It was a cowardly letter Tony thought, a letter calculated to frighten her, bring her to subjection again as well as to gratify the writer's own Byronic instinct for pose. He had behaved badly. He acknowledged it but claimed forgiveness on the grounds of love, his love for her which had been goaded to mad jealousy by her thoughtless unkindness, her love for him which would not desert him no matter what he did.

But pose or not, Tony was obliged to admit there was some truth in it all. Perhaps it was all true-too true. Even if he did not resort to the pistol as he threatened he would find other means of slaying his soul if not his body if she forsook him now. She could not do it. As he said she loved him too well. She had gone too far in the path to turn back now.

Ah why, why had she let it go so far? Why had she not listened to Dick, to Uncle Phil, to Carlotta, even to Miss Lottie? They had all told her there was no happiness for her in loving Alan Massey. She knew it herself better than any of them could possibly know it. And yet she had to go on, for his sake, for her own because she loved him.

By this time she was no longer angry or resentful. She was just sorry—sorry for Alan—sorry for herself. She knew just as she had known all along that last night's incident would not really make any difference. It would be put away in time with all the other things she had to forgive. She had eaten her pomegranate seeds. She could not escape the dark kingdom. She did not wish to.

Later came violets from Dick which she put in a vase on her desk beside Uncle Phil's picture. But it was the fragrance and color of Alan's roses that filled the room, and presently she sat down and wrote her ill-behaved lover a sweet, forgiving little note. She was sorry if she had been unkind. She had not meant to be. As for what happened it was too late to worry about it now. They had best forget it, if they could. He couldn't very well apologize to Dick in person because he was already on his way to Mexico. There was no need of any penance. Of course she forgave him, knew he had not meant to hurt her, though he had horribly. If he cared to do so he might take her to dinner tomorrow night—somewhere where they could dance. And in conclusion she was always his, Tony Holiday.

Both Dick and Alan were driven out of her mind later that day by the delightful and exciting interview over the tea table with Carol Clay. Miss Clay was a charming hostess, drew the girl out without appearing to do so, got her to talk naturally about many things, her life with her father at army barracks, and with her uncle on her beloved Hill, of her friends and brothers, her college life, of books and plays. Plays took them to the Killarney Rose and once more Miss Clay expressed her pleasure in the girl's rendering of one of her own favorite roles.

"You acted as if you had been playing Rose all your life," she added with a smile.

"Maybe I have," said Tony. "Rose is—a good deal like me. Maybe that is why I loved playing her so."

"I shouldn't wonder. You are a real little actress, my dear. I wonder if you are ready to pay the price of it. It is bitterly hard work and it means giving up half the things women care for."

The speaker's lovely eyes shadowed a little. Tony wondered what Carol Clay had given up, was giving up for her art to bring that look into them.

"I am not afraid. I am willing to work. I love it. And I—I am willing to give up a good deal."

"Lovers?" smiled Miss Clay.

"Must I? I thought actresses always had lovers, at least worshipers. Can't I keep the lovers, Miss Clay?" There was a flash of mischief in Tony's eyes as she asked the important question.

"Better stick to worshipers. Lovers are risky. Husbands—fatal."

Tony laughed outright at that.

"I am willing to postpone the fatality," she murmured.

"I am glad to hear it for I lured you here to take you into a deep-laid plot. I suppose you did not suspect that it was Max Hempel who sent me to see you play Rose?"

"Mr. Hempel? I thought he had forgotten me."

"He never forgets any one in whom he is interested. He has had his eye on you ever since he saw you play Rosalind. He told me when he came back from that trip that I had a rival coming on."

"Oh, no!" Tony objected even in jest to such desecration.

"Oh, yes," smiled her hostess. "Max Hempel is a brutally frank person. He never spares one the truth, even the disagreeable truth. He has had his eye out for a new ingenue for a long time. Ingenues do get old—at least older you know."

"Not you," denied Tony.

"Even I, in time. I grant you not yet. It takes a degree of age and sophistication to play youth and innocence. We do it better as a rule at thirty than at twenty. We are far enough away from it to stand off and observe how it behaves and can imitate it better than if we still had it. That is one reason I was interested in your Rose last night. You played like a little girl as Rose should. You looked like a little girl. But you couldn't have given it that delightfully sure touch if you hadn't been a little bit grown up. Do you understand?"

Tony nodded.

"I think so. You see I am—a little bit grown up."

"Don't grow up any more. You are adorable as you are. But to business. Have you seen my Madge?"

"In the 'End of the Rainbow?' Yes, indeed. I love it. You like the part too, don't you? You play it as if you did."

"I do. I like it better than any I have had since Rose. Did it occur to you that you would like to play Madge yourself?"

Tony blushed ingenuously.

"Well, yes, it did," she admitted half shyly. "Of course, I knew I couldn't play it as you did. It takes years of experience and a real art like yours to do it like that, but I did think I'd like to try it and see what I could do."

Miss Clay nodded, well pleased.

"Of course you did. Why not? It is your kind of a role, just as Rose is. You and I are the same types. Mr. Hempel has said that all along, ever since he saw your Rosalind. But I won't keep you in suspense. The long and short of all this preliminary is—how would you like to be my understudy for Madge?"

"Oh, Miss Clay!" Tony gasped. "Do you think I could?"

"I know you could, my dear. I knew it all the time while I was watching you play Rose. Mr. Hempel has known it even longer. I went to see Rose to find out if there was a Madge in you. There is. I told Mr. Hempel so this morning. He is brewing his contracts now so be prepared. Will you try it?"

"I'd love to if you and Mr. Hempel think I can. I promised Uncle Phil I would take a year of the school work though. Will I have to drop that?"

"I think so—most of it at least. You would have to be at the rehearsals usually which are in the morning. You might have to play Madge quite often then. There are reasons why I have to be away a great deal just now." Again the shadow, darkened the star's eyes and a droop came to her mouth. "It isn't even so impossible that you would be called upon to play before the real Broadway audience in fact. Understudies sometimes do you know."

Miss Clay was smiling now, but the shadow in her eyes had not lifted Tony saw.

"I am particularly anxious to get a good understudy started in immediately," the actress continued. "The one I had was impossible, did not get the spirit of the thing at all. It is absolutely essential to have some one ready and at once. My little daughter is in a sanitarium dying with an incurable heart leakage. There will be a time—probably within the next two months—when I shall have to be away."

Tony put out her hand and let it rest upon the other woman's. There was compassion in her young eyes.

"I am so sorry," she said simply. "I didn't know you had a daughter. Of course, I did know you weren't really Miss Clay, that you were Mrs. Somebody, but I didn't think of your having children. Somehow we don't remember actresses may be mothers too."

"The actresses remember it—sometimes," said Miss Clay with a tremulous little smile. "It isn't easy to laugh when your heart is heavy, Miss Antoinette. It is all I can do to go on with 'Madge' sometimes. I just have to forget—make myself forget I am a mother and a wife. Captain Carey, my husband, is in the British Army. He is in Flanders now, or was when I last heard."

"Oh, I don't see how you can do it—play, I mean," sighed Tony aghast at this new picture the actress's words brought up.

"One learns, my dear. One has to. An actress is two distinct persons. One of her belongs to the public. The other is just a plain woman. Sometimes I feel as if I were far more the first than I am the second. There wouldn't be any more contracts if I were not. But never mind that. To come back to you. Mr. Hempel will send you a contract to-morrow. Will you sign it?"

"Yes, if Uncle Phil is willing. I'll wire him to-night. I am almost positive he will say yes. He is very reasonable and he will see what a wonderful, wonderful chance this is for me. I can't thank you enough, Miss Clay. It all takes my breath away. But I am grateful and so happy; you can't imagine it."

Miss Clay smiled and drew on her gloves. The interview was over.

"There is really nothing to thank me, for," she said. "The favor is on the other side. It is I who am lucky. The perfect understudy like a becoming hat is hard to find, but when found is absolutely beyond price. May I send you a pass for to-morrow night to the 'End of the Rainbow'? Perhaps you would like to see it again and play 'Madge' with me from a box. The pass will admit two. Bring one of the lovers if you like."

Tony wired her uncle that night. In the morning mail arrived Max Hempel's contract as Miss Clay had promised. Tony regarded it with superstitious awe. It was the first contract she had ever seen in her life, much less had offered for her signature. The terms were, generous—appallingly so it seemed to the girl who knew little of such things and was not inclined to over-rate her powers financially speaking. She wisely took the contract over to the school and got the manager's advice to "Go ahead."

"We've nothing comparable to offer you, Miss Tony. With Hempel and Miss Clay both behind you you are practically made. You are a lucky little lady. I know a dozen experienced actresses in this city who would give their best cigarette cases to be in your shoes."

Arrived home at the Hostelry, armed with this approval, Tony found her Uncle's answering wire bidding her do as she thought best and sending heartiest love and congratulations. Dear Uncle Phil!

And then she sat down and signed the impressive document that made her Carol Clay's understudy and a real wage-earning person.

All the afternoon she spent in long, delicious, dreamless slumber. At five she was wakened by the maid bringing a letter from Alan, a wonderful, extravagant lover-note such as only he could pen. Later she bathed and dressed, donning the white and silver gown she had worn the night when she had first admitted to Alan in Carlotta's garden that she loved him, first took his kisses. It was rather a sacred little gown to Tony, sacred to Alan and her own surrender to love. He called it her starlight dress and loved it especially because it brought out the springlike, virginal quality of her youth and loveliness as her other more sophisticated gowns did not. Tony wore it for Alan to-night, wanted him to think her lovely, to love her immensely. She wanted to taste all life's joy at once, have a perfect deluge of happiness. Youth must be served.

Alan, graceful for being forgiven so easily, fell in with her mood and was at his best, courtly, considerate, adoring. He exerted all the magic of his not inconsiderable charm to make Tony forget that other unfortunate night when he had appeared in other, less attractive colors. And Tony was ready enough to forget beneath his worshiping green eyes and under the spell of his wonderful voice. She meant to shut out the unwelcome guests of fear and doubt from her heart, let love alone have sway.

They dined at a gorgeous restaurant in a great hotel. Tony reveled in the splendor and richness of the setting, delighted in the flawless service, the perfection of the strange and delectable viands which Alan ordered for their consumption. Particularly she delighted in Alan himself and the way he fitted into the richness and luxury. It was his rightful setting. She could not imagine him in any of the shabby restaurants where she and Dick had often dined so contentedly. Alan was a born aristocrat, patrician of the patricians. His looks, his manner, everything about him betrayed it. Most of all it was revealed in the way the waiters scurried to do his bidding, bowed obsequiously before him, recognized him as the authentic master, lord of the purple.

"So Carson really has gone to Mexico," Alan murmured as they dallied over their salads, looking mostly into each other's eyes.

"Yes, he went yesterday. I hated to have him go. It is awfully disagreeable and dangerous down there they say. He might get a fever or get killed or something." Tony absent-mindedly nibbling a piece of roll already saw Dick in her mind's eye the victim of an assassin's blade.

"No such luck!" thought Alan Massey bitterly. The thought brought a flash of venom into his eyes which Tony unluckily caught.

"Alan! Why do you hate Dick so? He never did you any harm."

Tony Holiday did not know what outrageous injury Dick had done his cousin, Alan Massey.

Alan was already suavely master of himself, the venom expunged from his eyes.

"Why wouldn't I hate him, Antoinetta mia? You are half in love with him."

"I am not," denied Tony indignantly. "He is just like Lar—." She broke off abruptly, remembering Dick's flare of resentment at that familiar formula, remembering too the kiss she had given him in the dimly-lit hall in the Hostelry, the kiss which had not been precisely such a one as she would have given Larry.

Alan's face darkened again.

"Oh, yes, you are. You are blushing."

"I am not." Then putting her hands up to her face and feeling it warm she changed her tactics. "Well, what, if I am? I do care a lot about Dick. I found out the other night that I cared a whole lot more than I knew. It isn't like caring for Larry and Ted. It's different. For after all he isn't my brother—never was—never will be. I'm a wretched flirt, Alan. You know it as well as I do. I've let Dick keep on loving me, knowing all the time I didn't mean to marry him. And I'm not a bit sure I am going to marry you either."

"Tony!"

"Well, anyway not for a long, long time. I want to go on the stage. I can't put all of myself into my work and give it to you at the same time. I don't want to get married. I don't dare to. I don't dare even let myself care too much. I want to be free."

"You want to be loved."

"Of course. Every woman does."

Alan made an impatient gesture.

"I don't mean lip-worship. You are a woman, not a piece of statuary. Come on now. Let's dance."

They danced. In her lover's arms, their feet keeping time to the syncopated, stirring rhythms of the violins, their hearts beating to a mightier harmony of nature's own brewing, Tony Holiday was far from being a piece of statuary. She was all woman, a woman very much alive and very much in love.

Alan bent over her.

"Tony, belovedest. There are more things than art in the world," he said softly. "Don't you know it, feel it? There is life. And life is bigger than your work or mine. We're both artists, but we'll be bigger artists together. Marry me now. Don't make me wait. Don't make yourself wait. You want it as much as I do. Say yes, sweetheart," he implored.

Tony shook her head vehemently. She was afraid. She knew that just now all her dreams of success in her chosen art, all her love for the dear ones at home were as nothing in comparison with this greater thing which Alan called life and which she felt surging mightily within her. But she also knew that this way lay madness, disloyalty, regret. She must be strong, strong for Alan as well as for herself.

"Not yet," she whispered back. "Be patient, Alan. I love you, dear. Wait."

The music came to an end. Many eyes followed the two as they went back to their places at the table. They were incomparable artists. It was worth missing one's own dance to see them have theirs. Aside from his wonderful dancing and striking personality Alan was at all times a marked figure, attracting attention wherever he went and whatever he did. The public knew he had a superlative fortune which he spent magnificently as a prince, and that he had a superlative gift which for all they were aware he had flung wantonly away as soon as the money came into his hands. Moreover he was even more interesting because of his superlatively bad reputation which still followed him. The public would have found it hard to believe that at last Alan Massey was leading the most temperate and arduous of lives and devoting himself exclusively to one woman whom he treated as reverently as if she were a goddess. The gazes focussed upon Alan now inevitably included the girl with him, as lovely and young as spring itself.

"Who was she?" they asked each other. "What was a girl like that doing in Alan Massey's society?" To most of the observers it meant but one thing, eventually if not now. Even the most cynical and world-hardened thought it a pity, and these would have been confounded if they could have heard just now his passionate plea for marriage. One did not associate marriage with Alan Massey. One had not associated it too much with his mother, one recalled.



CHAPTER XXVII

TROUBLED WATERS

Ted Holiday drifted into Berry's to buy floral offerings for the reigning goddess who chanced still to be pretty Elsie Hathaway. Things had gone on gayly since that night a month ago when he had stolen that impudent kiss beneath the crescent moon. Not that there was anything at all serious about the affair. College coquettes must have lovers, and Ted Holiday would not have been himself if there had not been a pretty sweetheart on hand.

By this time Ted had far outdistanced the other claimants for Elsie's favor. But the victory had come high. His bank account was again sadly humble in porportions and his bills at Berry's and at the candy shops were things not to be looked into too closely. Nevertheless he was in a gala humor that November morning. Aside from chronic financial complications things were going very well with him. He was working just hard enough to satisfy his newly-awakened common sense or conscience, or whatever it was that was operating. He was having a jolly good time with Elsie and basket ball and other things and college life didn't seem quite such a bore and burden as it had hitherto. Moreover Uncle Phil had just written that he would waive the ten dollar automobile tax for December in consideration of the approach of Christmas, possibly also in consideration of his nephew's fairly creditable showing on the new leaf of the ledger though he did not say so. In any case it was a jolly old world if anybody asked Ted Holiday that morning as he entered Berry's.

He made straight for Madeline as he invariably did. He was always friendly and gay and casual with her, always careful to let no one suspect he had ever known her any more intimately than at present—not because he cared on his own account—Ted Holiday was no snob. But because he had sense to see it was better for Madeline herself.

He was genuinely sorry for the girl. He could not help seeing how her despondency grew upon her from week to week and that she appeared miserably sick as well as unhappy. She looked worse than usual to-day, he thought, white and heavy-eyed and unmistakably heavy-hearted. It troubled him to see her so. Ted had the kindest heart in the world and always wanted every one else to be as blithely content with life as he was himself. Accordingly now under cover of his purchase of chrysanthemums for Elsie he managed to get in a word in her ear.

"You look as if you needed cheering up a bit. How about the movies to-night? Charlie's on. He'll fix you."

"No, thank you, I couldn't." The girl's voice was also prudently low, and she busied herself with the flowers instead of looking at Ted as she spoke.

"Why not?" he challenged, always impelled to insistence by denial.

"Because I—" And then to Ted's consternation the flowers flew out of her hands, scattering in all directions, her face went chalky white and she fell forward in a heavy faint in Ted Holiday's arms.

Ted got her to a chair, ordered another clerk to get water and spirits of ammonia quick. His arm was still around her when Patrick Berry strayed in from the back room. Berry's eyes narrowed. He looked the girl over from head to foot, surveyed Ted Holiday also with sharp scrutiny and knitted brows. The clerk returned with water and dashed off for the ammonia as ordered. Madeline's eyes opened slowly, meeting Ted's anxious blue ones as he bent over her.

"Ted!" she gasped. "Oh, Ted!"

Her eyes closed again wearily. Berry's frown deepened. His best customer had hitherto in his hearing been invariably addressed by the girl as Mr. Holiday.

In a moment Madeline's eyes opened again and she almost pushed Ted away from her, shooting a frightened, deprecating glance at her employer as she did so.

"I—I am all right now," she said, rising unsteadily.

"You are nothing of the sort, Madeline," protested Ted, also forgetting caution in his concern. "You are sick. I'll get a taxi and take you home. Mr. Berry won't mind, will you Berry?" appealed the best customer, completely unaware of the queer, sharp look the florist was bending upon him.

"No, she'd better go," agreed Berry shortly. "I'll call a cab." He walked over to the telephone but paused, his hand on the receiver and looked back at Ted. "Where does she live?" he asked. "Do you know?"

"Forty-nine Cherry," returned Ted still unconsciously revelatory.

The big Irishman got his number and called the cab. The clerk came back with the ammonia and vanished with it into the back room. Berry walked over to where Ted stood.

"See here, Mr. Holiday," he said. "I don't often go out of my way to give college boys advice. Advice is about the one thing in the world nobody wants. But I'm going to give you a bit. I like you and I liked your brother before you. Here's the advice. Stick to the campus. Don't get mixed up with Cherry Street. You wanted the chrysanthemums sent to Miss Hathaway, didn't you?"

"I did." There was a flash in Ted's blue eyes. "Send 'em and send a dozen of your best roses to Miss Madeline Taylor, forty-nine Cherry and mind your business. There is the cab. Ready, Madeline?" As the girl appeared in the doorway with her coat and hat on. "I'll take you home."

"Oh, no, indeed, it isn't at all necessary," protested Madeline. "You have done quite enough as it is, Mr. Holiday. You mustn't bother." The speaker's tone was cool, almost cold and very formal. She did not know that Patrick Berry had heard that very different, fervid, "Ted! Oh, Ted!" if indeed she knew it had ever passed her lips as she came reluctantly back to the world of realities.

Ted held the door open for her. They passed out. But a moment later when Berry peered out the window he saw the cab going in one direction and his best customer strolling off in the other and nodded his satisfaction.

Sauntering along his nonchalant course, Madeline Taylor already half forgotten, Ted Holiday came face to face with old Doctor Hendricks, a rosy cheeked, white bearded, twinkling eyed Santa Claus sort of person who had known his father and uncle and brother and had pulled himself through various minor itises and sprains. Seeing the doctor reminded him of Madeline.

"Hello, Doc. Just the man I wanted to see. Want a job?"

"Got more jobs than I can tend to now, young man. Anything the matter with you? You look as tough as a two year old rooster."

The old man's small, kindly, shrewd eyes scanned the lad's face as he spoke.

"Smoking less, sleeping more, nerves steadier, working harder, playing the devil lighter," he gummed up silently with satisfaction. "Good, he'll come out a Holiday yet if we give him time."

"I am tough," Ted grinned back, all unconscious that he had been diagnosed in that flitting instant of time. "Never felt better in my life. Always agrees with me to be in training."

The old doctor nodded.

"I know. You young idiots will mind your coaches when you won't your fathers and your doctors. What about the job?"

"There's a girl I know who works at Berry's flower shop. I am afraid she is sick though she won't see a doctor. She fainted away just now while I was in the store, keeled over into my arms, scared me half out of my wits. I'm worried about her. I wish you would go and see her. She lives down on Cherry Street."

"H-m!" The doctor's eyes studied the boy's face again but with less complacency this time. Like Patrick Berry he thought a young Holiday would better stick to the campus, not run loose on Cherry Street.

"Know the girl well?" he queried.

Ted hesitated, flushed, looked unmistakably embarrassed.

"Yes, rather," he admitted. "I ran round with her quite a little the first of the summer. I got her the job at Berry's. Her grandfather, a pious old stick in the mud, turned her out of his house. She had to do something to earn her living. I hope she isn't going to be sick. It would be an awful mess. She can't have much saved up. Go and see her, will you, Doc? Forty-nine Cherry. Taylor is the name."

"H-m." The doctor made a note of these facts. "All right, I'll go. But you had better keep away from Cherry Street, young man. It is not the environment you belong in."

"Environment be—blessed!" said Ted. "Don't you begin on that sort of rot, please, Doc. Old Pat Berry's just been giving me a lecture on the same subject. You make me tired both of you. As if the girls on Cherry Street weren't as good any day as the ones on the campus, just because they work in shops and stores and the girls on the campus work—us," he concluded with a grin. "I'm not an infant that has to be kept in a Kiddie coop you know."

"Look out you don't land in a chicken coop," sniffed the doctor. "Very well, you young sinner. Don't listen to me if you don't want to. I know I might as well talk to the wind. You always were open to all the fool germs going, Ted Holiday. Some day you'll own the old Doc knew best."

"I wouldn't admit to being so hanged well up on the chicken-roost proposition myself if I were you," retorted Ted impudently. "So long. I'm much obliged for your kind favors all but the moral sentiments. You can have those back. You may need 'em to use over again."

So Ted went on his way, dropped in to see Elsie, had a cup of tea and innumerable small cakes, enjoyed a foxtrot to phonograph music with the rug rolled up out of the way, conversed amicably with the Ancient History Prof himself, who wasn't such a bad sort as Profs go and had the merit of being one of the few instructors who had not flunked Ted Holiday in his course the previous year.

The next morning Ted found a letter from Doctor Hendricks in his mail which he opened with some curiosity wondering what the old Doc could have to say. He read the communication through in silence and tucking it in his pocket walked out of the room as if he were in a dream, paying no attention to the question somebody called after him as he went. He went on to his classes but he hardly knew what was going on about him. His mind seemed to have stopped dead like a stop watch with the reading of the old doctor's letter.

He understood at last the full force of the trouble which engulfed Madeline Taylor and why she had said that it would have been better for her if that mad joy ride with him had ended life for her. The doctor had gone to her as he had promised and had extracted the whole miserable story. It seemed Madeline had married, or thought she had married, Willis Hubbard against her grandfather's express command, a few weeks after Ted had parted from her in Holyoke. In less than two months Hubbard had disappeared leaving behind him the ugly fact that he already had one wife living in Kansas City in spite of the pretense of a wedding ceremony which he had gone through with Madeline. Long since disillusioned but still having power and pride to suffer intensely the latter found herself in the tragic position of being-a wife and yet no wife. In her desperate plight she besought her grandfather's clemency and forgiveness but that rigid old covenanter had declared that even as she had made her bed in willful disobedience to his command so she should lie on it for all of him.

It was then that she had turned as a last resort to Ted Holiday though always hoping against hope that she could keep the real truth of her unhappy situation from him.

"It is a bad affair from beginning to end," wrote the doctor. "I'd like to break every rotten bone in that scoundrel's body but he has taken mighty good care to effect a complete disappearance. That kind is never willing to foot the bills for their own villainy. I am telling you the story in order to make it perfectly clear that you are to keep out of the business from now on. You have burned your fingers quite enough as it is I gather. Don't see the girl. Don't write her. Don't telephone her. Let her alone absolutely. Mind, these aren't polite requests. They are orders. And if you don't obey them I'll turn the whole thing over to your uncle double quick and I don't think you want me to do that. Don't worry about the girl. I'll look after her now and later when she is likely to need me more. But you keep hands off. That is flat—the girl's wish as well as my orders."

And this was what Ted Holiday had to carry about with him all that bleak day and a half sleepless, uneasy night. And in the morning he was summoned home to the House on the Hill. Granny was dying.



CHAPTER XXVIII

IN DARK PLACES

The House on the Hill was a strange place to Tony and Ted those November days, stranger than to the others who had walked day by day with the sense of the approaching shadow always with them. Death itself was an awesome and unaccustomed thing to them. They did not see how the others bore it so well, took it all so calmly. To make matters worse, Uncle Phil who never failed any one was stricken down with a bad case of influenza and was unable to leave his bed. This of course made Margery also practically hors de combat. The little folks spent most of their time across the street in motherly Mrs. Lambert's care. Upon Ned Holiday's children rested the chief burden of the hour.

Granny was rarely conscious and all three of her grandchildren coveted the sad privilege of being near her when these brief moments of lucidity came though Tony and Ted could not stand long periods of watching beside the still form as Larry could and did. It was Larry that she most often recognized. Sometimes though he was his father to her and she called him "Ned" in such tones of yearning tenderness that it nearly broke down his self control. Sometimes too he was Philip to her and this also was bitterly hard for Larry missed his uncle's support woefully in this dark hour. Ruth, Granny seemed to know, oftener indeed, than she did Tony to the latter's keen grief though she acknowledged the justice of the stab. For she had gone her selfish way leaving the stranger to play the loving granddaughter's part.

One night when the nurse was resting and Larry too had flung himself upon the couch in the living room to snatch a little much needed relaxation, leaving Ruth in charge of the sickroom, Ted drifted in and demanded to take his turn at the watch, giving Ruth a chance to sleep. She demurred at first, knowing how hard these vigils were for the restless, unhappy lad. But seeing he was really in earnest she yielded. As she passed out of the room her hand rested for a moment on the boy's bowed head. She had come to care a great deal for sunny, kind-hearted Teddy, loved him for himself and because she knew he loved Larry with deep devotion.

He looked up with a faint smile and gave her hand a squeeze.

"You are a darling, Ruthie," he murmured. "Don't know what we would ever do without you."

And then he was alone with death and his own somber thoughts. He could not get away from the memory of Madeline, could not help feeling with a terrible weight of responsibility that he was more than a little to blame for her plight. Whether he liked to think it or not he couldn't help knowing that the whole thing had started with that foolish joy ride with himself. Madeline had never risked her grandfather's displeasure till she risked it for him. She had never gone anywhere with Hubbard till she went because she was bitterly angry with himself because he had not kept his promise—a promise which never should have been made in the first place. And if he had not gone to Holyoke, hadn't behaved like an idiot that last night, hadn't deserted her like a selfish cad to save his own precious self—if none of these things had happened would Madeline still have gone to Hubbard? Perhaps. But in his heart Ted Holiday had a hateful conviction that she would not, that her wretchedness now was indirectly if not directly chargeable to his own folly. It was terrible that such little things should have such tremendous consequences but there it was.

All his life Ted Holiday had evaded responsibility and had found self extenuation the easiest thing in the world. But somehow all at once he seemed to have lost the power of letting himself off. He had no plea to offer even to himself except "guilty." Was he going to do as Doctor Hendricks commanded and let Madeline pay the price of her own folly alone or was he going to pay with her? The night was full of the question.

The quiet figure on the bed stirred. Instantly the boy had forgotten himself, remembered only Granny.

He bent over her.

"Granny, don't you know me? It's Teddy," he pleaded.

The white lips quivered into a faint smile. The frail hand on the cover lid groped vaguely for his.

"I know—Teddy," the lips formed slowly with an effort.

Ted kissed her, tears in his eyes.

"Be—a man, dear," the lips breathed softly. "Be—" and Granny was off again to a world of unconsciousness from which she had returned a moment to give her message to the grief stricken lad by her side.

To Ted in his overwrought condition the words were almost like a voice from heaven, a sacred command. To be a man meant to face the hardest thing he had ever had to face in his life. It meant marrying Madeline Taylor, not leaving her like a coward to pay by herself for something which he himself had helped to start. He rose softly and went to the window, staring out into the night. A few moments later he turned back wearing a strange uplifted sort of look, a look perhaps such, as Percival bore when he beheld the Grail.

Strange forces were at work in the House on the Hill that night. Ruth had gone to her room to rest as Ted bade her but she had not slept in spite of her intense weariness. She had almost lost the way of sleep latterly. She was always so afraid of not being near when Larry needed her. The night watches they had shared so often now had brought them very, very close to each other, made their love a very sacred as well as very strong thing.

Ruth knew that the time was near now when she would have to go away from the Hill. After Granny went there would be no excuse for staying on. If she did not go Larry would. Ruth knew that very well and did not intend the latter should happen.

She had laid her plans well. She would go and take a secretarial course somewhere. She had made inquiries and found that there was always demand for secretaries and that the training did not take so long as other professional education did. She could sell her rings and live on the money they brought her until she was self supporting. She did not want to dispose of her pearls if she could help it. She wanted to hold on to them as the link to her lost past. Yes, she would leave the Hill. It was quite the right thing to do.

But oh, what a hard thing it was! She did not see how she was ever going to face life alone under such hard, queer conditions without Doctor Philip, without dear Mrs. Margery and the children, without Larry, especially without Larry. For that matter what would Larry do without her? He needed her so, loved her so much. Poor Larry!

And suddenly Ruth sat up in bed. As clearly as if he had been in the room with her she heard Larry's voice calling to her. She sprang up and threw a dark blue satin negligee around her, went out of the room, down the stairs, seeming to know by an infallible instinct where her lover was.

On the threshold of the living room she paused. Larry was pacing the floor nervously, his face drawn and gray in the dim light of the flickering gas. Seeing her he made a swift stride in her direction, took both her hands in his.

"Ruth, why did you come?" There was an odd tension in his voice.

"You called me, didn't you? I thought you did." Her eyes were wondering. "I heard you say 'Ruth' as plain as anything."

He shook his head.

"No, I didn't call you out loud. Maybe I did with my heart though. I wanted you so."

He dropped her hands as abruptly as he had taken them.

"Ruth, I've got to marry you. I can't go on like this. I've tried to fight it, to be patient and hang on to myself as Uncle Phil wanted me to. But I can't go on. I'm done."

He flung himself into a chair. His head went down on the table. The clock ticked quietly on the mantel. What was Death upstairs to Time? What were Youth and Love and Grief down here? These things were merely eddies in the great tide of Eternity.

For a moment Ruth stood very still. Then she went over and laid a hand on the bowed head, the hand that wore the wedding ring.

"Larry, Larry dear," she said softly. "Don't give up like that. It breaks my heart." There was a faint tremor in her voice, a hint of tears not far off.

He lifted his head, the strain of his long self mastering wearing thin almost to the breaking point at last, for once all but at the mercy of the dominant emotion which possessed him, his love for the girl at his side who stood so close he could feel her breathing, got the faint violet fragrance of her. And yet he must not so much as touch her hand.

The clock struck three, solemn, inexorable strokes. Ruth and Larry and the clock seemed the only living things in the quiet house. Larry brushed his hand over his eyes, got to his feet.

"Ruth, will you marry me?"

"Yes, Larry."

The shock of her quiet consent brought Larry back a little to realities.

"Wait, Ruth. Don't agree too soon. Do you realize what it means to marry me? You may be married already. Your husband may return and find you living—illegally—with me."

"I know," said Ruth steadily. "There must be something wrong with me, Larry. I can't seem to care. I can't seem to make myself feel as if I belonged to any one else except to you. I don't think I do belong to any one else. I was born over in the wreck. I was born yours. You saved me. I would have died if you hadn't gotten me out from under the beams and worked over and brought me back to life when everybody else gave me up as dead. I wouldn't have been alive for my husband if you hadn't saved me. I am yours, Larry. If you want me to marry you I will. If you want me—any way—I am yours. I love you."

"Ruth!"

Larry drew her into his arms and kissed her—the first time he had ever kissed any girl in his life except his sister. She lay in his arms, her fragrant pale gold hair brushing his cheek. He kissed her over and over passionately, almostly roughly in the storm of his emotion suddenly unpent. Then he was Larry Holiday again. He pushed her gently from him, remorse in his gray eyes.

"Forgive me, Ruth. It's all wrong. I'm all wrong. We can't do it. I shouldn't have kissed you. I shouldn't have touched you—shouldn't have let you come to me like this. You must go now, dear. I am sorry."

Ruth faced him in silence a moment then bowed her head, turned and walked away to the door meekly like a chidden child. Her loosened hair fell like a golden shower over her shoulders. It was all Larry could do to keep from going after her, taking her in his arms again. But he stood grimly planted by the table, gripping its edge as if to keep himself anchored. He dared not stir one inch toward that childish figure in the dark robe.

On the threshold Ruth turned, flung back her hair and looked back at him. There was a kind of fearless exaltation and pride on her lovely young face and in her shining eyes.

"I don't know whether you are right or wrong, Larry, or rather when you are right and when you are wrong. It is all mixed up. It seems as if it must be right to care or we wouldn't be doing it so hard, as if God couldn't let us love like this if he didn't mean we should be happy together, belong to each other. Why should He make love if He didn't want lovers to be happy?"

It was an argument as old as the garden of Eden but to Ruth and Larry it was as if it were being pronounced for the first time for themselves, here in the dead of night, in the old House on the Hill, as they felt themselves drawn to each other by the all but irresistible impulse of their mutual love.

"Maybe," went on Ruth, "I forgot my morals along with the rest I forgot. I don't seem to care very much about right and wrong to-night. You called me. I heard you and I came. I am here." Her lovely, proud little head was thrown back, her eyes still shining with that fearless elation.

"Ruth! Don't, dear. You don't know what you are saying. I've got to care about right and wrong for both of us. Please go. I—I can't stand it."

He left his post by the table then came forward and held open the door for her. She passed out, went up the stairs, her hair falling in a wave of gold down to her waist. She did not turn back.

Larry waited at the foot of the stairs until he heard the door of her room close upon her and then he too went up, to Granny's room. Ted met him at the threshold in a panic of fear and grief.

"Larry—I think—oh—" and Ted bolted unable to finish what he had begun to say or to linger on that threshold of death.

The nurse was bending over Madame Holiday forcing some brandy between the blue lips. Larry was by the bedside in an instant. The nurse stepped back with a sad little shake of the head. There was nothing she could do and she knew it, knew also there was nothing the young doctor could do professionally. He knelt, chafed the cold hands. The pale lips quivered a little, the glazed eyes opened for a second.

"Ned—Larry—give Philip love—" That was all. The eyes closed. There was a little flutter of passing breath. Granny was gone.

It was two days after Granny's funeral. Ted had gone back to college. Tony would leave for New York on the morrow. Life cannot wait on death. It must go on its course as inevitably as a river must go its way to the sea.

Yet to Tony it seemed sad and heartless that it should be so. She was troubled by her selfishness, first to Granny living and now to Granny dead. She said as much to her uncle sorrowfully.

"It isn't really heartless or unkind," he comforted her. "We have to go on with our work. We can't lay it down or scamp it just because dear Granny's work is done. It is no more wrong for you to go back to your play than it is for me to go back to my doctoring."

"I know," sighed Tony. "But I can't help feeling remorseful. I had so much time and Granny had so little and yet I wasn't willing to give her even a little of mine. I would have if I had known though. I knew I was selfish but I didn't know how selfish. I wish you had told me, Uncle Phil. Why didn't you? You told Ruth. You let her help. Why wouldn't you let me?" she half reproached.

"I tried to do what was best for us all. I wanted to find a reason for keeping Ruth with us and I did not think then and I don't think now that it was right or necessary to keep you back for the little comfort it could have brought to Granny. You must not worry, dear child. The blame if there is any is mine. I know you would have stayed if I had let you."

Back in college Ted sorted out his personal letters from the sheaf of bills. Among them was one from Madeline Taylor, presumably the answer to the one Ted had written her from the House on the Hill. He stared at the envelope, dreading to open it. He was too horribly afraid of what it might contain. Suddenly he threw the letter down on the table and his head went down on top of it.

"I can't do it," he groaned. "I can't. I won't. It's too hard."

But in a moment his head popped up again fiercely.

"Confound you!" he muttered. "You can and you will. You've got to. You've made your bed. Now lie on it." And he opened the letter.

"I can't tell you," wrote the girl, "how your letter touched me. Don't think I don't understand that it isn't because you love me or really want to marry me that you are asking me to do it. It is all the finer and more wonderful because you don't and couldn't, ever. You had nothing to gain—everything to lose. Yet you offered it all as if it were the most ordinary gift in the world instead of the biggest.

"Of course, I can't let you sacrifice yourself like that for me. Did you really think I would? I wouldn't let you be dragged down into my life even if you loved me which you don't. Some day you will want to marry a girl—not somebody like me—but your own kind and you can go to her clean because you never hurt me, never did me anything but good ever. You lifted me up always. But there must have been something still stronger that pulled me down. I couldn't stay up. I was never your kind though I loved you just as much as if I were. Forgive my saying it just this once. It will be the last time. This is really good-by. Thank you over and over for everything,

"Madeline."

A mist blurred Ted Holiday's eyes as he finished the letter. He was free. The black winged vulture thing which had hovered over him for days was gone. By and by he would be thankful for his deliverance but just now there was room only in his chivalrous boy's heart for one overmastering emotion, pity for the girl and her needlessly wrecked life. What a hopeless mess the whole thing was! And what could he do to help her since she would not take what he had offered in all sincerity? He must think out a way somehow.



CHAPTER XXIX

THE PEDIGREE OF PEARLS

"Where is Larry?" asked Doctor Holiday a few days later coming into the dining room at supper time. "I haven't seen him all the afternoon."

Margery dropped into her chair with a tired little sigh.

"There is a note from him at your place. I think he has gone out of town. John told me he took him to the three ten train."

"H—m!" mused the doctor. "Where is Ruth?" he looked up to ask.

"Ruth went to Boston at noon. At least so Bertha tells me." Bertha was the maid. "She did not say good-by to me. I thought possibly she had to you!"

Her husband shook his head, perplexed and troubled.

"Dear Uncle Phil," ran Larry's message.

"Ruth has gone to Boston. She left a letter for me saying good-by and asking me to say good-by to the rest of you for her. Said she would write as soon as she had an address and that no one was to worry about her. She would be quite all right and thought it was best not to bother us by telling us about her plans until she was settled."

"Of course I am going after her. I don't know where she is but I'll find her. I've got to, especially as I was the one who drove her away. I broke my promise to you. I did make love to her and asked her to marry me the night Granny died. She said she would and then of course I said she couldn't and we've not seen each other alone since so I don't know what she thinks now. I don't know anything except that I'm half crazy."

"I know it is horribly selfish to go off and leave you like this when you need me especially. Please forgive me. I'll be back as soon as I can or send Ruth or we'll both come. And don't worry. I'm not going to do anything rash or wrong or anything that will hurt you or Ruth. I am sorry about the other night. I didn't mean to smash up like that."

The doctor handed the letter over to his wife.

"Why didn't he wait until he had her address? How can he possibly find her in a city like Boston with not the slightest thing to go on?"

Doctor Holiday smiled wearily.

"Wait! Do you see Larry waiting when Ruth is out of his sight? My dear, don't you know Larry is the maddest of the three when he gets under way?"

"The maddest and the finest. Don't worry, Phil. He is all right. He won't do anything rash just as he tells you."

"You can't trust a man in love, especially a young idiot who waited a full quarter century to get the disease for the first time. But you are right. I'd trust him anywhere, more rather than less because of that confession of his. I've wondered that he didn't break his promise long before this. He is only human and his restraint has been pretty nearly super-human. I don't believe he would have smashed up now as he calls it if his nerves hadn't been strained about to the limit by taking all the responsibility for Granny at the end. It was terrible for the poor lad."

"It was terrible for you too, Phil. Larry isn't the only one who has suffered. I do wish those foolish youngsters could have waited a little and not thrown a new anxiety on you just now. But I suppose we can't blame them under the circumstances. Isn't it strange, dear? Except for the children sleeping up in the nursery you and I are absolutely alone for the first time since I came to the House on the Hill."

He nodded a little sadly. His father was gone long since and now Granny too. And Ned's children were all grown up, would perhaps none of them ever come again in the old way. Their wings were strong enough now to make strange flights.

"We've filled your life rather full, Margery mine," he said. "I hope there are easier days ahead."

"I don't want any happier ones," said Margery as she slipped her hand into his.

The next few days were a perfect nightmare to Larry. Naturally he found no trace of Ruth, did not know indeed under what name she had chosen to go. The city had swallowed her up and the saddest part of it was she had wanted to be swallowed, to get away from himself. She had gone for his sake he knew, because he had told her he could endure things no longer. She had taken him at his word and vanished utterly. For all her gentleness and docility Ruth had tremendous fortitude. She had taken this hard, rash step alone in the dark for love's sake, just as she was ready that unforgettable night to take that rasher step with him to marriage or something less than marriage had he permitted it. She would have preferred to marry him, not to bother with abstractions of right and wrong, to take happiness as it offered but since he would not have it so she had lost herself.

Despair, remorse, anxiety, loneliness held him-in thrall while he roamed the streets of the old city, almost hopeless now of finding her but still doggedly persistent in his search. Another man under such a strain of mind and body would have gone on a stupendous thought drowning carouse. Larry Holiday had no such refuge in his misery. He took it straight without recourse to anaesthetic of any sort. And on the fourth day when he had been about to give up in defeat and go home to the Hill to wait for word of Ruth a crack of light dawned.

Chancing to be strolling absent mindedly across the Gardens he ran into a college classmate of his, one Gary Eldridge, who shook his hand with crushing grip and announced that it was a funny thing Larry's bobbing up like that because he had been hearing the latter's name pretty consecutively all the previous afternoon on the lips of the daintiest little blonde beauty it had been his luck to behold in many a moon, a regular Greuze girl in fact, eyes and all.

Naturally there was no escape for Eldridge after that. Larry Holiday grabbed him firmly and demanded to know if he had seen Ruth Annersley and if he had and knew where she was to tell him everything quick. It was important.

Considering Larry Holiday's haggard face and tense voice Eldridge admitted the importance and spun his yarn. No, he did not know where Ruth Annersley was nor if the Greuze girl was Ruth Annersley at all. He did know the person he meant was in the possession of the famous Farringdon pearls, a fact immensely interesting to Fitch and Larrabee, the jewelers in whose employ he was.

"Your Ruth Annersley or Farringdon or whoever she is brought the pearls in to our place yesterday to have them appraised. You can bet we sat up and took notice. We didn't know they had left Australia but here they were right under our noses absolutely unmistakable, one of the finest sets of matched pearls in the world. You Holidays are so hanged smart. I wonder it didn't occur to you to bring 'em to us anyway. We're the boys that can tell you who's who in the lapidary world. Pearls have pedigrees, my dear fellow, quite as faithfully recorded as those of prize pigs."

Larry thumped his cranium disgustedly. It did seem ridiculous now that the very simple expedient of going to the master jewelers for information had not struck any of them. But it hadn't and that was the end of it. He made Eldridge sit down in the Gardens then and there however to tell him all he knew about the pearls but first and most important did the other have any idea where the owner of the pearls was? He had none. The girl was coming in again in a few days to hear the result of a cable they had sent to Australia where the pearls had been the last Larrabee and Fitch knew. She had left no address. Eldridge rather thought she hadn't cared to be found. Larry bit his lip at that and groaned inwardly. He too was afraid it was only too true, and it was all his fault.

This was the story of the pearls as his friend briefly outlined it for Larry Holiday's benefit. The Farringdon pearls had originally belonged to a Lady Jane Farringdon of Farringdon Court, England. They had been the gift of a rejected lover who had gone to Africa to drown his disappointment and had died there after having sent the pearls home to the woman he had loved fruitlessly and who was by this time the wife of another man, her distant cousin Sir James Farringdon. At her death Lady Jane had given the pearls to her oldest son for his bride when he should have one. He too had died however before he had attained to the bride. The pearls went to his younger brother Roderick a sheep raiser in Australia who had amassed a fortune and discarded the title. The sheep raiser married an Australian girl and gave her the pearls. They had two children, a girl and a boy. Roderick was since deceased. Possibly his wife also was dead. They had cabled to find out details. But it looked as if the little blonde lady who possessed the pearls although she did not know where she got them was in all probability the daughter of Roderick Farringdon, the granddaughter of the famous beauty, Lady Jane. She was probably also a great heiress. The sheep raiser and his father-in-law had both been reported to be wallowing in money. "Oh boy!" Eldridge had ended significantly.

"But if Ruth is a person of so much importance why did they let her travel so far alone with those valuable pearls in her possession? Why haven't they looked her up? I suppose she told you about the wreck and—the rest of it?"

"She did, sang the praises of the family of Holiday in a thousand keys. Your advertisements were all on the Annersley track you see and they would all be out on the Farringdon one. The paths didn't happen to cross I suppose."

"You don't know anything about, Geoffrey Annersley do you?" Larry asked anxiously.

"Not a thing. We are jewelers not detectives or clairvoyants. It is only the pearls we are up on and we've evidently slipped a cog on them. We should have known when they came to the States but we didn't."

"I'll cable the American consul at Australia myself. It's the first real clue we have had—the rest has been working in the dark. The first thing though is to find Ruth." And Larry Holiday looked so very determined and capable of doing anything he set out to do that Gary Eldridge grinned a little.

"Wonderful what falling in love will do for a chap," he reflected. "Used to think old Larry was rather a slow poke but he seems to have developed into some whirlwind. Don't wonder considering what a little peach the girl is. Hope the good Lord has seen fit to recall Geoffrey Annersley to his heaven if he really did marry her."

Aloud he promised to telephone Larry the moment the owner of the pearls crossed the threshold of Larrabee and Fitch and to hold her by main force if necessary until Larry could get there. In the meantime he suggested that she had seemed awfully interested in the Australia part of the story and it was very possible she had gone to the—

"Library." Larry took the words out of his mouth and bolted without any formality of farewell into the nearest subway entrance.

His friend gazed after him.

"And this is Larry Holiday who used to flee if a skirt fluttered in his direction," he murmured. "Ah well, it takes us differently. But it gets us all sooner or later."

Larry's luck had turned at last. In the reading room of the Public Library he discovered a familiar blonde head bent over a book. He strode to the secluded corner where she sat "reading up" on Australia.

"Ruth!" Larry tried to speak quietly though he felt like raising the echoes of the sacred scholarly precincts.

The reader looked up startled, wondering. Her face lit with quick delight.

"Larry, oh Larry, I'm finding myself," she whispered breathlessly.

"I'm glad but I'm gladder that I'm finding—yourself. Come on outside sweetheart. I want to shout. I can't whisper and I won't. I'll get us both put out if you won't come peaceably."

"I'll come," said Ruth meekly.

Outside in the corridor she raised blue eyes to gray ones.

"I didn't mean you to find me—yet," she sighed.

"So I should judge. I didn't think a mite of a fairy girl like you could be so cruel. Some day I'll exact full penance for all you've made me suffer but just now we'll waive that and go over to the Plaza and have a high tea and talk. But first I'm going to kiss you. I don't care if people are looking. All Boston can look if it likes. I'm going to do it."

But it was only a scrub woman and not all Boston who witnessed that kiss, and she paid no attention to the performance. Even had she seen it is hardly probable that she would have been vastly startled at the sight. She was a very old woman and more than likely she had seen such sights before. Perhaps she had even been kissed by a man herself, once upon a time. We hope so.

The next day Larry and Ruth came home to the Hill, radiantly happy and full of their strange adventures. Ruth was wearing an immensely becoming new dark blue velvet suit, squirrel furs and a new hat which to Margery's shrewd feminine eyes betrayed a cost all out of proportion to its minuteness. She was looking exquisitely lovely in her new finery. Scant wonder Larry could not keep his eyes off of her. Margery and Philip were something in the same state.

"On the strength of my being an heiress maybe Larry thought I might afford some new clothes," Ruth confessed. "Of course he paid for them—temporarily," she had added with a charming blush and a side long, deprecating glance at Doctor Holiday, senior. She did not want him to disapprove of her for letting Larry buy her pretty clothes nor blame Larry for doing it.

But he only laughed and remarked that he would have gone shopping with her himself if he had any idea the results would be so satisfactory.

It was only when he was alone with Margery that he shook his head.

"Those crazy children behave as if everything were quite all right and as if they could run right out any minute and get married. She doesn't even wear her ring any more and they both appear to think the fact it presumably represents can be disposed of as summarily."

"Let them alone," advised his wife. "They are all right. It won't do them a bit of harm to let themselves go a bit. Larry does his worshiping with his eyes and maybe with his tongue when they are alone. I don't blame him. She is a perfect darling. And it is much better for him not to pretend he doesn't care when we all know he does tremendously. It was crushing it all back that made him so miserable and smash up as he wrote you. I don't believe he smashed very irretrievably anyway. He is too much of a Holiday."

The doctor smiled a little grimly.

"You honor us, my dear. Even Holidays are men!"

"Thank heaven," said Margery.



CHAPTER XXX

THE FIERY FURNACE

A few days after the return of Larry and Ruth to the Hill Doctor Holiday found among his mail an official looking document bearing the seal of the college which Ted attended and which was also his own and Larry's alma mater. He opened it carelessly supposing it to be an alumni appeal of some sort but as his-eyes ran down the typed sheet his face grew grave and his lips set in a tight line. The communication was from the president and informed its recipient that his nephew Edward Holiday was expelled from the college on the confessed charge of gambling.

"We are particularly sorry to be obliged to take this action," wrote the president, "inasmuch as Edward has shown recently a marked improvement both in class-room work and general conduct which has gone far to eradicate the unfortunate impression made by the lawlessness of his earlier career. But we cannot overlook so flagrant an offense and are regretfully forced to make an example of the offender. As you know gambling is strictly against the rules of the institution and your nephew played deliberately for high stakes as he admits and made a considerable sum of money—three hundred dollars to be precise—which he disposed of immediately for what purpose he refuses to tell. Again regretting," et cetera, et cetera, the letter closed.

But there was also a hand written postscript and an enclosure.

The postscript ran as follows:

"As a personal friend and not as the president of the college I am sending on the enclosed which may or may not be of importance. A young girl, Madeline Taylor by name, of Florence, Massachusetts, who has until recently been employed in Berry's flower shop, was found dead this morning with the gas jet fully turned on, the inference being clearly suicide. A short time ago a servant from the lodging house where the dead girl resided came to me with a letter addressed to your nephew. It seems Miss Taylor had given the girl the letter to mail the previous evening and had indeed made a considerable point of its being mailed. Nevertheless the girl had forgotten to do so and the next day was too frightened to do it fearing the thing might have some connection with the suicide. She meant to give it to Ted in person but finding him out decided at the last moment to deliver it to me instead. I am sending the letter to you, as I received it, unopened, and have not and shall not mention the incident to any one else. I should prefer and am sure that you will also wish that your nephew's name shall not be associated in any way with the dead girl's. Frankly I don't believe the thing contains any dynamite whatever but I would rather you handled the thing instead of myself.

"Believe me, my dear Holiday, I am heartily sick, and sorry over the whole matter of Ted's expulsion. If we had not had his own word for it I should not have believed him guilty. Even now I have a feeling that there was more behind the thing than we got, something perhaps more to his credit than he was willing to tell."

Philip Holiday picked up the enclosed letter addressed to Ted and looked at it as dubiously as if indeed it might have contained dynamite. The scrawling handwriting was painfully familiar. And the mention of Florence as the dead girl's home was disagreeably corroborating evidence. What indeed was behind it all?

Steeling his will he tore open the sealed envelope. Save for a folded slip of paper it was quite empty. The folded slip was a check for three hundred dollars made payable to Madeline Taylor and signed with Ted Holiday's name.

Here was dynamite and to spare for Doctor Holiday. Beside the uneasy questions this development conjured the catastrophe of the boy's expulsion took second place. And yet he forced himself not to judge until he had heard Ted's own story. What was love for if it could not find faith in time of need?

He said nothing to any one, even his wife, of the president's letter and that disconcerting check which evidently represented the results of the boy's law breaking. All day he looked for a letter from Ted himself and hoped against hope that he would appear in person. His anxiety grew as he heard nothing. What had become of the boy? Where had he betaken himself with his shame and trouble? How grave was his trouble? It was a bad day for Philip Holiday and a worse night.

But the morning brought a letter from his nephew, mailed ominously enough from a railway post office in northern Vermont. The doctor tore it open with hands that trembled a little. One thing at least he was certain of. However bad the story the lad had to tell it would be the truth. He could count on that.

"Dear Uncle Phil—" it ran. "By the time you get this I shall be over the border and enlisted, I hope, with the Canadians. I am horribly sorry to knife you like this and go off without saying good-by and leaving such a mess behind but truly it is the best thing I could do for the rest of you as well as myself.

"They will write you from college and tell you I am fired—for gambling. But they won't tell you the whole story because they don't know it. I couldn't tell them. It concerned somebody else besides myself. But you have a right to know everything and I am going to tell it to you and there won't be anything shaved off or tacked on to save my face either. It will be straight stuff on my honor as a Holiday which means as much to me as it does to you and Larry whether you believe it or not."

Then followed a straightforward account of events from the first ill-judged pick-up on the train and the all but fatal joy ride to the equally ill-judged kisses in Cousin Emma's garden.

"I hate like the mischief to put such things down on paper," wrote the boy, "but I said I'd tell the whole thing and I will, even if it does come out hard, so you will know it isn't any worse than it is. It is bad enough I'll admit, I hadn't any business to make fool love to her when I really didn't care a picayune. And I hadn't any business to be there in Holyoke at all when you thought I was at Hal's. I did go to Hal's but I only stayed two days. The rest of the time I was with Madeline and knew I was going to be when I left the Hill. That part can't look any worse to you than it does to me. It was a low-down trick to play on you when you had been so white about the car and everything. But I did it and I can't undo it. I can only say I am sorry. I did try afterward to make up a little bit by keeping my word about the studying. Maybe you'll let that count a little on the other side of the ledger. Lord knows I need anything I can get there. It is little enough, more shame to me!"

Then followed the events of the immediately preceding months from Madeline Taylor's arrival in the college town on to the stunning revelation of old Doctor Hendricks' letter.

"You don't know how the thing made me feel. I couldn't help feeling more or less responsible. For after all I did start the thing and though Madeline was always too good a sport to blame me I knew and I am sure she knew that she wouldn't have taken up with Hubbard if I hadn't left her in the lurch just when she had gotten to care a whole lot too much for me. Besides I couldn't help thinking what it would have been like if Tony had been caught in a trap like that. It didn't seem to me I could stand off and let her go to smash alone though I could see Doc Hendricks had common sense on his side when he ordered me to keep out of the whole business.

"I had all this on my mind when I came home that last time when Granny was dying. I had it lodged in my head that it was up to me to straighten things out by marrying Madeline myself though I hated the idea like death and destruction and I knew it would about kill the rest of you. I wrote and asked her to marry me that night after Granny went. She wouldn't do it. It wasn't because she didn't love me either. I guess it was rather because she did that she wouldn't. She wouldn't pull me down in the quick sands with her. Whatever you may think of what she was and did you will have to admit that she was magnificent about this. She might have saved herself at my expense and she wouldn't. Remember that, Uncle Phil, and don't judge her about the rest."

Doctor Holiday ceased reading a moment and gazed into the fire. By the measure of his full realization of what such a marriage would have meant to his young nephew he paid homage to the girl in her fine courage in refusing to take advantage of a chivalrous boy's impulsive generosity even though it left her the terrible alternative which later she had taken. And he thought with a tender little smile that there was something also rather magnificent about a lad who would offer himself thus voluntarily and knowingly a living sacrifice for "dear Honor's sake." He went back to the letter.

"But I still felt I had to do something to help though she wouldn't accept the way I first offered. I knew she needed money badly as she wasn't able to work and I wanted to give her some of mine. I knew I had plenty or would have next spring when I came of age. But I was sure you wouldn't let me have any of it now without knowing why and Larry wouldn't lend me any either, sight unseen. I wouldn't have blamed either of you for refusing. I haven't deserved to be taken on trust.

"The only other way I knew of to get money quick was to play for it. I have fool's luck always at cards. Last year I played a lot for money. Larry knew and rowed me like the devil for it last spring. No wonder. He knew how Dad hated it. So did I. I'd heard him rave on the subject often enough. But I did it just the same as I did a good many other things I am not very proud to remember now. But I haven't done it this year—at least only a few times. Once I played when I'd sent Madeline all the money I had for her traveling expenses and once or twice beside I did it on my own account because I was so darned sick of toeing a chalk mark I had to go on a tangent or bust. I am not excusing it. I am not excusing anything. I am just telling the truth.

"Anyhow the other night I played again in good earnest. There were quite a number of fellows in the game and we all got a bit excited and plunged more than we meant to especially myself and Ned Delany who was out to get me if he could. He hates me like the seven year itch anyway because I caught him cheating at cards once and said so right out in meeting. I had absolutely incredible luck. I guess the devil or the angels were on my side. I swept everything, made about three hundred dollars in all. The fellows paid up and I banked the stuff and mailed Madeline a check for the whole amount the first thing. I don't know what would have happened if I had lost instead of winning. I didn't think about that. A true gambler never does I reckon.

"But I want to say right here and now, Uncle Phil, that I am through with the business. The other night sickened me of gambling for good and all. Even Dad couldn't have hated it any more than I do this minute. It is rotten for a man, kills his nerves and his morals and his common sense. I'm done. I'll never make another penny that way as long as I live. But I'm not sorry I did it this once no matter how hard I'm paying for it. If I had it to do over again I'd do precisely the same thing. I wonder if you can understand that, Uncle Phil, or whether you'll think I'm just plain unregenerate.

"I thought then I was finished with the business but as a matter of fact I was just starting on it. Somebody turned state's evidence. I imagine it was Delany though I don't know. Anyhow somebody wrote the president an anonymous letter telling him there was a lot of gambling going on and I was one of the worst offenders, and thoughtfully suggested the old boy should ask me how much I made the other night and what I did with it. Of course that finished me off. I was called before the board and put through a holy inquisition. Gee! They piled up not only the gambling business but all the other things I'd done and left undone for two years and a half and dumped the whole avalanche on my head at once. Whew! It was fierce. I am not saying I didn't deserve it. I did, if not for this particular thing for a million other times when I've gone scot-free.

"They tried to squeeze out of me who the other men involved were but I wouldn't tell. I could have had a neat little come back on Delany if I had chosen but I don't play the game that way and I reckon he knew it and banked on my holding my tongue. I'd rather stand alone and take what was coming to me and I got it too good and plenty. They tried to make me tell what I did with the money. That riled me. It was none of their business and I told 'em so. Anyway I couldn't have told even if it would have done me any good on Madeline's account. I wouldn't drag her into it.

"Finally they dismissed me and said they would let me know later what they would do about my case. But there wasn't any doubt in my mind what they were going to do nor in theirs either, I'll bet. I was damned. They had to fire me—couldn't help it when I was caught with the goods under their very noses. I think a good many of them wished I hadn't been caught, that they could have let me off some way, particularly Prof. Hathaway. He put out his hand and patted my shoulder when I went out and I knew he was mighty sorry. He has been awfully decent to me always especially since I have been playing round with his daughter Elsie this fall and I guess it made him feel bad to have me turn out such a black sheep. I wished I could tell him the whole story but I couldn't. I just had to let him think it was as bad as it looked.

"I had hardly gotten back into the Frat house when I was called to the telephone. It was Madeline. She thanked me for sending her the money but said she was sending the check back as she didn't need it, had found a way out of her difficulties. She was going on a long, long journey in fact, and wouldn't see me again. Said she wanted to say good-by and wish me all kinds of luck and thank me for what she was pleased to call my goodness to her. And then she hung up before I could ask any questions or get it through my head what she meant by her long, long journey. My brain wasn't working very lively after what I'd been through over there at the board meeting anyway and I was too wrapped up in my own troubles to bother much about hers at the moment, selfish brute that I am.

"But the next morning I understood all right. She had found her way out and no mistake, just turned on the gas and let herself go. She was dead when they found her. I don't blame her, Uncle Phil. It was too hard for her. She couldn't go through with it. Life had been too hard for her from the beginning. She never had half a chance. And in the end we killed her between us, her pious old psalm singing hypocrite of a grandfather, the rotter who ruined her, and myself, the prince of fools.

"I went to see her with the old Doc. And, Uncle Phil, she was beautiful. Not even Granny looked more peaceful and happy than she did lying there dead with the little smile on her lips as if she were having a pleasant dream. But the scar was there on her forehead—the scar I put there. I've got a scar of my own too. It doesn't show on the surface but it is there for all that and always will be. I shan't talk about it but I'll never forget as long as I live that part of the debt she paid was mine. It is mea culpa for me always so far as she is concerned.

"Her grandfather arrived while I was there. If ever there was a man broken, mind and body and spirit he was. I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. Of the two I would much rather have been Madeline lying there dead than that poor old chap living with her death on his conscience.

"Later I got my official notice from the board. I was fired. I wanted to get out of college. I'm out for better or worse. Uncle Phil, don't think I don't care. I know how terribly you are going to be hurt and that it will be just about the finish of poor old Larry. I am not very proud of it myself—being catapulted out in disgrace where the rest of you left trailing clouds of glory. It isn't only what I have done just now. It is all the things I have done and haven't done before that has smashed me in the end—my fool attitude of have a good time and damn the expense. I didn't pay at the time. I am paying now compound interest accumulated. Worst of it is the rest of you will have to pay with me. You told me once we couldn't live to ourselves alone. I didn't understand then. I do now. I am guilty but you have to suffer with me for my mistakes. It is that that hurts worst of all.

"You have been wonderful to me always, had oceans of patience when I disappointed you and hurt you and worried you over and over again. And now here is this last, worst thing of all to forgive. Can you do it, Uncle Phil? Please try. And please don't worry about me, nor let the others. I'll come through all right. And if I don't I am not afraid of death. I have found out there are lots of worse things in the world. I haven't any pipe dreams about coming out a hero of any sort but I do mean to come out the kind of a man you won't be ashamed of and to try my darnedest to live up a little bit to the Holiday specifications. Again, dear Uncle Phil, please forgive me if you can and write as soon as I can send an address." Then a brief postscript. "The check Madeline sent back never got to me. If it is forwarded to the Hill please send it or rather its equivalent to the president. I wouldn't touch the money with a ten foot pole. I never wanted it for myself but only for Madeline and she is beyond needing anything any of us can give her now."



CHAPTER XXXI

THE MOVING FINGER CONTINUES TO WRITE

Having read and reread the boy's letter Doctor Holiday sat long with it in his hand staring into the fire. Poor Teddy for whom life had hitherto been one grand and glorious festival! He was getting the other, the seamy side of things, at last with a vengeance. Knowing with the sure intuition of love how deeply the boy was suffering and how sincerely he repented his blunders the doctor felt far more compassion than condemnation for his nephew. The fineness and the folly of the thing were so inextricably confused that there was little use trying to separate the two even if he had cared to judge the lad which he did not, being content with the boy's own judgment of himself. Bad as the gambling business was and deeply as he regretted the expulsion from college the doctor could not help seeing that there was some extenuation for Ted's conduct, that he had in the main kept faith with himself, paid generously, far more than he owed, and traveling through the fiery furnace had somehow managed to come out unscathed, his soul intact. After all could one ask much more?

It was considerably harder for Larry to accept the situation philosophically than it was for the senior doctor's more tolerant and mature mind. Larry loved Ted as he loved no one else in the world not perhaps even excepting Ruth. But he loved the Holiday name too with a fine, high pride and it was a bitter dose to swallow to have his younger brother "catapulted in disgrace," as Ted himself put it, out of the college which he himself so loved and honored. He was inclined to resent what looked in retrospect as entirely unnecessary and uncalled for generosity on Ted's part.

"Nobody but Ted would ever have thought of doing such a fool thing," he groaned. "Why didn't he pull out in the first place as Hendricks wanted him to? He would have been entirely justified."

But the older man smiled and shook his head.

"Some people could have done it, not Ted," he said. "Ted isn't built that way. He never deserted anybody in trouble in his life. I don't believe he ever will. We can't expect him to have behaved differently in this one affair just because we would have liked it better so. I am not sure but we would be wrong and he right in any case."

"Maybe. But it is a horrible mess. I can't get over the injustice of the poor kid's paying so hard when he was just trying to do the decent, hard, right thing."

"You have it less straight than Ted has, Larry. He knows he is paying not for what he did and thought right but for what he did and knew was wrong. You can't feel worse than I do about it. I would give anything I have to save Ted from the torture he is going through, has been going through alone for days. But I would rather he learned his lesson thoroughly now, suffering more than he deserves than have him suffer too little and fall worse next time. No matter how badly we feel for him I think it is up to us not to try to dilute his penitence and to leave a generous share of the blame where he puts it himself—on his own shoulders."

"I suppose you are right, Uncle Phil," sighed Larry. "You usually are. But it's like having a piece taken right out of me to have him go off like that. And the Canadians are the very devil of fighters. Always in the thick of things."

"That is where Ted would want to be, Larry. Let us not cross that bridge until we have to. As he says himself there are worse things than death anyway."

"I know. Marrying the girl would have been worse. She was rather magnificent, wasn't she, just as he says, not saving herself when she might have at his expense?"

"I think she was. I am almost glad the poor child is where she can suffer no more at the hands of men."

The next day came a wire from Ted announcing his acceptance in the Canadian army and giving his address in the training camp.

The doctor answered at once, writing a long, cheerful letter full of home news especially the interesting developments in Ruth's romantic story. It was only at the end that he referred to the big thing that had to be faced between them.

"I am not going to say a word that will add in any way to the burden you are already carrying, Teddy, my lad. You know how sadly disappointed we all are in your having to leave college this way but I understand and sympathize fully with your reasons for doing what you did. Even though I can't approve of the thing itself. I haven't a single reproach to offer. You have had a harsh lesson. Learn it so well that you will never bring yourself or the rest of us to such pain and shame again. Keep your scar. I should be sorry to think you were so callous that you could pass through an experience like that without carrying off an indelible mark from it. But it isn't going to ruin your life. On the contrary it is going to make a man of you, is doing that already if I may judge from the spirit of your letter which goes far to atone for the rest. The forgiveness is yours always, son, seventy times seven if need be. Never doubt it. We shall miss you very much. I wonder if you know how dear to us you are, Teddy lad. But we aren't going to borrow trouble of the future. We shall say instead God speed. May he watch over you wherever you are and bring you safe back to us in His good time!"

And Ted reading the letter later in the Canadian training camp was not ashamed of the tears that came stinging up in his eyes. He was woefully homesick, wanted the home people, especially Uncle Phil desperately. But the message from the Hill brought strength and comfort as well as heart ache.

"Dear Uncle Phil," he thought. "I will make it up to him somehow. I will. He shan't ever have to be ashamed of me again."

And so Ted Holiday girded on manhood along with his khaki and his Sam Browne belt and started bravely up out of the pit which his own willful folly had dug for him.

Tony was not told the full story of her brother's fiasco. She only knew that he had left college for some reason or other and had taken French leave for the Canadian training camp. She was relieved to discover that even in Larry's stern eyes the escapade, whatever it was, had not apparently been a very damaging one and accepted thankfully her uncle's assurance that there was nothing at all to worry about and that Ted was no doubt very much better off where he was than if he had stayed in college.

As for the going to war part small blame had she for Ted in that. She knew well it was precisely what she would have done herself in his case and teemed with pride in her bonny, reckless, beloved soldier brother.

She had small time to think much about anybody's affairs beside her own just now. Any day now might come the word that little Cecilia had gone and that Tony Holiday would take her place on the Broadway stage as a real star if only for a brief space of twinkling.

She saw very little even of Alan. He was tremendously busy and seemed, oddly enough, to be drawing a little away from her, to be less jealously exacting of her time and attention. It was not that he cared less, rather more, Tony thought. His strange, tragic eyes rested hungrily upon her whenever they were together and it seemed as if he would drink deep of her youth and loveliness and joy, a draught deep enough to last a long, long time, through days of parching thirst to follow. He was very gentle, very quiet, very loveable, very tender. His stormy mood seemed to have passed over leaving a great weariness in its wake.

A very passion of creation was upon him. Seeing the canvases that flowered into beauty beneath his hand Tony felt very small and humble, knew that by comparison with her lover's genius her own facile gifts were but as a firefly's glow to the light of a flaming torch. He was of the masters. She saw that and was proud and glad and awed by the fact. But she saw also that the artist was consuming himself by the very fire of his own genius and the knowledge troubled her though she saw no way to check or prevent the holocaust if such it was.

Sometimes she was afraid. She knew that she would never be happy in the every day way with Alan. Happiness did not grow in his sunless garden. Married to him she would enter dark forests which were not her natural environment. But it did not matter. She loved him. She came always back to that. She was his, would always be his no matter what happened. She was bound by the past, caught in its meshes forever.

And then suddenly a new turn of the wheel took place. Word came just before Christmas that Dick Carson was very ill, dying perhaps down in Mexico, stricken with a malarial fever.

A few moments after Tony received this stunning news Alan Massey's card was brought to her. She went down to the reception room, gave him a limp cold little hand in greeting and asked if he minded going out with her. She had to talk with him. She couldn't talk here.

Alan did not mind. A little later they were walking riverward toward a brilliant orange sky, against which the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument loomed gray and majestic. It was bitter cold. A stinging wind lashed the girl's skirts around her and bit into her cheeks. But somehow she welcomed the physical discomfort. It matched her mood.

Then the story came out. Dick was sick, very sick, going to die maybe and she, Tony Holiday couldn't stand it.

Alan listened in tense silence. So Dick Carson might be going to be so unexpectedly obliging as to die after all. If he had known how to pray he would have done it, beseeched whatever gods there were to let the thing come to an end at last, offered any bribe within his power if they would set him free from his bondage by disposing of his cousin.

But there beside him clinging to his arm was Tony Holiday aquiver with grief for this same cousin. He saw that there were tears on her cheeks, tears that the icy wind turned instantly to frosted silver. And suddenly a new power was invoked—the power of love.

"Tony, darling, don't cry," he beseeched. "I—can't stand it. He—he won't die."

And then and there a miracle took place. Alan Massey who had never prayed in his life was praying to some God, somewhere to save John Massey for Tony because she loved him and his dying would hurt her. Tony must not be hurt. Any God could see that. It must not be permitted.

Tony put up her hand and brushed away the frosted silver drops.

"No, he isn't going to die. I'm not going to let him. I'm going to Mexico to save him."

Alan stopped short, pulling her to a halt beside him.

"Tony, you can't," he gasped, too astonished for a moment even to be angry.

"I can and I am going to," she defied him.

"But my dear, I tell you, you can't. It would be madness. Your uncle wouldn't let you. I won't let you."

"You can't stop me. Nobody can stop me. I'm going. Dick shan't die alone. He shan't."

"Tony, do you love him?"

"I don't know. I don't want to talk about love—your kind. I do love him one way with all my heart. I wish it were the way I love you. I'd go down and marry him if I did. Maybe I'll marry him anyway. I would in a minute if it would save him."

"Tony!" Alan's face was dead white, his green eyes savage. "You promised to stick to me through everything. Where is your Holiday honor that you can talk like that about marrying another man?" Maddened, he branished his words like whips, caring little whether they hurt or not.

"I can't help it, Alan. I am sorry if I am hurting you. But I can't think about anybody but Dick just now."

"Forgive me, sweetheart. I know you didn't mean it, what you said about marrying him and you didn't mean it about going to Mexico. You know you can't. It is no place for a woman like you."

"If Dick is there dying, it is the place for me. I love you, Alan. But there are some things that go even deeper, things that have their very roots in me, the things that belong to the Hill. And Dick is a very big part of them, sometimes I think he is the biggest part of all. I have to go to him. Please don't try to stop me. It will only make us both unhappy if you try."

A bitter blast struck their faces with the force of a blow. Tony shivered.

"Let's go back. I'm cold—so dreadfully cold," she moaned clinging to his arm.

They turned in silence. There was nothing to say. The sunset glory had faded now. Only a pale, cold mauve tint was left where the flame had blazed. A star or two had come out. The river flowed sinister black, showing white humps of foam here and there.

At the Hostelry Jean Lambert met them in the hall.

"Tony, where have you been? We have been trying everywhere to locate you. Cecilia died this afternoon. You have to take Miss Clay's place tonight."

Tony's face went white. She leaned against the wall trembling.

"I forgot—I forgot about the play. I can't go to Mexico. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?"



CHAPTER XXXII

DWELLERS IN DREAMS

The last curtain had gone down on the "End of the Rainbow" and Tony Holiday had made an undeniable hit, caught the popular fancy by her young charm and vivid personality and fresh talents to such a degree that for the moment at least even its idol of many seasons, Carol Clay, was forgotten. The new arriving star filled the whole firmament. Broadway was ready to worship at a new shrine.

But Broadway did not know that there were two Tony Holidays that night, the happy Tony who had taken its fickle, composite heart by storm and the other Tony half distracted by grief and trapped bewilderment. Tony had willed to exile that second self before she stepped out behind the foot lights. She knew if she did not she never could play Madge as Madge had the right to be played. For her own sake, for Max Hempel's sake because he believed in her, for Carol Clay's sake because Tony loved her, she meant to forget everything but Madge for those few hours. Later she would remember that Dick was dying in Mexico, that she had hurt Alan cruelly that afternoon, that she had a sad and vexed problem to solve to which there seemed no solution. These things must wait. And they had waited but they came crowding back upon her the moment the play was over and she saw Alan waiting for her in the little room off the wings.

He rose to meet her and oblivious of curious eyes about them drew her into his arms and kissed her. And Tony utterly miserable in a daze of conflicting emotions nestled in his embrace unresisting for a second, not caring any more than Alan himself what any one saw or thought upon seeing.

"You were wonderful, belovedest," he whispered. "I never saw them go madder over anybody, not even Carol herself."