it implied he at least would find contentment—the same sort of uninteresting contentment of which Mary boasted.

He found Beatrice in a furore of tears and protests, angered at missing the dinner engagement and not understanding why any of it was necessary. She felt her own territory had been infringed upon, since making a scene was her peculiar form of mental intoxication.

But Steve was composed, even smiling, and as he came up to her she fancied her father had made everything all right as his check book had seen fit to do upon so many occasions. The slight worry over Steve's possible folly vanished, and she felt it safe to proceed to reproach him for having been so horrid.

"Now, my dear Stevuns, why did you get me all upset? And yourself and poor papa, to say nothing of my having to send word at the last moment that we could not attend the dinner. Oh, Steve, Steve, will you ever be really tamed?"

"Come and sit beside me." He drew out a notebook and pencil. "I must tell you some things."

Rather curious, she obeyed, but keeping a discreet distance so her frock would not be ruffled. "I'm still cross," she warned.

Steve was writing down figures, adding them and making notations.

"Look here, dear," he began, patiently; "this is just where I shall stand—a poor man to your way of thinking, almost as poor as when I set out to win you. I'm going into a salaried job for a few years—a real hope-to-die job—and we can have a house——"

"I thought we talked that all out before," she interrupted, half petulantly, half wistfully. "Why do you keep repeating yourself? You'll be thumping your fists the first thing we know!"

"Do you fancy I am not going to do this? Are you not sufficiently concerned to listen, to realize that I have been a blind, conceited fool? But I have learned my lesson. I shall support my wife from now on and live in my own house or else I shall no longer be your husband."

"Steve!"

She opened and shut her fan quickly, then it fell to the floor. But he did not pick it up.

"You were never keen for details, so I shall not irritate you now by introducing them. But the fact remains that I have been made and backed by your father merely because he wished me to be your husband. You picked me out—and I was keen to be picked out—and he decided to make me as proper a companion for you as possible. I am in some ways as untried to-day as any youngster starting out; as I was when I fancied I made the grand and initial stride by myself. Your father feels that I ought to be eternally grateful—but then, what else could the father of the Gorgeous Girl think? He has harmed me—but he has ruined you. I hardly thought you would meet me halfway, still it was worth the try."

Forgetful of her flounces Beatrice crumpled them in her hands, saying sharply: "Are you taking this way of getting out of it?"

"Good heavens!" Steve murmured, half inaudibly, "I keep forgetting you have never been taught values or sincerity! There is no way I can prove to you how in earnest I am, is there?"

"You mean to say that I am a failure?" she preened herself unconsciously.

"The most gorgeous failure we have with us to-day! And the worst of it is it is growing to be a common type of failure since gorgeousness is becoming prevalent. There are many like you—not many more gorgeous, and thousands less so. You are a type that has developed in the last twenty years and is developing these days at breakneck speed! And you can't understand and you don't want to and I'm damned if I'll try to explain again."

"Well," she asked, shrewdly, quite the woman of the world, "what is it you are about to do? Wear corduroy trousers and a red bandanna and start a butcher-paper-covered East-Side magazine filled with ravings?"

"No; that is another type we plain Americans have on our hands."

"Don't spar for time."

"I'm not. I'm through sparring; I want to go to work. I want——"

What was the use? He stopped before adding another spark to her wrath.

"I suppose you want to marry that woman—Mary Faithful, who has loved you so long and made herself so useful! She was clever enough to pretend to efface herself and go to work for someone else, but I dare say you have seen her as often as before. Oh, are you surprised I know? I gave you the credit of being above such a thing, but Trudy told me that this woman had told her the truth—so you see even your Mary Faithful cannot be trusted. You had better turn monk, Steve, be done with the whole annoying pack of us! Anyway, Trudy came running to me, but I never lost sleep over the rumour. I felt you were above such things, as I said, but presently little indications—straws, you know—told me she cared; and if a woman cares for a man and is able to pass several hours each day in his employ, unless she is cross-eyed or a blithering idiot she cannot fail to win the game! Now can she, Stevuns?"

Steve raised his hand in protest. "Please leave her out of it."

"So—we must talk about my being a failure, my father clipping your wings of industry and all that—yet we must not mention a woman who has loved you—and gossiped about it."

"She did not! You know Trudy—you know her nature," he interrupted.

"Taking up her defence! Noble Stevuns! Then you do reciprocate—and you are planning one of those ready-to-be-served bungalows with even a broom closet and lovely glass doorknobs, where Mary may gambol about in organdie and boast of the prize pie she has baked for your supper. Oh, Stevuns, you are too funny for words!"

She laughed, but there was a malicious sparkle in her eyes. She was carrying off the situation as best she knew how, for she did not comprehend its true significance, its highest motive. Underneath her veneer of sarcasm and ridicule she was hurt, stabbed—quite helpless.

With her father's spirit she resolved to take the death gamely—and make Steve as ridiculous as possible, to have as good a time as she could out of such a sorry ending. But she knew as she stood facing him, so tired and heavy-eyed, the rejected sheet of figures fallen on the brocaded sofa between them, that it was she who met and experienced lasting defeat.

By turns she had been the spoiled child of fortune, the romantic parasite, the mad butterfly, the advanced woman, the Bolshevik de luxe; and finally and for all time to come she was confronted with the last possibility—there was no forked road for her—that of a shrewd, cold flirt. She realized too late the injustice done her under the name of a father's loving protection. Moreover, she determined never to let herself realize to any great extent the awfulness of the injustice. It was, as Steve said, a common fate these days—there was solace in the fact of never being alone in her defeat. But at five minutes after twelve she had glimpsed the situation and regretted briefly all she was denied. Still it was an impossibility to cease being a Gorgeous Girl.

She felt cheated, stunted, revengeful because of this common fate. Steve was setting out for new worlds to conquer—he very likely would have a good time in so doing. She must continue to be fearfully rushed and terribly popular, having a good time, too. How dull everything was! Strangely, she did not give Mary Faithful or her part in Steve's future a thought—just then. She was thinking that Ibsen merely showed the awakened Nora's going out the door—as have Victorian matrons shown their daughters, urging them to do likewise. But it really begins to be interesting at this very point since it is not the dramatic closing of the door that is so vital, but the pitfalls and adventures on the long road that Nora and her sisters have seen fit to travel.

Beatrice was deprived of even this chance, even the falling by the wayside and admitting a new sort of defeat, or travelling the road in cold, supreme fashion and ending with selfish victory and impersonal theories warranted to upset the most domestic and content of her stay-at-home sisters. But she, like all Gorgeous Girls, must be content to stand peering through the luxurious gates of her father's house, watching Steve go down the long road, then glancing back at her lovely habitation, where no one except tradesmen really took her seriously, and where all that was expected of her, or really permitted, was to have a good time.

Steve shrugged his shoulders. He felt a great weariness concerning the situation, nonchalant scorn of what happened in the future of this woman. As for Mary Faithful—that was a different matter, but he could not think about Mary Faithful while standing in the salon of the Villa Rosa with the Gorgeous Girl as mentor.

"Suppose we do not try to talk any more just now?" he suggested. "We are neither one fit to do so. Wait until morning and then come to an agreement." He spoke as impersonally as if a stranger asking aid interrupted his busiest time.

Beatrice recognized the tone and what it implied. "I am agreed," she said, after a second's hesitation. "Do not fancy my father and I will come on our knees to you."

She swept from the room in a dignified manner. Steve waited until he heard the door of Constantine's room bang. He knew his wife had rushed to tell her father her side of the matter—to receive the eternal heart's ease in the form of a check so she could go and play and forget all about Stevuns the brute.

He walked unsteadily through the rooms of the lower floor, out on to the main balcony, and back again. He could not think in these rooms; he could not think in any corner of the whole tinsel house. It seemed a consolation prize to those who have been forbidden to think.

He went to his own ornate and impossible room, which should have belonged to an actor desiring publicity, or some such puppet as Gay. He tried to sleep, but that too was impossible. He kept pacing back and forth and back and forth, playing the white bear as Beatrice had so often said, wondering if it would be too much the act of a cad to go to Mary Faithful and merely tell her. He could think at Mary's house—he must have a chance to think, to realize that Beatrice refused to come with him and to tell himself that nothing should force him to remain in the Villa Rosa and be the husband of the Gorgeous Girl, set right by her father's checks, the laughingstock of the business world that had called his hand.

The humiliation, the failure, the loss—were good to have; stimulating.

Wonderfully alive and keen, he did not know how to express the new sensation that took possession of his jaded brain. He was like a gourmand dyspeptic who has long hesitated before trying the diet of a workingman and when someone has whisked him off to a sanitarium and fed him bran and milk until he has forgotten nerves, headaches, and logginess he vows eternal thankfulness to bran and milk, and is humbly setting out to adopt the workingman's diet instead of the old-time menus.

Steve could begin to work simply, to find his permanent place in the commercial world. He had enough money—or would have—to start a home in simple yet pleasant fashion; he had knowledge and ability that would place him favourably and furnish him the chance to work normally toward the top. That was all very well, he told himself toward early morning—but must it be done alone? He had had the Gorgeous Girl as the incentive to make his fortune, and now he had Mary Faithful as the incentive to lose it—and if the Gorgeous Girl stayed on at the villa and became that pitied, dangerous object, a divorcee; and if Mary did care——-Strange things, both wonderful and fearsome, happen in the United States of America.



CHAPTER XXII

Beatrice, never having gone to her father for anything save money, did not know how to broach the subject in heartfelt and deep-water fashion. When she went into his room she found him with scarlet spots burning in his grayish cheeks, his dark eyes harsher and more formidable than ever. He tried twisting himself on the bed, resulting in awkward, halfway muscular contortions and gruff moans punctuating the failure. He held out his arms to her and she went flying into them, not the dignified woman of the world putting a cave man in his proper place.

"He is impossible!" was all she said, giving way to hysterical sobs. "Don't even try talking to him again——"

More gruff moans before Constantine began coherently: "He'll do what I say or he'll not stay in this house. I expected this——"

"Oh, you don't understand, papa. He doesn't want to stay here, not at all! He does not want me. There, now you know it! He must have said something of this to you—perhaps you didn't believe him. Neither did I—at first. Oh, my head aches terribly and I know I shall be ill. He wants me to be a poor man's wife—starting again, he calls it—while he earns a salary and we live in a poky house and I do the cooking. I'd think it awfully funny if it was happening to any of my friends—but this is terrible! Well, goat-tending tells, doesn't it? And after all we have done for him—to babble on about honesty and earning and all those socialistic ideas. He is a dangerous man, papa; really. I don't care."

Constantine stopped moaning. "Look up at me." He made her lift her face from the tangle of silk bed quilts. "Do you love him?"

"Why, papa, I always adored Stevuns—but of course I can't give up the things to which I've been accustomed! It's so silly that I think he is queer even to suggest it—don't you?"

"You won't love him if he goes out of here and you stay," the old man said, slowly; "but if he will stay and do as I tell him—then you'll love him?"

"Yes"—with great relief that she was not called upon to keep on explaining and analyzing her own feelings and Steve's motives; it was entirely too much of a strain—"that is it. If Steve will stay here and do what you tell him—I think he'd better retire from business and just look after our interests—I shall forgive him. But if he keeps up this low anarchistic talk about dragging me to a washtub—oh, it's too absurd!—I'm going to Reno and be done with all of it." She drew away from her father and the same cold, shrewd look of the mature flirt replaced her confusion. "Don't you think that is sensible?"

Her father closed his eyes for a moment. Then he whispered: "So you don't love him."

Beatrice had to stoop to catch the words. "You can't be expected to love people that make you unhappy."

"Oh, can't you?" he asked. "Can't you? Did you never think that loving someone is the bravest thing in the world? It takes courage to keep on loving the dead, for instance; the dead that keep stabbing away at your heart all through the years. Loving doesn't always make you happy, it makes you brave—real love!"

He opened his eyes to look at her closely. Beatrice whimpered.

"Isn't it time for your drops? You're too excited, papa dear."

"Then you don't love him," he repeated. "Well, then, it's best for you both that he go—that's all I've got to say. I thought you cared."

Beatrice's eyebrows lifted. "Really, I can't find any one who can talk about this thing sensibly," she began.

Suddenly she thought of Gay. There was always Gay; at least she could never disappoint him, which was what she meant by having him talk sensibly. Gay knew everyone, how to laugh at the most foolish whims, pick up fans, exercise lap dogs, and wear a fancy ball costume. What a blessed thing it was there was Gay.

"It has been quite too strenuous an evening," she said, in conclusion, "so I'm off for bed. Steve and I will talk more to-morrow. Good-night, papa. I'm terribly distressed that this has come up to annoy you." She bent and kissed him prettily.

"I've seen you make more fuss when your lap dog had a goitre operation," her father surprised her by way of an answer. "It's all different in my mind now." The thick fingers picked at the bed quilt. "I thought it would break your heart, but it's just that you want to break his spirit; so it's better he should go."

Left alone, Constantine lay staring into darkness, his harsh eyes winking and blinking, and the gnarled thick fingers, which had robbed so cleverly by way of mahogany-trimmed offices and which had written so many checks for his Gorgeous Girl, kept on their childish picking at the quilt. Yet his love for Beatrice, monument to his folly, never dimmed. He merely was beginning to realize the truth—too late to change it. And as the pain of loving his dead wife had never ceased throughout the years, so the new and more poignant pain of loving his daughter and knowing that she was in the wrong began tugging at his heartstrings. Well, he was the original culprit; he must see her through the game with flying colours. As for Steve—he envied him!