Phil felt very much as if it were his own funeral. But he did not speak. He couldn't. The other forged on, his big, mumbling bass mingled with the buzz of the blue-bottle in the window.

"I made up my mind something had to be done and done quick. I wasn't going to have my little girl run her head into the noose by marrying Lathrop when it was you she loved. I got busy, made inquiries about you as I said. I had to before I offered you the job naturally, but it was more than that. I had to find out whether you were the kind of man I wanted my Carlotta to marry. I found out, and came up here to put the proposition to you. I talked to your father first, by the way, and got his consent to go ahead with my plans."

"You went to my father!" There was concern and a trace of indignation in Phil's voice.

"Naturally I was playing to win. I had to hold all the trumps. I wanted your father on my side—had to have him in fact. He came without a murmur. He is a good sport. Said all he wanted was your happiness, same as all I wanted was Carlotta's. We quite understood each other."

Phil sat silent with down cast eyes on his almost untasted salad. He couldn't bear to think of his father's being attacked like that, hit with a lightning bolt out of a clear sky. The more he thought about it the more he resented it. Of course Dad would agree. He was a good sport as Mr. Cressy said. Rut that didn't make the thing any easier or more justifiable.

"Your father is willing. I want it. Carlotta wants it. You want it, yourself. Lord, boy, be honest. You know you do. You'll never regret giving in. Remember it is for Carlotta's happiness we are both looking for." There was an almost pleading note in Harrison Cressy's voice—a note few men had heard. He was more used to command than to sue for what he desired.

Phil rose from the table. His face was a little white as he stood there, tall, quiet, perfectly master of himself and the situation. Even before the young man spoke Harrison Cressy knew he had failed.

"I am sorry, Mr. Cressy. If Carlotta wants happiness with me I am afraid she will have to come to Dunbury."

"You won't reconsider?"

"There is nothing to reconsider. There never was any question. I am sorry you even raised one in Dad's mind. You shouldn't have gone to him in the first place. You should have come to me. It was for me to settle."

"Highty, tighty!" fumed the exasperated magnate. "People don't tell me what I should and should not do. They do what I tell 'em."

"I don't," said Philip Lambert in much the same tone he had once said to Carlotta, "You can't have this." "I am sorry, Mr. Cressy. I don't want to be rude, or unkind or obstinate; but there are some things no man can decide for me. And there are some things I won't do even to win Carlotta."

Harrison Cressy's head drooped for a moment. He was beaten for once—beaten by a lad of twenty-three whose will was quite as strong as his own. The worst of it was he had never liked any young man in his life so well as he liked Philip Lambert at this minute, never so coveted any thing for his daughter Carlotta as he coveted her marriage with Philip Lambert.

"That is final, I suppose," he asked after a moment, looking up at the young man.

"Absolutely, Mr. Cressy. I am sorry."

Harrison Cressy lumbered to his feet.

"I am sorry too," he said, "damnably sorry for Carlotta and for myself. Will you shake hands with me, Philip? It is good to meet a man now and then."



CHAPTER XXI

HARRISON CRESSY REVERTS

Left to himself, Harrison Cressy discovered to his annoyance that there was no train out of Dunbury for two hours. That was the worst of these little one-horse towns. You might as well be dead as alive in 'em. By the time he had smoked his after-dinner cigar he felt as if he might as well be dead himself. He felt suddenly heavy, old, almost decrepit, though that morning when he had left Boston he had considered himself in the prime of life and vigor. Hang it! He was sixty-nine. A man was about done for at sixty-nine, all but ready to turn into his grave. And he without son or grandson. Lord! What a swindle life was anyway!

Well, there was no use sitting still groaning. He would get up and take a little walk until train time. Maybe it was his liver that made him feel so confoundedly rotten and no count. A little exercise would do him good.

Absentmindedly he noted, as he strolled down the elm-shaded streets, the neatness of the lawns, the gay flower beds, the hammocks and swings out under the trees as if people really lived out of doors here. There were animate evidences of the fact everywhere. Children played here and there in shady spaces under big trees. Pretty girls on wide, hospitable-looking porches chatted and drank lemonade and knitted. A lithe, red-haired lass in white played tennis on a smooth dirt court with a tall, clean looking youth. As Mr. Cressy passed the girl cried out, "Love all" and the millionaire smiled. It occurred to him it was not so hard to love all in a village like this. It was only in cities that you hated your neighbor and did him first lest you be done yourself.

He hadn't been loose in a country town like this for years. He had almost forgotten what they were like when you didn't shoot through them in a motor car, rushing always to get somewhere else. His casual saunter down the quiet street was oddly soothing to his nerves, awoke happy, yet half-sad memories.

He had met and loved Carlotta's mother in a country town. The lilacs had been in bloom and the orioles had stood sponsor for his first Sunday call. They had become engaged by the time the asters were out. The next lilac time they had been married. A third spring and the little Carlotta had come. They had both been disappointed at its not being a boy, but the little girl was a wonder, with hair as gold as buttercups, eyes like wood violets and a laugh that lilted and gurgled like the little brook down in the meadow.

And then, two years later, the boy had come, come and drifted off to some far place. It had been a bitter blow to Rose as well as to Harrison Cressy, especially as they said there never could be any more children. Rose grew frail, did not rally or regain her strength. They advised a sanitarium in the Adirondacks for her. She had gone, but it had been of no use. By the time they brought in the first gentians Rose had drifted off after her little son. Carlotta and her father were alone.

By this time Harrison Cressy had begun to show the authentic Midas touch. Only the little Carlotta stood between him and sheer, sordid money grubbing. And even she was an excuse for the getting of always more and more wealth. He told himself Carlotta should be a veritable princess, should go always clad in the finest, have of the best, be surrounded always by the most beautiful. She should know only joy and light and laughter.

Thinking these thoughts, Carlotta's father sighed. For now at last Carlotta wanted something he could not give her, was learning after twenty-two years of cloudless joy the bitter way of tears. Why hadn't that stubborn boy surrendered?

For that matter why didn't Carlotta surrender? This was a new idea to Harrison Cressy. All the time he had been talking to Philip Lambert he had been seeing Carlotta only in relation to Crest House and the Beacon Street mansion. But just now he had been recalling her mother under very different associations. Rose had been content with a tiny little cottage set in a green yard gay with bright old fashioned flowers. He and Rose had nested as happily as the orioles in the maples, especially after the gold-haired baby came. Was Carlotta so different from Rose? Was her happiness such a different kind of thing? Were women not pretty much alike at heart? Did they not want about the same things?

Carlotta loved this lad of hers as Rose had loved himself. Was it her own father who was cheating her out of happiness because he had taught her to believe that money and limousines and great houses and many servants and silken robes are happiness? If he had talked to her of other things, told her about her mother and the happy old days among the lilacs and orioles, with little but love to nest with, couldn't he have made her see things more truly, shown her that love was the main thing, that money could not buy happiness? One could not buy much of anything that was worth buying Harrison Cressy thought. One could purchase only the worthless. That was the everlasting failure of money.

He remembered the boy's, "I love Carlotta. But I don't love her enough to let her or you buy me." It was true. Neither he nor his daughter had been able to purchase the lad's integrity, his good faith, his ideals. And Harrison Cressy was thankful from the bottom of his heart that it was so.

He turned his steps back to the village and as he did so an oriole flashed out of the shrubbery near him, and passed like a flame out of sight among the trees. This was a good sign. Orioles had nested every year in the maple tree by the little white house where Carlotta had been born. Carlotta herself had always loved them. "Pretty, pretty, birdie!" she had been wont to call out. "Come, daddy, let's follow him and see where he goes."

He would go home and tell Carlotta all this, make her see that her happiness was in her own hands. No, it was the boy's story. If Carlotta would not follow the orioles and her own heart for Philip Lambert she would not for any argument of his.

By this time a distant puff of smoke gave evidence that the Boston train was already on its way, leaving Harrison Cressy in Dunbury. Not that he cared. He had business still to transact ere he departed, a new battle to fight. He walked with the firm elastic step of a youth back to town. What did it matter if you were sixty-nine when the best things of life were still ahead of you?

Accordingly Phil was a second time that day surprised by the unheralded arrival of Carlotta's father, a rather dusty, weary and limp-looking gentleman this time, but exuding a sort of benignant serenity that had not been there early in the day.

"Hello," greeted the millionaire blandly. "Missed my train—got to browsing round the town like an old billy goat. Not sorry though. It is a nice little town. Mind if I sit down? I'm a bit blown." And dropping on a stool Mr. Cressy fanned himself with his panama and grinned at Philip, a grin the young man could not quite fathom. What new trick had the clever old financier at the bottom of his mind? Phil hoped he had not got to go through the thing again. Once had been quite enough for one day.

"Let me send out for something cool to drink, Mr. Cressy. You must be horribly hot. It is warm in here, even with all the fans going. Hi, there, Tommy!" Philip summoned a freckled, red-haired youth from somewhere in the background. "Run over to Greene's and get a lemonade for this gentleman, will you?"

"Right, Mr. Phil." The boy saluted—an odd salute, Mr. Cressy noted. It was rendered with the right hand, the three middle fingers held up, the thumb bent over touching the nail of the little finger. The saluter stood very straight as he went through the ceremony and looked very serious about it. "Queer!" thought the onlooker. The messenger boys he knew did not behave like that when you gave them an order.

Philip excused himself to attend to a customer and in a moment the red-haired lad was back with a tall glass of lemonade clinking delightfully with ice. Mr. Cressy took it and set it down on the counter while he fumbled for his wallet and produced a dollar bill.

To his amazement the boy's grin faded, and he drew himself up with dignity.

"No, thank you, sir," he said to the proffered greenback. "I'm a Scout and Scouts don't take tips."

"What!" gasped Harrison Cressy. In all his life he did not recall meeting a boy who ever refused money before. He began to think there was something uncanny about this town of Dunbury. First a young man who could not be bought at any price. And now a boy who wouldn't take a tip for service rendered.

"I said I was a Scout," repeated the lad patiently. "And Scouts don't take tips. We are supposed to do one good turn every day, anyway, and I hadn't gotten mine in before. I'm only a Tenderfoot but I'm most ready for my second class tests. Mr. Phil's going to try me out in first aid as soon as he gets time."

"Mr. Phil! What's he got to do with it?" inquired Mr. Cressy, after a long, satisfying swig of lemonade.

"He is our Scout-master and a peach of a one too. He is going to take us on a hike tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? Tomorrow is Sunday, young man." The Methodist in Harrison Cressy rose to the surface.

"I know. We all go to church and Sunday school in the morning. Mr. Phil won't take us unless we do. But in the afternoon he thinks it is all right to go on a hike. We don't practise signaling and things like that, but we get in a lot of nature study. I can identify all my ten trees now and a whole lot more besides, and I've got a bird list of over sixty."

"You don't say so?" Harrison Cressy was plainly impressed. "So your Mr. Phil gives a good deal of time to that sort of thing, does he?" he added, his eyes seeking Philip Lambert in the distance.

"Should say he did. I guess he gives about all the time he has outside of the store. He's a dandy Scout-master. What he says goes, you betcher."

Remembering the scene at the luncheon table that day, Harrison Cressy thought it quite probable. What Philip had said had gone "you betcher" on that occasion with a vengeance. So young Lambert gave his off hours to business of this sort. Most of Carlotta's male friends gave most of theirs to polo, jazz, and chorus girls. He began to covet Philip more than ever for a possible, and he hoped probable, son-in-law.

It played into his purposes excellently that Philip on returning invited him to supper on the Hill that night. He wanted to meet the boy's people, especially the mother. Carlotta had told him once that Philip's mother was the most wonderful person in the world.

Seated at the long table in the Lambert dining-room Harrison Cressy enjoyed a meal such as his chef-ridden soul had almost forgotten could exist—a meal so simple yet so delectable that he dreamed of it for days afterward.

But the food, excellent as it was, was only a small part of the significance of the occasion. It was a revelation to the millionaire to know that a family could gather around the board like this and have such a thoroughly delightful time all round. There was gay talk and ready laughter, a fine flavor of old-fashioned courtesy and hospitality and good will in everything that was said or done.

The Lambert girls—the pretty twins and the younger, slim slip of a lassie, Elinor—were charming, fresh, natural, unspoiled, very different from and far more to his taste than most of the young women who came to Crest House—hot-house products, over-sophisticated, cynical, too familiar with rouge and cigarettes and the game of love and lure, huntresses more or less, the whole pack of them. It seemed girls could still be plain girls on this enchanted Hill—girls who would make wonderful wives some day for some lucky men.

But the mother! She was the secret of it all, quite as remarkable as Carlotta had said. She was extraordinarily well read, talked well on a dozen subjects as to which he was himself but vaguely informed, and she was evidently even more extraordinarily busy. There was talk of a Better Babies movement in which she was interested, of a Red Cross Chapter at which she had spent the afternoon, of a committee meeting of the local Woman's Club which was bringing a noted English poet-lecturer to town. There were Chatauqua plans in view, and a new children's reading room in the public library with a story-telling hour of which Clare was to be in charge. A hundred things indicated that Mrs. Lambert was by no means confined to the four walls of her home for interests and activities. Yet her home was exquisitely kept and she was a mother first of all. One could see that every moment. It was "Mums, this" and "Mums, that" from them all. The life of the home clearly pivoted about her.

Harrison Cressy found himself wishing that Carlotta could have known a motherhood like that. Rose had gone so soon. Carlotta had never known what she missed. Perhaps Mr. Cressy himself had not known until he saw Mrs. Lambert and realized what a mother might be. Poor Carlotta! He had given her a great deal. At least, until this, afternoon, he had thought he had. But he had never given her anything at all comparable to what this quiet village store-keeper and his wife had given to their son and daughters. He hadn't had it to give. He had been poor, after all, all along. Though he hadn't suspected it until now.

After supper Stuart Lambert had slipped quickly away, bidding his son stay up on the Hill a little longer with their guest. Phil had demurred, but had been quietly overruled and had acquiesced perforce. Poor Dad! There had not been a moment all day to relieve his mind about Mr. Cressy's offer. Not once had the father and son been alone. Phil was afraid his father was taking the thing a good deal to heart, and it worried him. He had counted on talking it over together as they went back to the store but his father had willed otherwise.

It was with Carlotta's father instead of his own that Philip talked first after all.

"See here, Philip," began Mr. Cressy as they descended the Hill in "Lizzie." "I went at this all wrong. So did Carlotta. I understand better now. I've been back in the past this afternoon, remembering what it means to live in the country and love and mate there in the good old-fashioned way as Carlotta's mother and I did. It is what I want her to do with you. Do you get that, boy? I want her to come to Dunbury. I want her to have a piece of your mother. Carlotta never knew what it was to have a mother. It is mostly my fault she doesn't see any clearer. You mustn't blame her, lad."

"I don't," said Phil. "I love her."

"I know you do. And she loves you. Go to her. Make her see. Make her marry you and be happy."

Phil was silent, not because he was not moved by the older man's plea but because he was almost too moved to speak. It rather took his breath away to have Harrison Cressy on his side like this. It was almost too incredible, and yet there was no mistaking the sincerity in the other's words or on his face. Carlotta's father did want Carlotta to come to him on his Hill.

But would Carlotta want it? That was the question. For himself he sought no higher road to follow than the one where his father and mother had blazed the trail through fair weather and stormy these many years. But would Carlotta be content to travel so with him? He did not know. At any rate he could ask her, try once more to make her see, as her father put it.

He turned to his companion with a sober smile at this point in his reflections.

"Thank you, Mr. Cressy. I will try again and I know it is going to make a great deal of difference to Carlotta—and to me—to have you on my side. Perhaps she will see it differently this time. I—hope so."

"Lord, boy, so do I!" groaned Mr. Cressy. "You will come back to Crest House tomorrow with me?"

Phil hesitated, considered, shook his head.

"I'll come next Saturday. I can't get away tomorrow," he said.

"Why not? For the Lord's sake, boy, get it over!"

Phil smiled but shook his head. He too wanted to get it over. He could hardly wait to get to Carlotta, would have started that moment if he could have done so. But there were clear-cut reasons why he could not go tomorrow, obligations that held him fast in Dunbury.

"I can't go tomorrow because I have promised my boys a hike," he explained.

Harrison Cressy nearly exploded.

"Heavens, man! What does a parcel of kids amount to when it comes to getting you a wife? You can call off your hike, can't you?"

"I could, but it would be hard on a good many of them. They count on it a good deal. Some of them have given up other pleasures they might have had on account of it. Tommy has, for instance. His uncle asked him to go to Worcester with him in his car, and he refused because of his date with me. They are all bribed to church and Sunday School by the means. One of the things Scouting stands for is sticking to your job and your word. I don't think it is exactly up to the Scoutmaster to dodge his responsibilities when he preaches the other kind of thing. Of course, if it were a life and death matter, it would be different. It isn't. I have waited a good many weeks to see Carlotta. I can wait one more."

Harrison Cressy grunted. He hardly knew whether to fly into a rage with this extraordinary young man or to clap him on the back and tell him he liked him better and better every minute. He contented himself by repeating a remark he had made earlier in the day.

"You are a darn fool, young man." Then he added, half against his will, "But I like your darnfoolness, hang me if I don't!"

Phil had a strenuous two hours in the store with never a minute to get at his father. It was not until the last customer had departed, the last clerk fled away and the clock striking eleven that the father and son were alone.

Philip came over to where the older man stood. His heart smote him when he saw how utterly worn and weary the other looked, as if he had suddenly added a full ten years to his age since morning. His characteristic buoyancy seemed to have deserted him for once.

"Dad, I've not had a minute alone with you all day. I am sorry Mr. Cressy bothered you about that blue sky proposition of his. I never would have let him if I had known. Of course there was nothing in it. I didn't consider it for a minute."

Stuart Lambert smiled wearily and sat down on the counter.

"I am afraid you have given up more than we realized, Philip, in coming into the store. Mr. Cressy gave me a glimpse into things that I knew nothing about. You should have told us."

"There was nothing to tell. I've given up nothing that was mine. I told Carlotta all along she would have to come to me. I couldn't come to her. My whole life is here with you. It is what I have wanted ever since I had the sense to want anything but to enjoy my fool self. But even then I didn't appreciate what it would be like to be here with you. I couldn't, till I had tried it and found out first hand what kind of a man my dad was. I am absolutely satisfied. If Mr. Cressy had offered me a million a year I wouldn't have taken it. It wouldn't have been the slightest temptation even—" he smiled a little sadly—"even with Carlotta thrown in. I don't want to get Carlotta that way."

"You say you are satisfied, Philip. Maybe that is so. But you are not happy."

"I wasn't, just at first. I was a fool. I let the thing swamp me for awhile. Mums helped pull me out of the slough and since then I've been finding out that happiness is—well, a kind of by-product. Like the kingdom of heaven it doesn't come for observation. I have had about as much happiness here with you, and with Mums and the girls at home, and with my Scouts in the woods, as I deserve, maybe more. I'm going to try to get Carlotta. I haven't given up hope. I'm going down to Sea View next week to ask her again and maybe things will be different this time. Her father is on my side now, which is a great help. He has got the Holiday Hill viewpoint all at once. He wants Carlotta to come to me—us. So do I, with all my heart. But whether she does or doesn't, I am here with you as long as you want me, first last and all the time and glad to be. Please believe that, Dad, always."

Stuart Lambert rose.

"Philip, you don't know what it means to me to hear you say this." There was a little break in the older man's voice, the suggestion of pent emotion. "It nearly killed me to think I ought to give you up. You are sure you are not making too much of a sacrifice?"

"Dad! Please don't say that word to me. There isn't any sacrifice. It is what I want. I haven't been a very good son always. Even this summer I am afraid I haven't come up to all you expected of me, especially just at first when I was wrapped up in myself and my own concerns too much to see that doing a good job in the store was only a small part of what I was here in Dunbury to do. But anyway I am prouder than I can tell you to be your son and I am going to try my darndest to live up to the sign if you will let me stay on being the minor part of it."

He held out his hand and his father took it. There were tears in the older man's eyes. A moment later the store was dark as the two passed out shoulder to shoulder beneath the sign of STUART LAMBERT AND SON.



CHAPTER XXII

THE DUNBURY CURE

Harrison Cressy awoke next morning to the cheerful chirrup of robins and the pleasant far-off sound of church bells. He liked the bells. They sounded different in the country he thought. You couldn't hear them in the city anyway. There were too many noises to distract you. There was no Sabbath stillness in the city. For that matter there wasn't much Sabbath.

He got up out of bed and went and looked out of the window. There was a heavenly hush everywhere. It was still very early. It had been the Catholic bells ringing for mass that he had heard. The dew was a-dazzle on every grass blade. The robins hopped briskly about at their business of worm-gathering. The morning glories all in fresh bloom climbed cheerfully over the picket fence. He hadn't seen a morning glory in years. It set him dreaming again, took him back to his boyhood days.

If only Carlotta would be sensible and yield to the boy's wooing. Dunbury had cast a kind of spell upon him. He wanted his daughter to live here. He wanted to come here to visit her. In his imagination he saw himself coming to Carlotta's home—not too big a home—just big enough to live and grow in and raise babies in. He saw himself playing with Carlotta's little golden-haired violet-eyed daughters, and walking hand in hand with her small son Harrison, just such a sturdy, good-looking, wide-awake youngster as Philip Lambert had no doubt been. Harrison Cressy's mind dwelt fondly upon this grandson of his. That was a boy indeed!

Carlotta's son should not be permitted to grow up a money grubber. There would be money of course. One couldn't very well avoid that under the circumstances. The boy would be trained to the responsibilities of being Harrison Cressy's heir. But he should be taught to see things in their true values and proportions. He must not grow up money-blinded like Carlotta. He should know that money was good—very good. But he should know it was not the chief good, was never for an instant to be classed with the abiding things—the real things, not to be purchased at a price.

Mr. Cressy sighed a little at that point and crept back to bed. It occurred to him he would have to leave this latter part of his grandson's education to the Lambert side of the family. That was their business, just as the money part was his.

He fell asleep again and presently re-awoke in a kind of shivering panic. What if Carlotta would not marry Philip after all? What if it was too late already? What if his grandson turned out to be a second Herbert Lathrop, an unobjectionable, possibly even an objectionable ass. Perspiration beaded on the millionaire's brow. Why was that young idiot on the Hill waiting? What were young men made of nowadays? Didn't Philip Lambert know that you could lose a woman forever if you didn't jump lively? Hanged if he wouldn't call the boy this minute and tell him he just had to change his mind and go to Crest House that very morning without a moment's delay. Delay might be fatal. Harrison Cressy sat up in bed, fumbled for his slippers, shook his head gloomily and returned to his place under the covers.

It wasn't any use. He might as well give up. He couldn't make Philip Lambert do anything he did not want to do. He had tried it twice and failed ignominiously both times. He wouldn't tackle it again. The boy was stronger than he was. He had to lie back and let things take their course as best they might.

"Cheer up! Cheer up!" counseled the robins outside, but millionaire Cressy heeded not their injunctions. The balloon of his hopes lay pricked and flat in the dust.

He rose, dressed, breakfasted and discovered there was an eleven o'clock train for Boston. He discovered also that he hadn't the slightest wish to take it. He did not want to go to Boston. He did not want to go to Crest House. And very particularly and definitely he did not want to see his daughter Carlotta. Carlotta might ferret out his errand to Dunbury and be bitterly angry at his interference with her affairs. Even if she were not angry how could he meet her without telling her everything, including things that were the boy's right to tell? It was safer to stay away from Crest House entirely. That was it. He would telegraph Carlotta his gout was worse, that he had gone to the country to take a cure. He would be home Saturday.

Immensely heartened he dispatched the wire. By this time it was ten-thirty and the dew on the grass was all dry, the morning glories shut tight and the robins vanished. The church bells were ringing again however and Harrison Cressy decided to go to church, the white Methodist church on the common. He wouldn't meet any of the Hill people there. The Holidays were Episcopal, the Lamberts Unitarian—a loose, heterodox kind of creed that. He wished Phil were Methodist. It would have given him something to go by. Then he grinned a bit sheepishly at his own expense and shook his head. He had had the Methodist creed to go by himself and much good had it done him. Maybe it did not make so much difference what you believed. It was how you acted that mattered. Why that was Unitarianism itself, wasn't it? Queer. Maybe there was something in it after all.

Seated in the little church Harrison Cressy hardly listened to the preacher's droning voice. He followed his own trend of thought instead, recalling long-forgotten scriptural passages. "What shall it profit a man though he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" was one of the recurring phrases. He applied it to Philip Lambert, applied it sadly to himself and with a shake of his head to his daughter, Carlotta. He remembered too the story of the rich young man. Had he made Carlotta as the rich young man, cumbered her with so many worldly possessions and standards that by his own hand he was keeping her out of the heaven of happiness she might have otherwise inherited? He feared so.

He bowed his head with the others but he did not pray. He could not. He was too unhappy. And yet who knows? Perhaps his unwonted clarity of vision and humility of soul were acceptable that morning in lieu of prayer to Sandalphou.

As he ate his solitary dinner his despondency grew upon him. He felt almost positive Philip would fail in his mission, that Carlotta would go her willful way to regret and disillusionment, and all these things gone irretrievably wrong would be at bottom his own fault.

Later he endeavored to distract himself from his dreary thoughts by discoursing with his neighbor on the veranda, a tall, grizzled, soldierly looking gentleman with shrewd but kind eyes and the brow of a scholar.

As they talked desultorily a group of khaki clad youngsters filed past, Philip Lambert among them, looking only an older and taller boy in their midst. The lads looked happy, alert, vigorous, were of clean, upstanding type, the pick of the town it seemed probable to Harrison Cressy who said as much to his companion.

The other smiled and shook his head.

"You are mistaken, sir," he said. "Three months ago most of those fellows were riffraff—the kind that hang around street corners smoking and indulging in loose talk and profanity. Young Lambert, the chap with them, their Scout-master, picked that kind from choice, turned down a respectable church-mothered bunch for this one, left the other for a man who wanted an easier row to hoe. It was some stunt, as the boys say. It took a man like Phil Lambert to put it through. He has the crowd where he wants them now though. They would go through fire and water if he led them and he is a born leader."

Harrison Cressy's eyes followed the departing group. Here was a new light on his hoped-for son-in-law. So he picked "publicans-and sinners" to eat with. Mr. Cressy rather liked that. He hated snobs and pharisees, couldn't stomach either brand.

"It means a good deal to a town like this when its college-bred boys come back and lend a hand like that," the other man went on. "So many of them rush off to the cities thinking there isn't scope enough for their ineffable wisdom and surpassing talents in their own home town. A number of people prophesied that young Lambert would do the same instead of settling down with his father as we all wanted him to do. I wasn't much afraid of that myself. Phil has sense enough to see rather straight usually. He did about that. And then the kickers put up a howl that he had a swelled head, felt above the rest of Dunbury because he had a college education and his father was getting to be one of the most prosperous men in town. They complained he wouldn't go in for things the rest of the town was interested in, kept to himself when he was out of the store. There were some grounds for the kick I will admit. But it wasn't a month before he got his bearings, had his head out of the clouds and was in the thick of everything. They swear by him now almost as much as they do by his father which is saying a good deal for Dunbury has revolved about Stuart Lambert for years. It is beginning to revolve about Stuart Lambert and Son now. But I am boring you with all this. Phil happens to be rather a favorite of mine."

"You know him well?" questioned Mr. Cressy.

"I ought to. I am Robert Caldwell, principal of the High School here. I've known Phil since he was in knickerbockers and had him under my direct eye for four years. He kept my eye sufficiently busy at that," he added with a smile. "There wasn't much mischief that youngster and a neighbor of his, young Ted Holiday, didn't get into. Maybe that is why he is such a success with the black sheep," he added with a nod in the direction in which the khaki-clad lads had gone.

"H-mm," observed Mr. Cressy. "I am rather glad to hear all this. You see it happens that I came to Dunbury to offer Philip Lambert a position. My name's Cressy—Harrison Cressy," he explained.

His companion lifted his eye-brows a little dubiously.

"I see. I didn't know I was discussing a young man you knew well enough to offer a position to. May I ask if he accepted it?" "He did not," admitted Harrison Cressy grimly.

"Turned it down, eh?" The school man looked interested.

"Turned it down, man? He made the proposition look flatter than a last year's pan-cake and it was a mighty good proposition. At least I thought it was," the magnate added with a faint grin remembering all that went with that proposition.

Robert Caldwell smiled. He rather liked the idea of one of his boys making a proposition of millionaire Cressy's look like a last year's pan-cake. It was what he would have expected of Phil Lambert.

"I am sorry for you, Mr. Cressy," he said. "But I am glad for Dunbury. Philip is the kind we need right here."

"He is the kind we need right everywhere," grunted Mr. Cressy. "Only we can't get 'em. They aren't for sale."

"No," agreed Robert Caldwell. "They are not for sale. Ah, the Boston train must be in. There is the stage."

Mr. Cressy allowed his eyes to stray idly to the arriving bus and the descending passengers.

Suddenly he stiffened.

"Good Lord!" he ejaculated, an exclamation called forth by the fact that the last person to alight from the bus was a slim young person in a trim, tailored, navy blue suit and a tiny black velvet toque whose air bespoke Paris, a person with eyes which were precisely the color of violets which grow in the deepest woods.

A little later Harrison Cressy sat in a deep leather upholstered chair in his bedroom with his daughter Carlotta in his lap.

"Don't try to deceive me, Daddy darling," Carlotta was saying. "You were worried—dreadfully worried because your little Carlotta wept salt tears all over your shirt bosom. You thought that Carlotta must not be allowed to be unhappy. Wars, earthquakes, ship sinkings, wrecks—anything might be allowed to go on as usual but not Carlotta unhappy. You thought that, didn't you, Daddy darling?"

Daddy darling pleaded guilty.

"Of course you did, you old dear. The moment I knew you were in Dunbury I knew what you were up to. I understand perfectly how your mind works. I ought to. Mine works very much the same way. It is a simple three stage operation. First we decide we want a thing. Next we decide the surest, quickest way to get it and third—we get it. At least we usually do. We must do ourselves that much justice, must we not, Daddy darling?"

Daddy darling merely grunted.

"You came to Dunbury to tell Phil he had to marry me because I was in love with him and wanted to marry him. He couldn't very well marry me and keep on living in Dunbury because I wouldn't care to live in Dunbury. Therefore he would have to emigrate to a place I would care to live in and he couldn't very well do that unless he had a very considerable income because spending money was one of my favorite sports both indoor and outdoor and I wouldn't be happy if I didn't keep right on playing it to the limit. Therefore, again, the very simple solution of the whole thing was for you to offer Phil a suitable salary so that we could marry at once and live in the suitable place and say, 'Go to it. Bless you my children. Bring on your wedding bells—I mean bills. I'll foot 'em.' Put in the rough, that was the plan wasn't it, my dear parent?"

"Practically," admitted the dear parent with a wry grin. "How did you work it out so accurately?"

Carlotta made a face at him.

"I worked it out so accurately because it was all old stuff. The plan wasn't at all original with you. I drew the first draft of it myself last June up on the top of Mount Tom, took Phil up there on purpose indeed to exhibit it to him."

"Humph!" muttered Harrison Cressy.

"Unfortunately Phil didn't at all care for the exhibit because it happened that I had fallen in love with a man instead of a puppet. I could have told you coming to Dunbury was no earthly use if you had consulted me. Phil did not take to your plan, did he?"

"He did not."

"And he told you—he didn't care for me any more?" Carlotta's voice was suddenly a little low.

"He did not. In fact I gathered he was fair-to-middling fond of you still, in spite of your abominable behavior."

"Phil, didn't say I had behaved abominably Daddy. You know he didn't. He might think it but he wouldn't ever say it—not to you anyway."

"He didn't. That is my contribution and opinion. Carlotta, I wish to the Lord Harry you would marry Philip Lambert!"

Carlotta's lovely eyes flashed surprise and delight before she lowered them.

"But, Daddy," she said. "He hasn't got very much money. And it takes a great deal of money for me."

"You had better learn to get along with less then," snapped Harrison Cressy. "I tell you, Carlotta, money is nothing—the stupidest, most useless, rottenest stuff in the world."

Carlotta opened her eyes very wide.

"Is that what you thought when you came to Dunbury?" she asked gravely.

"No. It is what I have learned to think since I have been in Dunbury."

"But you—you wouldn't want me to live here?" probed Carlotta.

"My child, I would rather you would live here than any place in the whole world. I've traveled a million miles since I saw you last, been back in the past with your mother. Things look different to me now. I don't want what I did for you. At least what I want hasn't changed. That is the same always—your happiness. But I have changed my mind as to what makes for happiness."

"I am awfully glad, Daddy darling," sighed Carlotta snuggling closer in his arms. "Because I came up here on purpose to tell you that I've changed my mind too. If Dunbury is good for gout maybe—maybe it will be good for what ails me. Do you think it might, Daddy?" For answer he held her very tight.

"Do you mean it, child? Are you here to tell that lad of yours you are ready to come up his Hill to him?"

"If—if he still wants me," faltered Carlotta. "I'll have to find that out for myself. I'll know as soon as I see Phil. There won't anything have to be said. I am afraid there has been too much talking already. You shouldn't have told him I cried," reproachfully.

"How could I help it? That is, how the deuce did you know I did?" floundered the trapped parent.

"Daddy! You know you played on Phil's sympathy every way you could. It was awful. At least it would have been awful if you had bought him with my silly tears after you failed to buy him with your silly money. But he didn't give in even for a moment—even when you told him I cried, did he?"

"Not even then. But that doesn't mean he doesn't care. He—"

But Carlotta's hand was over his mouth at that. How much Phil cared she wanted to hear from nobody but from Phil himself.

Philip Lambert found a queer message waiting for him when he came in from his hike. Some mysterious person who would give no name had telephoned requesting him to be at the top of Sunset Hill at precisely seven o'clock to hear some important information which vitally concerned the firm of Stuart Lambert and Son.

"Sounds like a hoax of some sort," remarked Phil. "But Lizzie has been chafing at the bit all day in the garage and I don't mind a ride. Come on, Dad, let's see what this bunk means."

Stuart Lambert smiled assent. And at precisely seven o'clock when dusk was settling gently over the valley and the glory in the western sky was beginning to fade into pale heliotrope and rose tints Lizzie brought the two Lamberts to the crest of Sunset Hill where another car waited, a hired car from the Eagle garage.

From the tonneau of the other car Harrison Cressy stepped out, somewhat ponderously, followed by some one else, some one all in white with hair that shone pure gold even in the gathering twilight.

Phil made one leap and in another moment, before the eyes of his father and Carlotta's, not to mention the interested stare of the Eagle garage chauffeur, he swept his far-away princess into his arms. There was no need of anybody's trying to make Carlotta see. Love had opened her eyes. The two fathers smiled at each other, both a little glad and a little sad.

"Brother Lambert," said Mr. Cressy. "Suppose you and I ride down the hill. I rather think this spot belongs to the children."

"So it seems," agreed Stuart Lambert. "We will leave Lizzie for chaperone. I think there will be a moon later."

"Exactly. There always was a moon, I believe. It is quite customary."

As Stuart Lambert got out of the small car Philip and Carlotta came to him hand-in-hand like happy children.

Carlotta slipped away from Phil, put out both hands to his father. He took them with a happy smile.

"I have a good many daughters, my dear," he said. "But I have always wanted to welcome one more. Do you think you could take in another Dad?"

"I know I could," said Carlotta lifting her flower face to him for a daughterly kiss.

"Come, come! Where do I come in on this deal? Where is my son, I'd like to know?" demanded Mr. Cressy.

"Right here at your service—darnfoolness and all," said Phil holding out his hand.

"Don't rub it in," snapped Harrison Cressy, though he gripped the proffered hand hard. "Come on, Lambert. This is no place for us."

And the two fathers went down the hill in the hired car leaving Lizzie and the lovers in possession of the summit with the world which the moon was just turning to silver at their feet.



CHAPTER XXIII

SEPTEMBER CHANGES

When September came Carlotta, who had been ostensibly visiting Tony though spending a good deal of her time "in the moon with Phil" as she put it, departed for Crest House, carrying Philip with her "for inspection," as he dubbed it somewhat ruefully. He wasn't particularly enamored of the prospect of being passed upon by Carlotta's friends and relatives. It was rather incongruous when you came to think of it that the lovely Carlotta, who might have married any one in the world, should elect an obscure village store keeper for a husband. But Carlotta herself had no qualms. She was shrewd enough to know that with her father on her side no one would do much disapproving. And in any case she had no fear that any one even just looking at Phil would question her choice. Carlotta was not the woman to choose a man she would have to apologize for. Phil would hold his own with the best of them and she knew it. He was a man every inch of him, and what more could any woman ask?

Ted went up for his examinations and came back so soberly that the family held its composite breath and wondered in secret whether he could possibly have failed after all his really heroic effort. But presently the word came that he had not only not failed but had rather covered himself with glory. The Dean himself, an old friend of Doctor Holiday's, wrote expressing his congratulations and the hope that this performance of his nephew's was a pledge of better things in the future and that this fourth Holiday to pass through the college might yet reflect credit upon it and the Holiday name.

Ted himself emphatically disclaimed all praise whatsoever in the matter and cut short his uncle's attempt at expressing his appreciation not only of the successful finish of the examinations but the whole summer's hard work and steadiness.

"I am glad if you are satisfied, Uncle Phil," he said. "But there isn't any credit coming to me. It was the least I could do after making such a confounded mess of things. Let's forget it."

But Ted Holiday was not quite the same unthinking young barbarian in September that he had been in June. Nobody could work as he had worked that summer without gaining something in character and self-respect. Moreover, being constantly as he was with his brother and uncle, he would have been duller than he was not to get a "hunch," as he would have called it, of what it meant to be a Holiday of the authentic sort. Larry's example was particularly salutary. The younger Holiday could not help comparing his own weak-willed irresponsibility of conduct with the older one's quiet self-control and firmness of principle. Larry's love for Ruth was the real thing. Ted could see that, and it made his own random, ill-judged attraction to Madeline Taylor look crude and cheap if nothing worse. He hated to remember that affair in Cousin Emma's garden. He made up his mind there would be no more things like that to have to remember.

"You can tell old Bob Caldwell," he wrote from college to his uncle, "that he'll sport no more caddies and golf balls at my expense. Flunking is too damned expensive every way, saving your presence, Uncle Phil. No more of it for this child. But don't get it into your head I am a violently reformed character. I am nothing of the kind and don't want to be. If I see any signs of angel pin-feathers cropping out I'll shave 'em. I'd hate to be conspicuously virtuous. All the same if I have a few grains more sense than I had last year they are mostly to your credit. Fact is, Uncle Phil, you are a peach and I am just beginning to realize it, more fool I."

Tony also flitted from the Hill that September for her new work and life in the big city. Rather against her will she had ensconced herself in a Student Hostelry where Jean Lambert, Phil's older sister, had been living several years very happily, first as a student and later as a successful illustrator. Tony had objected that she did not want anything so "schooly," and that the very fact that Jean liked the Hostelry would be proof positive that she, Tony, would not like it. What she really wanted to do was either to have a studio of her own or accept Felice Norman's invitation to make her home with her. Mrs. Norman was a cousin of Tony's mother, a charming widow of wealth and wide social connections whom Tony had always adored and admired extravagantly. Just visiting her had always been like taking a trip to fairy land and to live with her—well, it would be just too wonderful, Tony thought. But Doctor Holiday had vetoed decidedly both these pleasant and impractical propositions. Tony was far too young and pretty to live alone. That was out of the question. And he was scarcely more willing that she should go to Mrs. Norman, though he liked the latter very well and was glad that his niece would have her to go to in any emergency. He knew Tony, and knew that in such an environment as Mrs. Norman's home offered the girl would all but inevitably drift into being a gay little social butterfly and forget she ever came to the city to do serious work. Life with Mrs. Norman would be "too wonderful" indeed.

So Tony went to the Hostelry with the understanding that if after a few months' trial she really did dislike it as much as she declared she knew she would they would make other arrangements. But rather to her chagrin she found herself liking the place very much and enjoying the society of the other girls who were all in the city as she and Jean were, pursuing some art or other.

The dramatic school work was all she had hoped and more, stimulating, engrossing, altogether delightful. She made friends easily as always, among teachers and pupils, slipped naturally here as in college into a position of leadership. Tony Holiday was a born queen.

She had plenty of outside diversion too. Cousin Felice was kind and delighted to pet and exhibit her pretty little kinswoman. There were fascinating glimpses into high society, delightful private dancing parties in gorgeous ball rooms, motor trips, gay theater parties in resplendent boxes, followed by suppers in brilliant restaurants—all the pomp and glitter of life that youth loves.

There were other no less genuinely happy occasions spent with Dick Carson, way up near the roof in the theaters and opera house or in queer, fascinating out-of-the-way foreign restaurants. The two had the jolliest kind of time together, always like two children at a picnic. Tony was very nice to Dick these days. He kept her from being too homesick for the Hill and anyway she felt a wee bit sorry for him because he did not know about Alan and those long letters which came so frequently from the retreat in the mountains where the latter was sketching. She knew she ought to tell Dick how far things had gone but somehow she couldn't quite drive herself to do it. She didn't want to hurt him. And she did not want to banish him from her life. She wanted him, needed him just where he was, at her feet, and never bothering her with any inconvenient demands or love-making. It was selfish but it was true. And in any case it would be soon enough to worry Dick when Alan came back to town.

And then without warning he was back, very much back. And with his return the pleasant nicely balanced, casual scheme of things which she had been following so contentedly was knocked sky high. She had to adjust herself to a new heaven and a new earth with Alan Massey the center of both. In her delight and intoxication at having her lover near her again, more fascinating and lover-like than ever, Tony lost her head a little, neglected her work, snubbed her friends, refused invitations from Dick and Cousin Felice, and indeed from everybody except Alan. She went everywhere with him, almost nowhere without him, spent her days and more of her nights than was at all prudent or proper in his absorbing society, had, in short, what she afterward described to Carlotta as a "perfect orgy of Alan."

At the end of ten days she called a halt, sat down and took honest account of herself and her proceedings and found that this sort of thing would not do. Alan was too expensive every way. She could not afford so much of him. Accordingly with her usual decision and frankness she explained the situation to him as she saw it and announced that henceforth she would see him only twice a week and not as often if she were especially busy.

To this ultimatum she kept rigidly in spite of her lover's protests and pleas and threats. She was inexorable. If Alan wanted to see her at all he must do it on her terms. He yielded perforce and was madder over her than ever, feted and worshiped and adored her inordinately when he was with her, deluged her with flowers and poetry and letters between times, called her up daily and nightly by telephone just to hear her voice, if he might not see her face.

So superficially Tony conquered. But she was not over-proud of her victory. She knew that whether she saw Alan or not he was always in the under-current of her thoughts and feelings. In the midst of other occupations she caught herself wondering whether he had written her, whether she would find his flowers when she got home, where he was, what he was doing, if he was thinking of her as she of him. She wanted him most irrationally when she forbade his coming to her. She looked forward to those few hours spent with him as the only time when she was fully alive, dreamed them over afterward, knew they meant a hundredfold more to her than those she spent with any other man or woman. She wore his flowers, pored over his long, beautiful, impassioned letters, devoured the books of poetry he sent her, danced with him as often and as long as she dared, gave her soul more and more into his keeping, the more so perhaps in that he was so tenderly reverential of her body, never even touching her lips with his, though his eyes often told a less moderate story.

The orgy over she was again doing well with her work at the school. She knew that. Her teachers praised her gifts and her progress. Without any vanity she could not help seeing that she was forging ahead of others who had started even with her, had more real talent perhaps than most of those with whom she worked and played. But she took no pride in these things. For equally clearly she saw that she was not doing half what she might have done, would have done, had there been no Alan Massey in the city and in her heart. She had a divided allegiance and a divided allegiance is a hard thing to live with as a daily companion.

But she would not have had it otherwise. Not for a moment did she ever wish to go back to those free days when love was but a name and the flame had not blown so dangerously near.

As for Alan Massey himself, he alternated between moods which were starry pinnacles of ecstasy and others which were bottomless pits of despair. He lived for two things only—his hours with Tony and his work. For he had begun to paint again, magnificently, furiously, with all his old power and a new almost godlike one added to it. As an artist it was his supreme hour. He painted as he had never painted before.

His love for Tony ran the whole gamut. He loved her passionately, found it exquisite torture to have her in his arms when they danced and to have still to bank the fires which consumed him and of which she only dimly guessed. He loved her humbly, worshipfully as a moth might look to a star. He loved her tenderly, protectingly, longed to shield her by his own might from all griefs, troubles and petty annoyances, to guard her day and night, lest any rough, unlovely or unseemly thing press near her shining sphere. He desired to wrap her about with a magic mantle of beauty and luxury and the quintessence of life, to keep her in a place apart as he kept his priceless collection of rubies and emeralds. He loved her jealously, was sick at the thought that some other man might be near her when he might not, might dance with her, covet her, kiss her. He hated all men because of her and particularly he hated with black hate the man whom he was wronging daily by his silence, his cousin, John Massey.

Beneath all this strange, sad welter of emotion deeper still in Alan Massey's heart lay the tragic conviction that he would never win Tony, that his own sins would somehow rise to strike at him like a snake out of the grass. He had lost faith in his luck, had lost it strangely enough when luck had laid at his feet that most desirable of all gifts, Jim Roberts' timely death.

In the House on the Hill, things were very quiet, missing the gay presence of the two younger Holidays and with those at home cumbered with cares and perplexity and grief.

Things were easier for Ruth than for Larry. It was less difficult for her to play the part of quiet friendship than for him, partly because her love was a much less tempestuous affair and partly because a woman nearly always plays a part of any kind with more facility than a man does. And Larry Holiday was temperamentally unfit to play any part whatsoever. He was a Yea-Yea and Nay-Nay person.

The simplicity of the girl's role was also very largely created by her lover's rigid self control. She took her cue from his quietness and felt that things could not be so bad after all. At least they were together. Neither had driven the other away from the Hill by any unconsidered act or word. Ruth had no idea that being with her under the tormenting circumstances was scarcely undivided happiness for poor Larry or that her peace of mind was more or less purchased at cost of his.

Larry kept the promise he had made to his uncle more literally than the latter had had any idea he would or could. He never sought out Ruth's society, was never alone with her if he could help it, never so much as touched her hand. Ruth being a very human and feminine little person sometimes wished he were not quite so consistently, "Holidayish" in his conduct. She missed the ardent gaze of those wonderful gray eyes which he now kept studiously averted from hers. Privately she thought it would not have mattered so fearfully if just once in a while he had forgotten the ring. Life was very, very drab when you never forgot and let yourself go the tiniest little bit. Child like little Ruth never guessed that a man like Larry Holiday does not dare let himself go the tiniest little bit, lest he go farther, far enough to regret.

Doctor Holiday watching in silence out of the tail of his eye understood better what was going on behind his nephew's quiet exterior demeanor, and wondered sometimes if it had not been a mistake to keep the boy bound to the wheel like that, if he should not rather have packed him off to the uttermost parts of the earth, far away from the little lady with the wedding ring who was so little married. And yet there was Granny, growing perceptibly weaker day by day, clinging pathetically to Larry's young strength. Poor Granny! And poor Larry! How little one could do for either!

Ruth's memory did not return. She remembered, or at least found familiar, books she had read, songs she must have sung, drifted into doing a hundred little simple everyday things she must have done before, since they came to her with no effort. She could sew and knit and play the piano exquisitely. But all this seemed rather a trick of the fingers than of the mind. The people, the places, the life that lay behind that crash on the Overland never returned to her consciousness for all her anxious struggle to get them back.

It began to look as if her husband, if she had one, were not going to claim her. No one claimed her. Not a single response came from all the extensive advertising which Larry still kept up in vain hope of success. Apparently no one had missed the little Goldilocks. Precious as she was none sought her.

In the meanwhile she was an undisguised angel visitant to the House on the Hill. If in his kindly hospitality Doctor Holiday had stretched a point or two in the first place to make the little stranger feel at home the case was different now. She was needed, badly needed and she played the part of house daughter so sweetly and unselfishly that her presence among them was a double blessing to them all, except perhaps to poor Larry who loved her best of all.



CHAPTER XXIV

A PAST WHICH DID NOT STAY BURIED

Coming in from a lively game of tennis with Elsie Hathaway, his newest sweetheart, the Ancient History Prof's pretty daughter, Ted Holiday found awaiting him a letter from Madeline Taylor. He turned it over in his hands with a keen distaste for opening it, had indeed almost a mind to chuck it in the waste paper basket unread. Hang it all! Why had she written? He didn't want to hear from her, didn't want to be reminded of her existence. He wanted instead distinctly to forget there was a Madeline Taylor and that he had been fool enough to make love to her once. Nevertheless he opened the letter and pulled his forelock in perturbation as he read it.

She had quarrelled with her grandfather and he would not let her come back home. She was with Emma just now but she couldn't stay. Fred was behaving very nastily and he might tell Emma any day that she, Madeline, had to go. They were all against her. Everything was against a girl anyway. They never had a chance as a man did. She wished she had been killed when she had been thrown out of the car that night. It would have been much better for her than being as miserable as she was now. She often wished she was dead. But what she had written to Ted Holiday for was because she thought perhaps he could help her to find a job in the college town. She had to earn some money right away. She would do anything. She didn't care what and would be very grateful to Ted if he would or could help her to find work.

That was all. There was not a single personal note in the whole thing, no reference to their flirtation of the early summer except the one allusion to the accident, no attempt to revive such frail ties as had existed between them, no reproaches to Ted for having broken these off so summarily. It was simply and exclusively a plea for help from one human being to another.

Ted thrust the letter soberly in his pocket and went off for a shower. But the thing went with him. He wished Madeline hadn't written, wished she hadn't besought his aid, wished most of all she hadn't been such a devilish good sport in it all. If she had whined, cast things up against him as she might have done, thrown herself in any way upon him, he could perhaps have ignored her and her plea. But she had done nothing of the sort. She was deucedly game now just as she had been the night of the smash. And by a queer trick of his mind her very gameness made Ted Holiday feel more quiet and responsible, a frame of mind he heartily resented. Hanged if he could see why it was his funeral! If that old Hottentot of a grandfather of hers chose to turn her out without a cent it wasn't his fault. For that matter he wasn't to blame for what Madeline herself had done. He didn't suppose the old man would have cut so rough without plenty of cause. Why did she have to bob up now and make him feel so darned rotten?

Unfortunately, even the briefest of episodes have a way of not erasing themselves as conveniently as most of us would like to have them. The thing was there and Ted Holiday had to look at it whether it made him feel "darned rotten" or not. He did not want to help the girl, did not even want to renew their acquaintance by even so much as a letter. The whole thing was an infernal nuisance. But infernal nuisance or not, he had to deal with it, could not funk it. He was a Holiday and no Holiday ever shirked obligations he himself had incurred. He was a Holiday and no Holiday ever let a woman ask for help, and not give It. By the time he was back from the shower Ted knew precisely where he stood. Perhaps he had known all along.

The next day he bestirred himself, went to Berry the florist who he happened to know was in need of a clerk, got the burly Irishman's consent to give the girl a job at excellent wages, right away, the sooner the better. Ted opened his mouth to ask for an advance of salary but thought better of it before the words came out. Madeline might not like to have anybody know she was up against it like that. He would have to see to that part of it himself somehow.

"You're a good customer, Mr. Holiday," the genial florist was saying. "I'm tickled to be obligin' ye and mesilf at the same time. Anything in the flower line, to-day, Mr. Holiday? Some roses now or violets? Got some Jim dandies just in. Beauties, I'm tellin' you. Want to see 'em?"

Ted hesitated. His exchecquer was low, very low. The first of the month was also far away—too far, considering all things. His bill at Berry's already passed the bounds of wisdom and the possibility of being paid in full out of the next month's allowance without horribly crippling the debtor. It was exceedingly annoying to have to forfeit that ten dollars to Uncle Phil every month for that darned automobile business which it seemed as if he never would get free of one way or another. He certainly ought not to buy any more flowers this month.

Still, there was the hop to-night. Elsie was going with him. He had run a race with three other applicants for the privilege of escorting her and being victor it behooved him to prove he appreciated his gains. He didn't want Elsie to think he was a tight-wad, or worse still suspect him of being broke. He fell, let Berry open the show case, debated seriously the respective merits of roses and violets, having reluctantly relinquished orchids as a little too ruinous even for a ruined young man.

"If they are for Miss Hathaway," murmured a pretty, sympathetic clerk in his ear, "Mr. Delany sent roses this morning and she likes violets best. I've heard her say so."

That settled it. Ted Holiday wasn't going to be beaten by a poor fish like Ned Delany. The violets were bought and duly charged along with those other too numerous items on Ted Holiday's account. Going home Ted wrote a cheerful, friendly letter to Madeline Taylor reporting his success in getting her a job and enclosing a check for twenty live dollars, "just to tide you over," he had put in lightly, forbearing to mention that the gift made his bank balance even lighter, so light in fact that it approached complete invisibility. He added that he was sorry things were in a mess for her but they would clear up soon, bound to, you know. And nix on the wish-I-were-dead-stuff! It was really a jolly old world as she would say herself when her luck turned. He remained hers sincerely and so forth.

This business off his mind, young Mr. Holiday felt highly relieved and pleased with himself and the world which was such a jolly old affair as he had just assured Madeline. Later he went to the hop and had a corking time, stayed till the last violin swooned off into silence, then sauntered with deliberate leisureliness toward Prof. Hathaway's house with Elsie on his arm. On the Prof's porch he had lingered as long as was prudent, perhaps a little longer, spooning discreetly the while as one may, even with an Ancient History Prof's daughter. There was nothing suggestive of Ancient History about Elsie. She was slim and young as the little new moon they had both nearly broken their necks to see over their right shoulders a few minutes before. Moreover she was exceedingly pretty and as provocative as the dickens. In the end Ted stole a saucy kiss and left her pretending to be as indignant as if a dozen other impudent youths had not done precisely the same thing since the opening of the college year. It was the lady's privilege to protest. Ted granted that, but neither was he much taken in by injured innocence airs. Elsie was quite as sophisticated as he was himself as he knew very well. No first kiss business for either of them, he reflected as he went whistling back to the frat house. It was all in the game and both knew it was nothing but a game which made it perfectly pleasant and harmless.

At the frat house he found a quiet little game of another sort in progress, slid in, took a hand, got interested, played until three A.M. and on quitting found himself in possession of some thirty odd dollars he had not had when he sat in. Considering his recent financial depression the thirty dollars was all to the good, covered Madeline's check and Elsie's violets. It was indeed a jolly old world if you treated it right and did not take it or yourself too seriously.

Inasmuch as playing cards for money was strictly against college rules and gambling had been the one vice of all vices the late Major Holiday had hated with unrelenting hate, it might be a satisfaction to record that the late Major's son took an uneasy conscience to bed that night, or rather that morning, but truth is truth and we are compelled to state that Ted Holiday did not suffer the faintest twinge of remorse and went to sleep the moment his head touched the pillow as peacefully as a guileless new born babe might have done.

Moreover when he woke the next morning at an unconscionably late hour he turned over, looked at the clock, grunted and grinned sleepily and lapsed off again into blissful oblivion, thereby cutting all his morning classes and generally submerging himself in the unregenerate ways of his graceless sophomoric year. He had never contracted to be conspicuously virtuous it will be recalled.

The next day he secured a suitable lodging place for Madeline in an inexpensive but respectable neighborhood and the day after that betook himself to the station to meet the girl herself. Ted never did things by halves. Having made up his mind to stand by he did it thoroughly, perhaps the more punctiliously because in his heart he loathed the whole business and wished he were well out of it.

For a moment as Madeline came toward him he hardly recognized her. She looked years older. The brilliancy of her beauty was curiously dimmed as an electric light might be dimmed inside a dusty globe. There were hard lines about her full lips and a sharp, driven look in her black eyes. The two had met in June on equal terms of blithe youth. Now, only a few months later, Ted was still a careless boy but Madeline Taylor had been forced into premature womanhood and wore on her haggard young face, the stamp of a woman's hard won wisdom.

To the girl Ted Holiday appeared more the bonny Prince Charming than ever only infinitely farther removed from her than he had seemed in those happy summer days which were a million years ago to all intents and purposes now. How good looking he was—how tall and clean and manly looking! Her heart gave a quick jump seeing him again after all these dreary months. But oh, she must be very careful—must never forget for a moment that things were very, very different now from what they were in June!

There was a moment's slightly embarrassed silence as they shook hands. Both were remembering all too vividly the scene in Cousin Emma's garden upon the occasion of their last meeting. It was Ted who first found tongue and announced casually that he was going to take her straight to the house of Mrs. Bascom, her landlady to be.

"She's a good sort," he added. "Mothery like you know. You'll like her."

Madeline did not answer. She couldn't. Something choked in her throat. The phrase, "mothery like" was almost too much for the girl who had never had a mother to remember and wanted one now as she never had wanted one in her life. Ted's kindness—the first she had received from any one these many days—touched her deeply. For the first time in months the tears brimmed up into her eyes as she followed her companion to the cab and let him help her in. As the door closed upon them Ted turned and faced the girl and seeing the tears put out his hand and touched hers gently.

"Don't worry, Madeline," he said. "Things are going to look up. And please don't cry," he pleaded earnestly.

She wiped away the tears and summoned a wan little smile to meet his.

"I won't," she said. "Crying is silly and won't help anything. It is just that I was awfully tired and your being so good to me upset me. You've always been good even—when I thought you weren't. I understand better now. And oh, Ted, you don't know how ashamed I am of the way I behaved that night! It was awful—my striking you like that. It made me sick to think of it afterward."

"It needn't have. If anybody has any call to be ashamed of that night it's yours truly. See here, Madeline, I've worried a lot about you though maybe you won't believe it because I didn't write or act as if I were sorry about things. I kept still because it seemed the straightest thing to do all round, but I did think a great deal about you, honest I did, and I've wondered millions of times if my darn-foolness set things going wrong for you. Did it, Madeline?" he demanded.

"No," she answered her gaze away from his out the cab window. "You mustn't worry, Ted, or blame yourself. It—it's all my fault—everything."

"It's good of you to let me out but I am not so sure I ought to be let out. I'd give a good deal this minute if I could go back and not take Uncle Phil's car that night." Ted leaned forward suddenly and for a startled instant Madeline thought he meant to kiss her. But nothing was farther from his wish or thought. It was the scar he was looking for. He had almost forgotten it, just as he had almost forgotten the episode it represented. But there it was on her forehead. Even in the gathering darkness it showed with perfect distinctness. "I hoped it had gone," he added. "But it is still there, isn't it?"

"The scar? Yes, it is still there." For a moment the ghost of a smile played about the girl's lips. "I've always liked it. I'd miss it if it went."

"Well, I don't like it. I hate it," groaned the boy. "Why, Madeline I might have killed you!"

"I know. Sometimes I wish it had come out so. It—it would have been better."

"Don't Madeline. That is an awful thing to say. Things can't be as bad as all that, you know they can't. By the way, can you tell me the whole business or would you rather not?"

The girl shivered.

"No. Don't ask me, Ted. It—it's too awful. Don't bother about me. You have done quite enough as it is. I am very grateful but truly I would rather you wouldn't have anything more to do with me. Just forget I am here."

And because this injunction was precisely in line with his own inclination Ted suspected its propriety and swung counterwise in true Ted fashion.

"I'll do just exactly as I please about that. I won't pester you but you needn't think I'm going to leave you all soul alone in a strange place when you are feeling rotten anyway. I'm pretty doggoned selfish but not quite that bad."



CHAPTER XXV

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE

Although Max Hempel had not openly sought out Tony Holiday he was entirely aware of her presence in the city and in the dramatic school. Whenever she played a role in the course of the latter's program he had his trusted aides on the spot to watch her, gauge her progress, report their finding to himself. Once or twice he had come himself, sat in a dark corner and kept his eye unblinking from first to last upon the girl.

In November it had seemed good to the school to revive The Killarney Rose, a play which ten years ago had had a phenomenal run and ended as it began with packed houses. It was past history now. Even the road companies had lapsed, and its name was all but forgotten by the fickle public which must and will have ever new sensations.

Hempel was glad the school had made this particular selection, doubly glad it had given Antoinette Holiday the title role. The play would show whether the girl was ready for his purposes as he had about decided she was. He would send Carol Clay to see her do the thing. Carol would know. Who better? It was she who created the original Rose.

Tony Holiday behind the scene on that momentous evening, on being informed that Carol Clay—the famous Carol Clay herself—the real Rose—was out there in a box, was paralyzed with fear, for the first time in her life, victim of genuine stage fright. She was cold. She was hot. She was one tremendous shake and shiver. She was a very lump of stone. The orchestra was already playing. In a moment her call would come and she was going to fail, fail miserably. And with Carol Clay there to see.

Some flowers and a card were brought in. The flowers were from Alan of course, great crimson roses. It was dear of him to send them. Later she would appreciate it. But just now not even Alan mattered. She glanced at the card which had come separately, was not with the flowers. It was Dick's. Hastily she read the pencil-written scrawl. "Am covering the Rose. Will be close up. See you after the show. Best o' luck and love."

Tony could almost have cried for joy over the message. Somehow the knowledge of Dick's nearness gave her back her self-possession. She had refused to let Alan come. His presence in the audience always distracted her, made her nervous. But Dick was different. It was almost like having Uncle Phil himself there. She wouldn't fail now. She couldn't. It was for the honor of the Hill.

A moment later, still clutching Dick's comforting card, she ran in on the stage, swinging her sun-bonnet from its green ribbons with hoydenish grace, chanting a gay little lilt of an Irish melody. Her fear had gone even as the dew might have disappeared at the kiss of the sun upon the Killarney greensward.

Almost at once she discovered Dick and sang a part of her song straight down at him. A little later she dared to let her eyes stray to the box where Carol Clay sat. The actress smiled and Tony smiled back and then forgot she was Tony, was henceforth only Rose of Killarney.

It was a winsome, old-timey sort of play, with an almost Barriesque charm and whimsicality to it. The witching little Rose laughed and danced and sang and flirted and wept and loved her way through it and in the end threw herself in the right lover's arms, presumably there to dwell happy forever after.

After the last curtain went down and she had smiled and bowed and kissed her hand to the kindly audience over and over Tony fled to the dressing room where she could still hear the intoxicating, delightful thunder of applause. It had come. She could act. She could. Oh! She couldn't live and be any happier.

But, after all she could stand a little more joy without coming to an untimely end, for there suddenly smiling at her from the threshold was Carol Clay congratulating her and telling her what a pleasure to-night's Rose had been to the Rose of yesterday. And before Tony could get her breath to do more than utter a rather shy and gasping word of gratitude, the actress had invited her to take tea with her on the next day and she had accepted and Carol Clay was gone.

It was in a wonderful world of dreams that Tony Holiday dwelt as she removed a little of her makeup, gave orders to have all her flowers sent to a near-by hospital, except Alan's, which she gathered up in her arms and drawing her velvet cloak around her, stepped out into the waiting-room.

But it was a world of rather alarming realities that she went into. There was Dick Carson waiting as she had bidden him to wait in the message she had sent him. And there was Alan Massey, unbidden and unexpected. And both these males with whom she had flirted unconscionably for weeks past were ominously belligerent of manner and countenance. She would have given anything to have had a wand to wave the two away, keep them from spoiling her perfect evening. But it was too late. The hour of reckoning which comes even to queens was here.

"Hello, you two," she greeted, putting on a brave front for all her sinking heart. She laid down the roses and gave a hand impartially to each. "Awfully glad to see you, Dicky. Alan, I thought I told you not to come. Were you here all the same?"

"I was. I told you so in my note. Didn't you get it? I sent it in with the roses." He nodded at the flowers she had just surrendered.

Dick's eyes shadowed. Massey had scored there. He had not thought of flowers. Indeed there had been no time to get any he had gotten the assignment so late. There had been quantities of other flowers, he knew. The usher had carried up tons of them it seemed to the popular Rose, but she carried only Alan Massey's home with her.

"I am sorry, Alan. I didn't see it. Maybe it was there; I didn't half look at the flowers. Your message did me so much good, Dicky. I was scared to death because they had just said Miss Clay was outside. And somehow when I knew you were there I felt all right again. I carried your card all through the first act and I know it was your wishing me the best o' luck that brought it."

She smiled at Dick and it was Alan's turn to glower. She had not looked at his roses, had not cared to look for his message; but she carried the other man's card, used it as a talisman. And she was glad. The other was there, but she had forbidden himself—Alan Massey—to come, had even reproached him for coming.

A group of actors passed through the reception room, calling gay goodnights and congratulations to Tony as they went and shooting glances of friendly curiosity at the two, tall frowning men between whom the vivacious Rose stood.

"Tony Holiday doesn't keep all her lovers on the stage," laughed the near-heroine as she was out of hearing. "Did you ever see two gentlemen that hated each other more cordially?"

"She is an arrant little flirt, isn't she, Micky?" The speaker challenged the Irish lover of the play who had had the luck to win the sweet, thorny little Killarney Rose in the end and to get a real, albeit a play kiss from the pretty little heroine, who as Tony Holiday as well as Rose was prone to make mischief in susceptible male hearts.

"She can have me any minute, on the stage or off," answered Micky promptly. "She's a winner. Got me going all right. Most forgot my lines she was so darned pretty."

Dick took advantage of the confusion of the interruption to get in his word.

"Will you come out with me for a bite somewhere, Tony. I won't keep you late, but there are some things I want to talk over with you."

Tony hesitated. She had caught the ominous flash of Alan's eyes. She was desperately afraid there would be a scene if she said yes to Dick now in Alan's hearing. The latter strode over to her instantly, and laid his hand with a proprietorial air on her arm. From this point of vantage he faced Dick insolently.

"Miss Holiday is going out with me," he asserted. "You—clear out."

The tone and manner even more than the words were deliberate insult. Dick's face went white. His mouth set tight. There was almost as ugly a look in his eyes as there was in Alan's. Tony had never seen him look like that and was frightened.

"I'll clear out when Miss Holiday asks me to and not before," he said in a significantly quiet voice. "Don't go too far, Mr. Massey. I have taken a good deal from you. There's a limit. Tony, I repeat my question. Will you go out with me to-night?"

Before Tony could speak Alan Massey's long right arm shot out in Dick's direction. Dick dodged the blow coolly.

"Hold on, Massey," he said. "I'm perfectly willing to smash your head any time it is convenient. Nothing would afford me greater pleasure in fact. But you will kindly keep from making trouble here. You can't get a woman's name mixed up with a cheap brawl such as you are trying to start. You know, it won't do."

Alan Massey's white face turned a shade whiter. His arm fell. He turned back to Tony, real anguish in his fire-shot eyes.

"I beg your pardon, Tony dearest," he bent over to say. "Carson is right. We'll fight it out elsewhere when you are not present. May I take you to the taxi? I have one waiting outside."

Another group of people passed through the vestibule, said goodnight and went on out to the street exit. It made Tony sick to think of what they would have seen if Dick had lost his self control as Alan had. She thought she had never liked Dick as she did that moment, never despised Alan Massey so utterly. Dick was a man. Alan was a spoiled child, a weakling, the slave of his passions. It was no thanks to him that her name was not already bandied about on people's lips, the name of a girl, about whom men came to fist blows like a Bowery movie scene. She was humiliated all over, enraged with Alan, enraged with herself for stooping to care for a man like that. She waited until they were absolutely alone again and then said what she had to say. She turned to face Alan directly.

"You may take me nowhere," she said. "I don't want to see you again as long as I live."

For an instant Alan stared at her, dazed, unable to grasp the force of what she was saying, the significance of her tone. As a matter of fact the artist in him had leaped to the surface, banished all other considerations. He had never seen Tony Holiday really angry before. She was magnificent with those flashing eyes and scarlet cheeks—a glorious little Fury—a Valkyrie. He would paint her like that. She was stupendous, the most vividly alive thing he had ever seen, like flame itself, in her flaming anger. Then it came over him what she had said.

"But, Tony," he pleaded, "my belovedest—"

He put out both hands in supplication, but Tony whirled away from them. She snatched the great bunch of red roses from the table, ran to the window, flung up the sash, hurled them out into the night. Then she turned back to Alan.

"Now go," she commanded, pointing with a small, inexorable hand to the door.

Alan Massey went.

Tony dropped in a chair, spent and trembling, all but in tears. The disagreeable scene, the piled up complex of emotions coming on top of the stress and strain of the play were almost too much for her. She was a quivering bundle of nerves and misery at the moment.

Dick came to her.

"Forgive me, Tony. I shouldn't have forced the issue maybe. But I couldn't stand any more from that cad."

"I am glad you did exactly what you did do, Dick, and I am more grateful than I can ever tell you for not letting Alan get you into a fight here in this place with all these people coming and going. I would never have gotten over it if anything like that had happened. It would have been terrible. I couldn't ever have looked any of them in the face again." She shivered and put her two hands over her eyes ashamed to the quick at the thought.

Dick sat down on the arm of her chair, one hand resting gently on the girl's shoulder.

"Don't cry, Tony," he begged. "I can't stand it. You needn't have worried. There wasn't any danger of anything like that happening. I care too much to let you in for anything of that sort. So does he for that matter. He saw it in a minute. He really wouldn't want to do you any harm anyway, Tony. Even I know that, and you must know it better than I."

Tony put down her hands, looked at Dick. "I suppose that is true," she sighed. "He does love me, Dick."

"He does, Tony. I wish he didn't. And I wish with all my heart I were sure you didn't love him."

Tony sighed again and her eyes fell.

"I wish—I were sure, too," she faltered.

Dick winced at that. He had no answer. What was there to say?

"I don't see why I should care. I don't see how I can care after to-night. He is horrid in lots of ways—a cad—just as you called him. I know Larry would feel just as you do and hate to have him come near me. Larry and I have almost quarreled about it now. He thinks Uncle Phil is all wrong not to forbid my seeing Alan at all. But Uncle Phil is too wise. He doesn't want to have me marry Alan any more than the rest of you do but he knows if he fights it it would put me on the other side in a minute and I'd do it, maybe, in spite of everybody."

"Tony, you aren't engaged to him?"

She shook her head.

"Not exactly. I am afraid I might as well be though. I said I didn't ever want to see him again, but I didn't mean it. I shall want to see him again by to-morrow. I always do no matter what he does. I always shall I am afraid. It is like that with me. I'm sorry, Dicky. I ought to have told you that before. I've been horrid not to, I know. Take me home now, please. I'm tired—awfully tired."

Going home in the cab neither spoke until just as they were within a few blocks of the Hostelry when Dick broke the silence.

"I am sorry all this had to happen to-night," he said. "Because, well, I am going away tomorrow."

"Going away! Dick! Where?" It was horribly selfish of her, Tony knew; but it didn't seem as if she could bear to have Dick go. It seemed as if the only thing that was stable in her reeling life would be gone if he went. If he went she would belong to Alan more and more. There would be nothing to hold her back. She was afraid. She clung to Dick. He alone of the whole city full of human beings was a symbol of Holiday Hill. With him gone it seemed to her as if she would be hopelessly adrift on perilous seas.

"To Mexico—Vera Cruz, I believe," he answered her question.

"Vera Cruz! Dick, you mustn't! It is awful down there now. Everybody says so." He smiled a little at that.

"It is because it is more or less awful that they are sending me," he said. "Journalism isn't much interested in placidity. A newspaper man has to be where things are happening fast and plenty. If things are hot down there so much the better. They will sizzle more in the copy."

"Dick! I can't have you go. I can't bear it." Tony's hand crept into his. "Something dreadful might happen to you," she wailed.

He pressed her hand, grateful for her real trouble about him and for her caring.

"Oh no, dear. Nothing dreadful will happen to me. You mustn't worry," he soothed.

"But I do. I shall. How can I help it? It is just as if Larry or Ted were going. It scares me."

Dick drew away his hand suddenly.

"For heaven's sake, Tony, please don't tell me again that I'm just like Larry and Ted to you. It is bad enough to know it without your rubbing it in all the time. I can't stand it—not to-night."

"Dick!" Tony was startled, taken aback by his tone. Dick rarely let himself go like that.

In a moment he was all contrition.

"Forgive me, Tony. I'm sorry I said that. I ought to be thankful you care that much, and I am. It is dear of you and I do appreciate it."

"Oh me!" sighed Tony. "Everything I do or say is wrong. I wish I did care the other way for you, Dicky dear. Truly I do. It would be so much nicer and simpler than caring for Alan," she added naively.

"Life isn't fixed nice and simple, Tony. At least it never has been for me."

"Oh, Dick! Everything has been horribly hard for you always, and I'm making it harder. I don't want to, Dicky dear. You know I don't. It is just that I can't help it."

"I know, Tony. You mustn't bother about me. I'm all right. Will you tell me just one thing though? If you hadn't cared for Massey—no I won't put it like that. If you had cared for me would my not having any name have made any difference?"

"Of course it wouldn't have made any difference, Dicky. What does a name matter? You are you and that is what I would care for—do care for. The rest doesn't matter. Besides, you are making a name for yourself."

"I am doing it under your name—the one you gave me."

"I am proud to have it used that way. Why wouldn't I be? It is honored. You have not only lived up to it as you promised Uncle Phil. You have made it stand for something fine. Your stories are splendid. You are going to be famous and I—Why, Dicky, just think, it will be my name you will take on up to the stars. Oh, we're here," as the cab jolted to a halt in front of the Hostelry.

The cabby flung open the door. Tony and Dick stepped out, went up the steps. In a moment they were alone in the dimly lit hall.

"Tony, would you mind letting me kiss you just once as you would Larry or Ted if one of them were going off on a long journey away from you?"

Dick's voice was humble, pleading. It touched Tony deeply, and sent the quick tears welling up into her eyes as she raised her face to his.

For a moment he held her close, kissed her on the cheek and then released her.

"Good-by, Tony. Thank you and God bless you," he said a little huskily as he let her go.

"Good-by, Dick." And then impulsively Tony put up her lips and kissed him, the first time he ever remembered a woman's lips touching his.

A second later the door closed upon him, shutting him out in the night. He dismissed the cab driver and walked blindly off, not knowing or caring in what direction he went. It was hours before he let himself into his lodging house. It seemed as if he could have girdled the earth on the strength of Tony Holiday's kiss. The next morning he was off for Mexico.



CHAPTER XXVI

THE KALEIDOSCOPE REVOLVES

Tony slept late next morning and when she did open her eyes they fell upon a huge florist box by the door and a special delivery letter on top of it. The maid had set the two in an hour ago and tiptoed away lest she waken the weary little sleeper.

Tony got up and opened the box. Roses—dozens of them, worth the price of a month's wages to many a worker in the city! Frail, exquisite, shell-pink beauties, with gold at their hearts! Tony adored roses but she almost hated these because it seemed to her Alan was bribing her forgiveness by playing upon her worship of their beauty and fragrance.

Still kneeling by the flowers she glanced at the clock. Ten-thirty! Dick was already miles away on his hateful journey, had gone sad and hopeless because she loved Alan Massey. Why did it have to be so? Why was love so perverse and unreasonable a thing? Alan was not worthy to touch Dick's hand, though in his arrogance he affected to despise the other. But it was Alan she loved, not Dick. There must be something wrong with her, dreadfully wrong that it should be so. After last night there could be no doubt of that.

She sat down on the floor, opened Alan's letter, despised herself for letting its author's spell creep over her anew with every word. It was an abject plea for mercy, for forgiveness, for restoration to favor. It had been a devil of jealousy that had possessed him, he had not known what he was doing. Surely she must know that he would not willingly harm or hurt or anger her in any way. He loved her too much. Carson had behaved like a man. Alan would apologize to him if the other man would accept the apology. It was Tony really who had driven him mad by being so much kinder to the other than to himself. She must realize what he was, not drive him too far.

"I am sending you roses," he ended. "Please don't throw them away as you did the others. Keep them and let them plead for me. And don't ah Tony, don't ever, ever say again what you said last night, that you never wanted to see me again! You don't mean it, I know. But don't say it. It kills me to hear you. If you throw me over I'll blow my brains out as sure as I am a living man this moment. But you won't, you cannot, Tony dearest. You will forgive me, stand by me, rotten as I am. You are mine. You love me. You won't push me down to Hell."