“Come for a ride, won’t you?” he asked.

“Oh, I couldn’t,” she answered promptly.

“Why not?”

“I—I just couldn’t, that’s all.”

He gave her a curious, somewhat puzzled look. “Round the park—once?”

“I—I—no, thank you, I couldn’t.”

“Then let me drive you home.”

“I—I don’t live very far. I always walk it.”

“Well, ride it to-night. Please!” Again that disarming gleam.

Sallie looked up with eyes clouded and a tremor on her lips. “It’s

nice of you to want to take me, but—”

“But I’ve been coming here every night this week trying to make a hit

with you, and until to-night you never even knew I was alive. Don’t

you think you ought to be a little kind to a fellow who’s as devoted

as that?”

“I—I’d like to, awfully—but—”

“Then what’s to prevent?”

She looked down, tracing a pattern with the toe of her boot.

“Please—I—thanks just the same,” she brought out finally.

She took a step toward the curb, away from him.

And just then came one of those feathery gusts that send whirling the

wheel of fate. Miss Mariette Mallard and Grace issued from the stage

door, their exchange of glances telling too plainly that they were

still enjoying the laugh at her expense. At the curb waited a

limousine quite overshadowed by the gorgeousness of the big yellow

touring car. They drew near, still giggling.

Swift as a bird, Sallie veered back to him. Instantly he was at her

side.

“You can take me home”—it was breathless—“I’ll let you do that.”

Eagerly he helped her in, took his place at the wheel. Sallie turned

with the air of royalty. With the sweetest of smiles, her head

inclined in the direction of the two girls. As the car sped round the

corner she saw them halt abruptly and, like Lot’s wife, stand rooted

where they stopped.

CHAPTER II

To a woman, the discovery that events do not work out as she had

planned comes in the nature of a disappointment. To a man, the same

discovery adds zest to the determination to make them do so. The man

in the yellow touring car was amazed to find that Sallie actually did

permit him to drive her home and no farther. He had anticipated that

run round the park at least once—probably twice—possibly three times.

He had even anticipated a cozy supper at which, across a table not too

wide, he could drink deep of a pair of well-like blue eyes shaded with

gold. But Sallie gave him her address, ten blocks from the theater,

and though he urged with all the masculine dominance of which he was

capable, she got out of the car in front of a brownstone house sagging

as if with the weight of its own years.

The man looked up the steep steps to where a flicker of gaslight

sifted on the broken mosaics of the vestibule.

“Is this where you live?” he queried, still holding the hand by which

he had helped her.

Sallie nodded, adding as she tried to withdraw the hand, “Thanks ever

so much.”

“Here—just a minute!” He drew her back. “You haven’t told me your name

yet!”

“Zara May.”

“On-the-level name, I mean.”

“Oh”—she flashed him a smile—“that one’s good enough.”

“Peaches and cream would fit better!” came in quick response.

She jerked her hand away. “Good-night, Mr.—Mr.—”

“Patterson. Jimmie Fowler Patterson. You’ll notice I’m not so stingy

as somebody else!”

She caught hold of the rusty iron railing.

He sprang into the car. “Well, I can wait! See you to-morrow, Miss

Zara May.”

Two emotions played havoc with her dreams that night—exultation over

the girls and fear. As through her narrow rear window she watched the

patch of dull blue mellow into dull gray, she assured herself that

to-morrow she would do nothing more than walk past the yellow car with

a pleasant “Good-evening.”

But of course she didn’t. Not to-morrow—nor any other night that found

it waiting at the stage entrance. And that became every night.

In the chorus dressing-room an aura of new interest surrounded her.

That car commanded respect. Miss Mariette even restrained her

inclination to persiflage until one evening some ten days later when

Sallie came in after the final act and caught her hunched on the

floor, back up, meowing with all her might while the alley cat reposed

over one ear.

All the old wounds tore open. The blood gushed to Sallie’s head. She

grabbed the hat and slapped Miss Mariette’s face, leaving the latter

too startled to retaliate in kind. And when Mr. Patterson begged her

as he did each evening to drive out to supper, she stepped into the

car, throat too full for speech.

He gave a broad grin. “Shall we make it up the Drive and back to

Montmartre?”

“I’d just rather ride if you don’t mind.”

They spun up Broadway, through Seventy-second Street and into the

enveloping shadows of Riverside. The moon was up, a new crescent

streaking its modest trail across the water. On the opposite shore the

chain of lights was a necklace of clustering jewels laid on the plush

of night.

Sallie nestled into the deep leather-cushioned seat, somewhat to the

far side. A sharp wind lifted the curls from under the despised turban

and sent them flying across the man’s face. He stole a moment to turn

and gaze.

“You’re a winner!” he murmured.

Sallie scarcely heard him. She was lost in the intoxication of tearing

motor and racing March wind. Never had she experienced anything like

it. And gradually the turmoil of it soothed her own. She closed her

eyes.

When they opened it was to meet a swift turn of road, the houses

mounted to a higher level and before them, far into the star-eyed

night, a stretch of wooded walk through which the Hudson shimmered.

“What’s this?” she asked, hand grasping his coat sleeve as if to stop

the onward rush.

“Lafayette Boulevard. You’ve been up here—haven’t you?”

“Never!”

He slowed down, eyes mocking her.

“Honestly! I’ve never even heard of it.”

“Good Lord!” he whistled and stared at her.

“How long have you been in the show business?”

“About a year.”

“Well, what have you been doing all that time?”

“Working, most of it.”

“But after working hours?”

“Oh, home right after the show. I’m pretty tired then.”

He gave another low whistle, still regarding her curiously, that

puzzled, half-skeptical expression creeping into his eyes.

“And Sundays?”

“I visit the girls I used to work with.”

“Where?”

“You mean where did I work?”

He nodded, still with that curious measuring of her.

“In Brooklyn—in a department store. I was at the perfumery. And one

day Miss Barton, Bessie Barton—ever hear of her?”

“Rather! Peach of a voice—in ‘Kiss Me Again.’”

“Yes. She was playing over there last year and she came in to buy some

French extract—it’s awfully expensive—”

“I know.”

“I waited on her. And after she’d bought a big bottle—it was

eight-eighty an ounce—she asked me if I’d ever wanted to go on the

stage. She said I was—” Sallie paused.

“Go on,” he put in quickly. “She said you were a beauty who didn’t

belong behind a counter.”

“How did you know?” came wonderingly.

“I don’t need blinders to make me see straight,” he remarked

succinctly.

She gave an embarrassed, stammering laugh. “Well—you—you’re right.

That’s what she did say—and she’d have her manager give me a job if I

wanted it. So I went with them—twenty-five a week. It was a lot more

than I was getting at the store. And when she closed, they took me on

at the Summer Garden.”

“And you still go round with the Brooklyn crowd?”

Some note in his voice put her on the defensive.

“They’re my old friends—why shouldn’t I?”

He stared at her again. “Queer!” he remarked to himself.

They dashed up a hill.

“I guess we’d better be going back,” she sighed regretfully.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like this?”

“It—it’s wonderful!” Luxuriously she nestled down, eyes half closing

again.

“Then have a heart! I’ve been jitneying you from the theater for two

solid weeks! Be a little sympathetic, won’t you?”

She laughed, a ringing laugh free as the March wind. “You must think

I’m an awful grafter.”

“I think you’re a sweetness.”

The laugh died down. “I guess we’d better be going back.”

They swung round. “All right. But we’ll stop at Arrowhead first.”

“What’s Arrowhead?”

Once more that swift quizzical look, then his head went back with a

long chuckle. “By George, you are cute!”

“What’s so funny about my asking?”

“It’s called Arrowhead Inn, sweetness—and we’re going there for

supper.”

“Oh!”

“Now I guess you think you’re not hungry?”

“No—I am hungry.”

Her prompt and unexpected reply pleased him hugely.

“Right! There you are!”

They were flying up a drive, round a grass plot and under a

porte-cochère. Sallie saw a house girdled with glass that glowed, warm

and alluring.

She went into the hall while her host parked the car. A mirror on the

wall reflected a face very different from the one she saw habitually

in the jagged glass of the dressing-table or the mottled one above her

washstand. Its eyes were glistening, red lips were laughing, and at

one corner a dimple danced. The blood surged under the smooth skin and

went singing through every vein.

To a rotund observer standing nearby, the girl in the mirror looked

like a golden-haired sprite. To Sallie she looked nothing more than

happy. She proceeded to powder her nose critically and straighten the

alley cat on the shining curls. She was still engaged in the process

when Mr. James Patterson came in and bore her off under the rotund

one’s fat nose. Mr. Patterson had already achieved a proprietory air

that prohibited trespassing under penalty of the law.

He refused the first table offered, selecting one close against the

window with an intimate little lamp shedding its blush over the cloth.

Sallie had never felt so important, not even the night of her stage

debut, for then she had been conscious solely of the fact that she was

dancing with no skirt on before a lot of people.

The head-waiter helped her out of the ulster. Mr. Patterson then

seated himself and for the first time Sallie saw him under revealing

electricity.

His hair, parted at the side and brushed straight from his forehead,

gave evidence of having been in boyhood the color affectionately known

as “carrots.” But frequent use of water and military brushes had

charitably darkened it. Remnants of freckles lingered where no amount

of hatless motoring could promote more than one coat of tan. Above

them gray eyes, not so young as they might have been, searched a world

with which they were well acquainted. Smiling, they were a boy’s. In

repose, as old as any frequenter’s of stage doors.

Sallie’s gaze settled, not on his features but on his clothes. Patch

pockets slanted across the coat. The waistcoat was high and of the

same dark blue material threaded with a hairline of white. From the

sleeves she thought rather too short, he shook down blue silk shirt

cuffs matched by a soft collar. His blue Persian tie was held in an

immaculate four-in-hand by a small pearl scarfpin. The correctness,

the perfection of detail, were to Sallie positively thrilling. As he

picked up the menu she noticed that his hands were wide and muscular

with no shine on the nails. She was glad he wasn’t a dude.

He proceeded to order with the casual ease of one who knows the chef’s

best dishes. Sallie pulled off her gloves, crossed her arms on the

table, leaned forward to listen with a kind of awe. He turned back and

as he did so his glance fell on her hand. It riveted there, then

slowly traveled upward accompanied by the same long low whistle he had

emitted as they drove uptown.

“Whew, what a stone!”

“Yes,” replied Sallie. “It used to be my mother’s.”

He stared. After which came a knowing twinkle to his eyes and a laugh,

equally knowing, to his lips. He said nothing.

“Honestly it was,” Sallie protested.

His stare probed her—then came a faint flash of resentment. “I wasn’t

born yesterday—not quite,” he announced.

Tears started to Sallie’s eyes. “Please—_please_ believe me!”

“Your mother owned a stone like that and you had to work in a

department store?”

“It does sound funny. But it’s true! We never had any money after my

father died. Nor before, either. He just saved and saved, and then

when he was gone mother just spent and spent. She went crazy spending.

She said he never gave us enough to eat when he was alive and she was

going to make the best of it now that he was dead. So she went to the

savings bank and took out every cent and had a wonderful time—for a

while. Hats and dresses and movies every night. She was awfully

pretty—”

“I believe it,” came vehemently.

“And she never did have a decent thing to wear while my father was

living. Then one day she came home with this ring. ‘Baby,’ she

said—she always called me her baby—‘there’s not much left and before

it’s all gone, I want to be sure you’re fixed. If I put it in the bank

I’ll take it out again, so this way we’ll always have something we can

hock if we need to.’”

He chuckled. “And did you ever need to?”

“Often.”

Unwittingly, perhaps, his gaze shifted from the diamond to her dress

and hat. She needed no intuition to interpret that look. Experience

had taught her exactly what it meant. And where defiance had met the

girls in the dressing-room, a wave of shame now swept over her.

Gazing at him in his immaculate perfection, her fingers twitched to

toss the alley cat out of the window. Yet she could not apologize for

it. She couldn’t explain that, being her father’s daughter, she was

banking such of her earnings as could be spared against the day when

the sapphire sparkle would fade from her eyes.

As the ’busboy shook out the glistening white napkin, placing it

across her knees, she felt an absurd inclination to slide under the

table.

Mr. Patterson’s attention, however, had turned to the silver dish of

frogs’ legs submitted for approval. He regarded them critically,

nodded to the waiter, and Sallie’s discomfort vanished in the thrill

of a new experience, though she wished he had ordered a nice thick

steak.

When they were once more gliding down the Drive he leaned over,

quickly freeing one hand, and gave hers a squeeze.

“You’re an adorable infant!” he whispered. “Don’t know just what to

make of you, but you’ve got me going!”

Sallie looked up a little uncertainly. “My right name’s Sallie

MacMahon,” she stammered.

“I don’t care what it is,” came tenderly. “My name for you is the same

as your mother’s—‘Baby!’”

CHAPTER III

“Gracie deah—will you gaze!”

Miss Mallard’s wide, wondering orbs, accompanied by Grace’s, turned

toward the door. Sallie MacMahon had just entered, resplendent in

spring outfit. Above slim ankles billowed a skirt of silk the color of

her eyes. The ankles ended in slippers mounted with buckles of cut

steel. Her arms gleamed white through transparent clinging sleeves. A

necklace of pearls clasped her throat and over the golden head brimmed

a wide hat weighted with roses.

She disrobed nonchalantly, hanging her garments against the sheet that

ran round the wall for their protection. She pretended not to see the

nudges of the girls but her heart sang a paean of triumph.

Now they would stop laughing at her!

Now they would treat her with respect!

Yea—weep for her, ye wise ones! Sallie’s day had come. She had fallen

from grace. Worse, actually reveled in her downfall! That very

morning, without a struggle, she had gone to the bank and wantonly

depleted her little horde. There had followed a wild debauch of

spending such as her own mother had indulged in years before. Silks,

laces, chiffons, feathers! Shades of Scotland, the Irish had won out!

And having recklessly started at high speed, she could not stop. She

had no desire to. Ridicule she might have endured indefinitely, but

nightly to sit opposite to Mr. James Fowler Patterson in his

perfectly tailored clothes, conscious of the variety and extent of

them, _that_ had been the straw that broke the backbone of resistance.

Once and once only had Mr. Jimmie essayed the rôle of godfather.

Reaching home one evening after a long drive in the moonlight, he had

followed her up the ladder-like steps to the dim vestibule. Standing

there, he had clasped quickly round her wrist a narrow glittering

bracelet.

“To match the ring,” he had whispered.

Sallie’s gaze had fastened on the jewels that laughed up through

semi-darkness.

“Oh—I—couldn’t!” she breathed at last. And don’t imagine it was easy.

“Please! Just because I want you to.”

“But I—I couldn’t, Jimmie.”

“But if I ask you? I’m crazy about you, Baby. Never was so keen on a

girl in my life.”

Sallie gulped hard and, without looking at it, unclasped the clinging

circlet.

“Please,” he protested as she handed it back. “Please—dear!”

She shook her head decisively.

“But I want to see you in pretty things. I want you to have them.”

“Thanks, Jimmie,—for wanting to give it to me. But you mustn’t—ever do

that again. It wouldn’t be right for me to take it.”

And Jimmie had been forced to content himself with flowers and kid

gloves and perfume—French stuff at eight-eighty an ounce.

That phrase of his, however—“I want to see you in pretty things”—clung

to her consciousness. She wanted him to see her in them. She wanted to

see herself in them. She wanted those girls to see her in them.

After which the savings bank simply flew to meet her.

“Well,” observed Miss Mallard, still devouring the new costume, “I’m

glad you’re learning how to handle him.”

Sallie slipped into her chair.

“May we inspect the dog collar, my deah?” Miss Mallard pursued.

With large indifference Sallie handed over the necklace and watched

the blue eyes widen. Not hers to inform the lady that it had been

purchased at a near-pearl establishment, guaranteeing that “Our pearls

rival the real.”

Miss Mariette fingered it lovingly, even to the tiny barrel of

brilliants that formed the clasp. “Atta boy!” she breathed and let

fall upon its possessor a look approaching homage.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” Sallie found herself saying, drunk with the

dazzle of scoring at last against her enemies, “I’m going to get a car

of my own soon.” And promptly wondered _how_ she was going to get it.

But feminine imagination, given full rein, took the bit between its

teeth and galloped beyond Sallie’s control. She spoke of champagne

supper parties and a house on Long Island and sables, with the

largesse of an “Arabian Nights.” She tasted the sweets of seeing baby

blue eyes and impudent black ones dilate with envy as the other girls

gathered round. She swept on, heedless of sharp turns ahead, and not

until the callboy shouted the half hour did she halt.

At the curb that night she found a gray roadster barking its haste to

be off like a pert pomeranian. Mr. J. F. Patterson stepped out, then

stopped short with a gasp as he took in the glory of her. She gave him

her hand—and waited. To her amazement he said not a word, merely

helped her into the car. It snorted and raced up Broadway. Still not a

word! She snuggled into the low seat, turned to look up at him. He was

frowning.

“What’s the matter, Jimmie?”

“Nothing.”

“Something is.”

“Nothing, I tell you.” His tone was brusque. The frown settled deeper,

bringing brows together.

Sallie’s eyes filled. She had pictured something so different—Jimmie

bounding with delight when he saw her! Jimmie covering her with

admiration!

But his mood did not change. Throughout the ride he brooded, silent,

absorbed—though she tried desperately to make conversation.

“Is this a new car, Jimmie?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you ever come in it before?”

“In the repair shop.”

“Oh!”

Silence.

“I like it, Jimmie.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. It’s so—so cozy.”

“Is it?”

Silence.

“Montgomery’s laid up, Jimmie. And the new lead’s made a big hit.”

“Has he?”

Silence—a long one.

“Jimmie—I—I don’t want any supper.”

“Why?”

“I—I think I want to go home.”

“Just as you say.”

“Jimmie—what—what’s wrong?”

His eyes scanned the beauty of her, steel buckles, silken dress,

rose-laden hat. They ended on the glossy pearls and his lips which had

opened for speech snapped shut.

He drove her home, without a word lifted his cap.

“Jimmie—please—please don’t act that way.”

“What way?”

“So—so queer.”

He gave a short laugh.

She clapped a hand over her mouth, stared at him, eyes swimming, then

fled up the steps.

The following night Mr. Patterson was late for the first time. He

swung round the corner just as Sallie appeared. She was wearing a

violet suit, fluffy lace collar and cuffs, and a hat of violets. They

made her eyes the same color. During a night of tearful and bewildered

groping she had arrived at a conclusion. Jimmie hadn’t liked the way

she looked! He wasn’t pleased with her dress or hat or something.

Maybe he didn’t think they were becoming and hadn’t wanted to hurt her

feelings. A lighter color, perhaps, something gayer! After which she

rolled over with relief, stole a few hours’ sleep, and later embarked

on another shopping tour.

But the violet, apparently, made no more satisfactory impression than

the blue. He handed her almost roughly into the car. They shot like a

cannon ball into the darkness.

There were no stars. The moon had reached the full, dwindled and

slipped round to smile upon the other side of the world.

Sallie gulped, groped for a fitting subject and finally burst out:

“Jimmie, tell me about yourself. You never have told me much.”

“Nothing to tell.”

“How does it feel to have so much money?” she proceeded for want of

something better to say.

The effect was electric. He turned on her. The car jerked to the other

side of the road. “You ought to know!”

“I? Stop kidding!”

“Yes, you!”

“But—”

“Look as if you’d come into a Rockefeller income!”

“Well, I haven’t.”

“No?”

“You know it.”

“I don’t know anything about women.”

“Well, you ought to know all about me.”

“Yes—I ought to.” He gave the same ugly laugh of the night before but

in his eyes was real pain. “But who knows what to expect of a chorus

queen.”

“Jimmie!”

“Oh, what’s the use?” came in husky desperation. “Let’s be merry!”

Sallie stared, choked and bewildered, into the darkness. She didn’t

know how to answer, how to act. This new Jimmie, this—this nasty one!

He was a stranger. Small teeth settled into her lower lip. She felt

like slipping to the floor of the car and crying her eyes out.

For three nights they followed the same program—Sallie bewitching in a

new costume chosen tearfully to conciliate the mysterious male—he

taciturn, unresponsive, answering her labored conversation with husky

monosyllables or hard cynicism that hurt without enlightening. Twice

during those three days it drizzled and, instead of suggesting supper

in the neighborhood as was their habit in bad weather, he drove the

short ten blocks to the weary brownstone house and left her there.

“As if he was anxious to get rid of me,” sobbed Sallie into her

pillow.

To dust and ashes in her mouth turned the sweets of her triumph over

the girls. Though she continued to weave stories for their benefit, to

elaborate on gifts in the past and the car in the future, to flash her

diamond and twirl her pearls, the tang had gone out of it.

By Friday she felt she couldn’t stand it another minute. What had she

done? Under the glimmering stars she gazed up first in mute pleading,

then—

“Jimmie,” she choked, “take me home. I—I—guess I’d better—”

The roadster snarled at the tug that sent it round the corner.

“Oh—another date!”

“Maybe!” His tone had brought defiance into hers.

“H’m! Thought so!”

“You—you’re horrid!”

“And he’s all to the good—what?”

“Who?”

“Well—can’t blame you! What chance has a mean little bracelet against

a string of oyster tears like that?” The volcano which had been

rumbling all week sent up a sudden blinding glare. “Gad, what an ass

I’ve been!” it spat out.

“Don’t talk like that—don’t!”

“I mean it,—a saphead! Swallowed that diamond yarn whole—hook, line

and sinker.”

“It wasn’t a yarn.”

“You’ll tell me next your mother bought the pearls, too.”

“No—I did.”

The volcano roared a warning. “God!” A pause while his breath caught.

“It’s true, I tell you! I bought them myself—they’re imitation.”

He flung back his head. His laugh frightened her.

“Oh—won’t you believe me?”

“No!”

“Won’t you—please?”

“And I put you above them—way on top.” The volcano erupted with

thunderous crash. “But you’re like the rest of them! Price—a string of

pearls—a diamond! Rotten—that’s what—! Sit down! Sit down, I say!!

I’ll get you home quick enough!”

White and terrified, she subsided. Words rushed to her lips, clung

there.

He crashed on.

“But you did put it over! Had me going so that I’d have staked my life

on you. Got me with the baby stare stuff. ‘Baby’—huh! It’s a lesson—I

won’t be such a damn fool next time!”

“Jimmie,” the voice struggled to keep steady—“I swear to you—!”

“I wouldn’t believe you on a stack of Bibles! Down on your

luck—thought you had an easy mark! Then something better—pearls!—came

along—”

“I—I’ll never forgive—you!”

“That’s right! Injured innocence—”

“I—I could die this minute!”

“It’s tough, though, when the first time a man really—cares—more than

he ever thought—” The words halted painfully.

“Oh, _won’t_ you listen? Jimmie—you—you had _so_ much—”

“But the other fellow’s got more! Like all the rest—”

They stopped with a jump that made the roadster snort in protest.

“You—you don’t understand.” The sobs clamored to her lips.

“To-morrow—please—please listen—”

She sprang out of the car and up the steps, clinging to the iron rail.

But to-morrow when she hurried out of the stage entrance, eyes darting

to the curb, Mr. James Fowler Patterson was not there.

CHAPTER IV

“My deah—what has become of the orange motah?” Miss Mariette turned

her round stare on Sallie.

“What—d-do you mean?”

“Well, the yellow peril doesn’t seem to be on duty any more.”

“Oh! He—he’s out of town.”

“M’m! Been ‘out’ some time, I take it.”

“F-four weeks.” Sallie found it impossible to talk these days without

a quiver. And the wells that had been her eyes were wept dry.

“When does he return, my deah?”

“Oh s-soon now, I g-guess.”

“H’m!” Merciless blue eyes took in the small white face, listless

shoulders and drooping mouth, while their owner hummed low and

languorously, “When I Come Back to You.” After which she proceeded:

“And the cobbles, my deah?”

“What?”

“Pearls! The dog collar?”

“Oh! I—I p-put it away.”

“Ah?”

“I—it—I thought I’d better not wear it round all the time.”

After a moment of slow scrutiny Miss Mariette cast her eyes

heavenward. “You were a wise child not to let him get back the

diamond, too,” she drawled.

“I d-don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh—d-don’t you? My deah, do I look as easy as that? It’s plain he’s

gone his merry way tra-la.”

Like a whip Sallie snapped round at her. “He hasn’t!”

“Tra-la, tra-la-la!”

“Don’t you dare—”

“Then where’s the car, tra-la?”

“I told you—”

“The car he was giving you, I mean.”

Grace, who had entered in time for the last words, tittered with all

the old enjoyment.

“Poor little car skidded on the way, Gracie deah,” announced Miss

Mallard.

Sallie’s throat closed in a hard knot. Her head almost dropped on the

table. But not quite. Pride kept it up. Pride and the determination

never to let them know how right they were.

Yet Miss Mallard, having resumed her tactics of warfare allowed to

slip no opportunity for attack. She teased and tormented and tra-la’d

with purring delight, sharp little talons inflicting new wounds.

Sallie began to slink into the dressing-room as if to hide from

insinuating smiles. And coming out of the stage door, she fairly ran

round the corner to escape the torturing vision of that line at the

curb.

The pearls she had recklessly let go. After what _he_ had said, she

couldn’t bear to touch them. They curled in her hand like some

wriggling reptile. Her first impulse had been to toss the necklace

into an ashcan, but eventually she found herself back at the

near-pearl shop. A suave salesman after much fingering and testing

reminded her that they did not refund on merchandise but added that he

might be able to resell at a loss if she cared to leave it. Sallie

even hated the money—something more than half the amount she had

paid—which his smooth hands finally counted into hers.

One thing, though, she did determine in the long nights. There must be

a car! Never must they be certain that Jimmie had gone for good! The

savings account had long since gone the way of all flesh. And cars,

like Pegasus, soar winged in the clouds. June had come gliding into

the arms of May while Sallie suffered and waited, lived on bread and

milk, and hopelessly priced the cheaper makes.

Other lips, mustached, clean-shaven, young, and not so young, answered

Sallie’s plea of “Won’t you smile at me?” Sallie did not hear them.

Other eyes sought hers from motors at the curb. Sallie did not know

they were there.

She was in her room balancing accounts at 11:30 p. m. When she did

sleep, figures whirled through her dreams; figures and Jimmie’s face.

Then in the murky dawn of one June day came an inspiration. Yesterday

she had seen a second-hand runabout painted a beautiful blue for only

two hundred and fifty dollars, with a week’s trial before buying. Her

diamond! She could get enough for that! A few months in which to tear

up to the stage entrance and spring out; to display the shining blue

body to startled eyes; to make them believe he had come back!

Jimmie—who never would! She gazed out through the streaky window pane

and for a time the car was forgotten.

When the chorus had assembled for the Wednesday matinée, a ring

dropped tinkling to the dressing-room floor. Sallie picked it up,

proclaimed that the stone had come loose and wore it no more.

Later, behind a window barred like a prison, Sallie MacMahon’s lips

clung together and she looked away as her most precious possession

passed into other hands—probably for all time.

At last the night arrived when the girls sighted at the curb a little

car blue as the heavens. One of them stepped lightly from the stage

entrance, fetched a key from her bag, bent down, then sprang in and

took the wheel as though running a motor were a daily pastime.

Miss Mallard stopped in the center of the pavement.

“I’ll tell the world!” she breathed, forgetting Fifth Avenue. “She

wasn’t lying, Grace,—she wasn’t!”

Sallie MacMahon smiled upon them, put her foot on the self-starter,

heard the cheerful chug chug of the engine responding and, with terror

chasing down her spine, spun round the corner.

As she disappeared, Grace’s reply wafted on the breeze:

“But he’s a piker, anyhow. It’s as big as a minute!”

Up Broadway, eyes starting with fear, heart pounding, went Sallie. And

every instant’s progress petrified her. Buildings descended. Motor

trucks loomed up. Trolleys tore, gigantic, within an inch of the blue

mite that held her. It was completely, totally swamped. Alone in it

for the first time, she clung wildly to the wheel while all Broadway

danced.

Never had she traveled a distance to equal those ten blocks. Never

before had the thought of the sagging brownstone house been a welcome

one. A century later she reached her own street, turned in. Then

something snapped. The blue runabout stood stock still. Sallie tried

to recall the varied instructions of the garage man who had taught her

to drive it. Without his guiding hand they were Greek.

She fled in the direction of a passing policeman, caught his arm.

“Please, would you mind? Something’s happened. It—it’s stuck.”

He grinned as he took in the blue mite. “Better go and phone your

garage, Miss. I’ll take care of it till you get back.”

Sallie dropped his arm.

“Why, I—I haven’t any—”

“What?”

“Garage.”

“What do you do with it at night? Take it to bed with you?”

“N-nothing. It—it’s new. I—I never thought—”

“Then find some place to put it—quick. They’ll send you a man—”

Sallie stood stock still as the car, then turned on her heel and

dashed in the direction of the brownstone house. On the top step she

dropped.

Not a cent in the world! Diamond gone!! Car that was no good!! And no

place to put it!!!

Early in her career as a motorist she had discovered that cars have a

way of gathering expense like dust by the wayside. There had been

extra tires and repairs even while you were learning to run it. It

fairly ate up gas. You needed twice as much as she had reckoned.

And now—this!

Helplessly she gazed at the point far down the block where the

policeman stood guard. From time to time his glance roved

impatiently—and when at last he swung on his way, leaving the blue

mite unprotected, Sallie knew there was nothing left but to sit there

and watch it all through the night.

Then it was that the wells which had run dry filled once more,

overflowed. Huddled in a corner of the stoop, she fastened her wilted

gaze on a spot of blue parked close to Broadway and wondered what she

was going to do with it when morning arrived.

She came to drowsily as a clock struck one and something heavy

descended on her shoulder. It pulled her upright, shook the sleep from

her eyes and a cry from her lips. The policeman!

“What are you doing out here?”

She strained forward.

“Jimmie!!!”

“What are you doing, I say?”

“Jimmie—is it—is it—you?”

“Answer me!”

“I—oh, I can’t believe it! You—_you!!_” Then panic seized her.

“Jimmie—don’t—don’t go again! Wait—let me tell you! I’ve been praying

you’d give me the chance to tell you. I—it was true,—I _did_ buy all

those things myself. I did—I did! I was afraid you’d be ashamed of

me.”

He stood glaring silently down at her and when his voice did come, it

was thick and tense.

“Didn’t you know it was just those old clothes of yours that convinced

me the story you gave me was straight?”

“But the girls always made fun of them—and I wanted to look right for

you. And you thought—oh, Jimmie, what you thought has nearly killed

me!”

“What could a man who knew his Broadway think when you appeared all of

a sudden in a million dollars worth of finery?”

“But it wasn’t true! I took all my money out of the bank to look nice

just for you. Jimmie—if you go again—the way you did—I—I’ll die!”

He gave no direct answer. Instead he gripped her shoulders until they

ached.

“What are you doing out here this time of night? Answer me that!”

The car! Her eyes raced down the block. There it stood, untouched.

“I—I hocked my diamond, Jimmie, and bought a car. I made the girls

think you were going to give me one and I didn’t want them to know

that you—you—” She turned away. “So I hocked the ring—and—and

got—that!”

He followed her eyes to where a spot of blue reposed near the corner.

“And now it won’t go and I haven’t any money to put it anywhere.

They’ve been keeping it where I bought it and I never thought about

garaging. So—so when it broke down I just had to sit here and watch it

all night.”

The rushing words halted. She looked up at the face bent over hers. If

Mr. James Fowler Patterson had a sense of humor—and he had—the comedy

of the present situation failed to bring it to light. He stood and

gazed down into the small tired face lifted with such desperate

appeal.

“I—”

“Jimmie, won’t you believe me this time—please?”

He bent closer. “If I tell you I could take a gun this minute and blow

out what little brains I’ve got, will _you_ believe _me_? Will you?”

He did not give her time to answer. “I deserve it—shooting’s too good.

Why, even if you dressed up like a Christmas window, only a saphead

who’s wasted all his life chasing up and down Broadway could have made

such a mistake. What’s love, anyhow? And sweetheart—I do love you.

These weeks without you have proved how much.”

She closed her eyes as the words came.

“Why,” he plunged on, “my dad had given me up as a bad job—said he was

through! And six weeks ago I went to him and told him I’d found the

girl who could make a man of me—asked him to take me on at the

Patterson Iron Works, I didn’t care in what capacity. He thought I was

joking—but I put on overalls and rolled up my sleeves. Because I

wanted to be good enough for you. That was just about the time you

showed up in all that gorgeousness. And I let the idea get hold of me—

Don’t cry, honey,—I can’t stand it!”

There was an instant of potent silence, then:

“How did you happen to come past here to-night—Jimmie?” came

smothered.

“I’ve been coming past here every night.”

“Then why—why did you stay away from the theater?”

“I didn’t—for long. Wanted to—but couldn’t! I’ve watched you come out

from around the corner—” He broke off. “Sweetness—you’ve been looking

awfully sick.”

“I’ve been awfully lonesome.”

He lifted her chin.

“Baby—”

“Yes, Jimmie—dear—”

“Will you forgive me?”

“Jimmie—”

“Yes, Baby—dear—”

“Will you wait here till I get into my old rig, then take me for a

ride in my new car?”

CURTAIN!

_MELODRAMA_

It consists not in shouts, the leveled gun, the drawn sword, the

flashlight in the dark. The quiet moment of decision that means

happiness or wreck; the hesitant hand moving toward a doorknob that

may open upon joy or the misery of revelation; two people waiting in

stillness for the pendulum of uncertainty to swing—that is melodrama

as it is played every day within the four walls that enclose your

next-door neighbor.

CURTAIN!

CHAPTER I—ACT I

John Shakespeare’s son remarked once in a play he lightly invited us

to take “As You Like It” that all the world’s a stage. He told us that

men and women have their exits and their entrances, that one man in

his time plays many parts. But John Shakespeare’s son did not refer to

the acts that make up this drama of living. The first act of

introduction, the second of conflict, the third of revelation, the

fourth of readjustment. Not that all lives can be so simply

subdivided. To some dramas there are ten or twelve scenes,

swift-changing, tense, terrifying. But whether few or many, live in

acts we do—each with its conflict, its climax, each beginning a new

problem, a new turn, a new development, until the final curtain is

rung down that leaves the house of life in darkness.

Partly because of this and partly because Nancy Bradshaw’s story is

essentially of the theater, it seems but natural so to divide the

telling of it.

The first scenes had been that old familiar struggle of the young girl

trying to convince managers that even though she has had her

theatrical training somewhere west of Broadway she really can act. She

had encountered and combated the habitual have-to-show-me look until

one day in Jerry Coghlan’s office while the latter regarded her over

horn-rimmed specs, she gave him a disarming smile and said quietly:

“Yes, Mr. Coghlan, I know you’re from Missouri, but how can I show you

unless you give me a chance?”

Coghlan, being Irish, had tossed back his head with a roar of approval

and given her what she asked. He had never regretted it.

Nancy possessed two qualities that register with an audience more

quickly than genius—charm and personality. I might better say,

personality alone, because that includes charm, doesn’t it? By the

time she had reached the place of leading woman and the age of

twenty-six, she had a following many older and more experienced

actresses envied. She was never idle. When Coghlan, who had her under

contract, was unable to find a play or part for her, he loaned her to

other managers who featured their good fortune in advance notices and

electrics.

Nancy had what Broadway calls class. She was supple and slender with

an airy slimness that seemed more spiritual than of the body. She

could curl up in a couch corner with child-like grace or stand tense

and supplicating or sway with emotion. But whatever she did, one felt

the spirit ruling the flesh. She had heavy gold hair that fell in deep

sweeping waves over ears and forehead. The brows that mounted above

gold-brown eyes were straight and black as were the lashes shading

them. Her mouth, a bit too large for beauty, had a fascinating upcurve

when she smiled but in repose was strangely firm and chiseled. One

found oneself puzzling as to whether it belonged in a face whose charm

lay in the fact that its actual features eluded one. I’ve called her

eyes gold-brown. They weren’t always. At times across the footlights

they looked green, at others hazel, and often in some scene of fury

they went burning black.

Audiences loved her in all her moods—the matinée girls because she

might have been one of them; older women because she might have been

their daughter; young men because she was so much a girl they wondered

how much a woman she might be; and old men because, for a fleeting

moment, she gave them back their youth.

It looked pretty much as if Nancy’s drama of living were to flow

smoothly to its final scene with no more conflict than a pastoral

comedy. And then she met Richard Cunningham.

She had seen him once when lunching at the Ritz with Ted Thorne,

author of the play in which she was rehearsing. Thorne had returned

the nod of a man several tables away and Nancy asked who he was.

The young playwright’s eyes snapped as he answered: “You, too—eh?

Never saw a woman yet who didn’t want to know Dick Cunningham.”

“Oh, I don’t want to know him,” Nancy defended herself. “I just want

to know about him.”

“Amounts to the same thing, my dear. Well, when the papers speak of

Cunningham, they call him a clubman—whatever that may mean—and

turfman. He keeps a string of blooded horses at his place on Long

Island that are the envy of exhibitors all over the country. He has a

shooting box in the Adirondacks. He’s second Vice-president of a

railroad or two, is a regular first-nighter, has more money than any

one woman could spend, and no one woman has so far succeeded in

annexing it. Men like him and women feel toward him much as they do

toward original sin—they love and fear him at the same time.”

“Thank you,” Nancy imitated his crisp tone. “After that, I really

don’t think I care to know the gentleman.”

“You will—sooner or later,” drawled Thorne.

Nancy turned indifferently from the object of discussion, but in that

one short glance she could have told you exactly what he looked like.

Ted Thorne in a way was right. Cunningham was one of those men whom

women sense the instant they enter a room, not so much for height, big

shoulders and powerful dark head, as for a certain dynamic force that

stimulates fear and curiosity at once. In Cæsar’s day he might have

been a Marc Antony, but I doubt whether Cleopatra could ever have

persuaded him to abandon his armies for her dear sake. More likely the

devastating Egyptian would have descended from her throne, laid her

dainty olive hand in his and followed where he led.

For a man with manifold interests, Cunningham had few hobbies—two, to

be exact—his horses and the theater. Actors, managers, dramatists,

press-agents, all the busy bees in that hive of Broadway, knew

him—some by sight only, others well enough to call him by his given

name. No first night was complete without him. His familiar shoulders

swung down the aisle at eight-thirty sharp, hand stretched here and

there in greeting.

It was said his love of the theater far exceeded his interest in

women. In the same way, though in lesser degree, they were necessary

to his happiness—for amusement. They entertained him. But as the play

is done in a few hours and one seeks new diversion, so they had a way

of revealing themselves to him that after a short period became a

bore. He grew to know them too well—and the glamor was gone. To-morrow

another play! To-morrow—!

And then he met Nancy Bradshaw.

It happened the opening night of Thorne’s comedy just at the time

Coghlan surprised Nancy by elevating her to stardom.

What a difference one little preposition makes! Stepping out of a taxi

into dripping rain at the stage entrance, Nancy heard a shriek and saw

her colored maid drop a hatbox on the wet pavement to point wildly at

the electric sign outside the Coghlan Theater.

Instead of:—

“THE GAMESTER”

with

Nancy Bradshaw

she read:—

NANCY BRADSHAW

in

“The Gamester”

It blinked and smiled at her, that dazzling announcement. She shut her

eyes in ecstasy that hurt. When she opened them, shameless tears were

streaming down her cheeks and a prayer was in her heart.

Coghlan was waiting at the door of her dressing-room. She rushed at

him, arms flung recklessly about his neck, and wept into the stiff

white collar that held up his double chin.

“You deserve it!” he told her, his own eyes a bit moist. “You deserve

it. Never asked for it. Never nagged me for anything. Just worked like

hell—and waited. How old are you, kid?”

Nancy looked up. “T—twenty-three for publication.”

“But on the level?”

“Almost twenty-eight.”

“Well, by the time you’re thirty-three, you’ll be the greatest actress

in the country. Take it from me—Jerry Coghlan knows what he’s talking

about!”

With his prophecy singing in her ears, Nancy made her bow to New York

as a star. The audience was with her from the first, sharing her joy,

her triumph, eyes shining with hers, tears flowing when hers did. She

took it all modestly enough, even dragging on the leading man to take

the curtains with her. When finally they brought her out alone, she

stood a bit left-center and one could plainly see her whole body

shake, her lips tremble like some unaccustomed schoolgirl’s.

It was at this moment that a man with towering shoulders and the

stride of authority left his seat and made for the lobby. There he

cornered Coghlan and without preamble made his point.

“Jerry,” he said as they shook hands, “present me to Miss Bradshaw,

will you?”

“Sure!” said Jerry proudly.

And thus brought about the climax to the first act of Nancy’s life

drama.

Cunningham wanted to give a supper party that night. But she told him

friends were entertaining her and Thorne at one of those crowded and

supposedly exclusive restaurants known as “Clubs.” He calmly followed

them and with two other men managed to procure a table near theirs.

Cunningham could procure anything anywhere.

Nancy saw him instantly and wished he hadn’t come. Not that he gave

any sign of deliberate interest in her. In fact, one would have said

he did not know she was there. His eyes—non-committal, steel-colored

eyes they were, the sort that read without permitting themselves to be

read—scanned the menu. Supper ordered, he turned their full attention

to his companions. But his presence made Nancy self-conscious.

Probably, she concluded, because of what Ted Thorne had told her!

As they recognized her, men sauntered from various parts of the room,

white mustache to beardless youth, clamoring congratulations. And

beside that sweet intoxication of dreams realized, the champagne set

frankly before her was as plain water to the fountain of eternal

youth. She drank in every word, hearing the same ones repeated many

times.

When Thorne managed to break through the circle with her and spin into

a one-step, those they passed nudged each other. About the graceful

figure in cloudy silver with light hair tumbling over dark eyes and

lips curving in laughter, filmed the aura of the theater, fairyland of

illusion, the one magic world that makes children of us all.

As they went back to the table, she caught Cunningham watching her

with an unlit cigarette between his lips and around them rather a

puzzled look, as if he might be asking himself some question he could

not answer.

“So you’ve met,” whispered Ted, as Nancy returned his bow over the

plumes of her black feather fan.

“Yes, to-night. J. C. brought him back.” And added casually: “He’s

asked me to make up my own party for supper some night. Will you

come?”

“I will that!” rejoined Thorne. “But before it happens, I’ll ask you

to marry me.”

“Don’t be a goose, Ted,” she laughed—and wondered why a frown replaced

for a flash the twinkle in the sharp eyes behind Thorne’s glasses.

They smiled again as he raised his champagne.

“Here’s to you, Nancy girl—and the future. May it be a knock-out for

you always!”

Cunningham, however, did not wait for the date she had set. The

following night he sent word to the theater, inviting her to ride next

day. He had his horses in town for the Show and wanted her to try his

pet stallion. His messenger would wait for an answer.

There was a tone of assumption in the brief note that Nancy resented.

She couldn’t tell exactly where nor what it was but she had a feeling

that, though couched in terms of invitation, it had been written with

the assurance that she would not refuse. At first she was tempted to,

but anxiety to see his horses—at least that explanation she gave

herself—made her compromise by writing that he might telephone her in

the morning.

By the time he called her, she had on her habit and half an hour later

glided uptown in his car. Through the park, fairly purring as it sped

over the smooth roads, it veered West and out at a street in the

Sixties and pulled up before what appeared to be a two-story house.

Potted dwarf firs stood at either side of the big arched door on a

level with the street. Across the front above it were three windows,

each with its green window box from which ivy trailed over the dull

red brick. A saucy little building it was in the midst of drab flat

houses, like a French cocotte dropped by mistake into a New England

village.

Nancy gazed, puzzled and curious, when the heavy iron-hinged door was

drawn back and she stepped into the unmistakable pungent odor of the

stable.

Cunningham came to meet her. His hands, tingling with vitality, sent a

glow through hers as he held them an instant. Then he led the way

toward the rear. The floor was covered with a sort of porous rubber

that gave to the step and Nancy felt an absurd inclination to bound

into the air as she walked. Along the walls were cases filled with

blue, red and yellow ribbons, each rosette with its streamers as dear

to the sportsman as if it had been pinned upon him instead of an

equine representative. Prints of blue ribboners with famous jockeys up

hung between the cases. Several of the originals stamped at that

moment in the stalls downstairs. Cunningham helped her down the run.

“I want you to meet my best friends,” he said, stopping before the

nearest stall. “Permit me—Lord Chesterfield!”

With approved good manners his Lordship settled his velvet nose in her

outstretched hand.

“Chawmed, M’lord,” she smiled. Her wondering eyes went the length of

the place.

It was daintily white as a woman’s boudoir, each stall bordered in

brilliant blue and bearing its occupant’s monogram in the same color.

A border of blue ran round the white walls. Even the water buckets and

feed boxes were white with horse’s heads painted on them.

There was a rush forward and eager heads poked out as Cunningham went

down the line. Satin bodies swaggered, priming themselves for

approval.

“No wonder they’re your friends!” Nancy observed. “You treat them so

well.”

“Do you think friendship has to be won that way?” he put quickly.

“No. It’s usually given first and earned afterward.”

“That’s not _friendship_ you’re speaking of.” The look he bent on her

was disconcerting. Nancy turned to follow a groom who was leading two

horses, saddled, toward the run.

A few moments later they swung through the wide doorway into the

autumn sunshine. Nancy had never ridden any but academy horses and the

sense of the fine, spirited animal under her with his rearing head and

shining coat made her blood dance. Flying down the bridle path was

like soaring heavenward on Pegasus. Poetry was in the air, in her

eyes, in the crack of the gravel under their horses’ feet. The man

beside her sat his mount, a bay of sixteen hands, as if part of it.

His muscular hands barely touched the reins.

“How did you know that I rode?” she asked.

“I recalled seeing your picture in riding habit in one of the

magazines.”

“But that doesn’t prove anything. It’s the privilege of an actress to

be photographed in habit, even if she wouldn’t go near enough to a

real horse to feed him a lump of sugar.”

He laughed, looked down at her slim straight body in its tan coat, at

the graceful limbs swung across her mount, at her glossy gold hair and

the light of the sun in her eyes. “Well, I should have known you did

anyway. There’s nothing vital you couldn’t do.”

He put it not as a question but directly, as if giving her the

information. She found no answer. This man left her strangely

speechless. For no reason at all her cheeks went red with a deeper

flush than the exercise had brought to them.

She said little during the two hours of their ride. He told her of the

fascination the theater had for him. Then her eyes shone through their

black lashes and she told him it was her life. She loved it not as an

artist loves his work but with the passion one gives a human thing.

“That’s why you’ve made good,” he answered promptly. “Because you’ve

given yourself completely.” He paused, then with the usual startling

abruptness: “Do you know, I had an actual sense of pride last night,

watching that crowd swarm round you. Odd, that—isn’t it—in a man who

had just met you?”

“Yes.” She did not meet the gaze she knew was turned on her.

When they dismounted and he was handing her into the car, he bent down

and into his non-committal eyes came a warmth that enveloped her like

a flame.

“And to think that I flipped a coin last night whether to go to the

Show or go to see you!”

She rode with him every day after that. He arranged it as a matter of

course. He had a direct way of taking things into his own hands just

as he had a direct way of looking and speaking. Often it made her gasp

but at the same time possessed the attraction male dominance always

holds for the primitive in woman. Particularly to the woman who has

fought her own battles is there something hypnotic in having decision

taken out of her hands.

At the end of two weeks she called his horses by name; had fed them

more sugar than was good for them; had dined and danced with him; and

knew, though to herself she denied it, that tongues quick to wag, were

busy with their names. Nancy Bradshaw, popular star, and Dick

Cunningham who, in the eyes of the world, could like Joshua command

sun and moon and stars to stand still!

When his friends—men who made the nation’s pulse throb—stopped at

their table in a restaurant or, as was frequently the case, joined

them at his invitation and gave to Nancy the homage a charming actress

always receives from men a bit jaded, Cunningham’s probing glance

warmed and a smile softened his sharply determined mouth.

He sent her flowers and books as a matter of course. Wherever they

went he surrounded her with an atmosphere of unconscious luxury that

was like a narcotic.

And finally at the house of the fir trees, instead of that

diamond-lighted district bounded by the Forties, he gave the

supper-party they had planned the night of their meeting. Ted Thorne

was there and Lilla Grant, ingénue of the company, a sinuous little

thing with pert nose, full Oriental lips and eyes that might have come

from Egypt. She had begged Nancy to let her meet Cunningham.

“She’ll get there, that kid,” Jerry Coghlan had once remarked. “Don’t

know yet whether her name used to be O’Shaughnessy or Rabinowitz. But

take it from me, she’ll make her mark—maybe because it used to be

both.”

Lights shone in the upper windows as the four stepped from the car,

not the brilliant light of electricity but one gentle and golden. They

went up the flight of steps leading to the unique apartment above the

stable.

“Make yourselves at home. I’ll send a maid.” Cunningham opened the

door to a room done in gray and rose, with enameled dressing-table and

pier-glass, and rose brocade chairs, divan and hangings.

Lilla dropped her frou-frou of cloak from bare shoulders and, taking

the center of the floor, gazed round with glistening eyes.

“What a duck you were to ask me!” she cried. “I’ve been just crazy to

see this place.”

Nancy turned. “You’ve heard of it?”

“Heard of it! My dear, there have been _some_ parties given here!”

Swift indignation swept the color into Nancy’s cheeks. The insinuating

tone more than the words angered her. “Don’t talk like that!” Her eyes

flashed black as they sometimes did in a big scene.

Lilla looked up wickedly. “Crazy about him, aren’t you?”

The color went, leaving her white. “Of course not.”

“Well, don’t let him know it—that’s all I have to say.”

She powdered her nose, head perked to one side, guided a brush over

hair dense-dark as velvet, added a touch of mascaro to her lashes, and

turning to the maid who had just come in asked whether her dress was

hooked all the way up the back.

“I do envy you, Nancy,” she frowned, taking in the other girl’s

graceful figure in swathing black satin, relieved only by a splash of

green fan. “One of these days—soon—I’m going to have a maid and not

break my neck gathering myself together after the show.”

As they went out Lilla linked her arm in Cunningham’s.

“Do you live in this heavenly place?” she asked.

“No. But I like to have people here—the people I like, I should say.

That’s why I fixed up the second floor—for parties like this one.

There’s a fully equipped kitchen at the back. And here’s my banquet

hall.”

The short corridor ended in the room of the three windows. They might

have been entering an Italian Villa. Paneled oak stretched straight to

the ceiling. At either end yawned a marble fireplace with logs

sputtering the faint scent of fir. A refectory table, with couch the

color of purple grapes backed against it fronted one. Drawn close to

the other stood two old Medici chairs. On both mantels and smaller

tables were candlesticks with thick yellow candles. The silver set for

supper on the long table gleamed under the glow of branching

candelabra.

Cunningham watched Nancy’s face as she paused in the doorway. Her eyes

had dreams in them.

“Makes a great stage setting for you,” he whispered. “I’ll want you

here all the time now.”

A manservant passed cigarettes. They sat and chatted while they waited

for the other guests, Mr. and Mrs. Courtleigh Bishop and several

friends who were coming in from the Opera. Nancy was in a chair by the

fire; Lilla nested in the couch depths, her somber gaze lidded as if

heavy with secrets, following her host; and Thorne springing up every

now and then to wander about the room, examining its treasures.

Lilla watched and listened to the others, much as she watched and

absorbed every word of the director at rehearsals. She had advanced by

wits rather than wit and was clever enough to know the value of

silence. Only when Cunningham brought her the spray of orchids he had

supplied for each of the women did she look up from under thick lids.

“You do everything just right,” she murmured, pinning them into the

orange chiffon at her waist, “and I guess never anything wrong.”

In her somnolent eyes was an obvious dare to which several weeks ago

Cunningham would probably have responded. Now he smiled down amusedly

at the round soft form sunk in the couch cushions and went back to

Nancy. The somnolent eyes went after him.

They persuaded Thorne who, unlike a number of writing men, hated to

talk about himself, to tell the plot of his new play.

“I’ve tackled a big problem,” he said. “Woman’s rights in love!”

“You’ve tackled the universe,” came from Cunningham. “Fifty years ago

it could have been summed up in one beautiful word, ‘Submission’.

To-day—” He flung up his hands.

Nancy smiled. “And you’re just the type a submissive woman would bore

to death.”

“Don’t you believe it,” chimed in Lilla. “He’s apt to fall for some

baby doll who’ll tell him what a great big wonderful man he is and do

exactly what he wants—when he’s around.”

“You don’t subscribe to the fifty-fifty theory then, old man?”

suggested Thorne when the laugh died down.

“No, I believe in ninety-nine-one. At least women can make it that if

they know how to handle us. Just as Miss Grant says, we’re nothing but

a bunch of boobs.”

“That’s what you like to make us think,” Nancy corrected. “And the

unfortunate part of it is, we want to deceive ourselves just as much

as you want to deceive us.”

Cunningham blew a ring of feathery cigarette smoke and studied her

through it. “I didn’t know you were such a cynic.”

“Did you think dealing with theatrical managers had taught me

nothing?” she laughed.

At twelve Mrs. Bishop bubbled in commandeering a group of light-voiced

women and husky-voiced men.

She apologized for being late and wailed at the length of Russian

Opera.

“Courty can sleep through it all,” she sighed. “But the noise keeps me

awake.”

She caught Nancy by both hands, drawing her out of the chair.

“I’ve been so anxious to know you, my dear. I begged Dicky to bring

you to see me but he said you were the mountain—Mohammet would have to

come to you.”

All through the elaborate supper they gushed over her, with just that

touch of patronage position assured permits itself toward those of the

stage.

But though conversation was light and general and Cunningham the

perfect host, he might have been alone with the young star, so

completely did his eyes disregard the others. They seemed to send

their gaze round her like a cloak. She felt it unmistakably and a glow

radiated from her eyes and voice, from her whole body.

When the dregs of Crème de Menthe and Benedictine had settled in

little green and gold pools at the bottom of cordial glasses, and

candle flames gleamed faint blue in the dripping tallow; when laughing

voices mellowed into distance and cars had slid off into darkness, two

figures stood at the curb in front of the little house. The door swung

slowly shut behind them. The woman looked up, the man down, and there

flashed between them that secret look of understanding that can pass

only when words no longer have value.

The last car drove up. He helped her in. The door slammed. Without a

word he took her to him. Just as his gaze had encompassed her, so his

arms enclosed her now. Her lips trembled against his. For a moment,

endless because of all time, there was silence—that intense beating

silence that chokes.

Then his voice came with a ring of triumph.

“You know I want you.” And he waited for no answer. “You knew I wanted

you that night we met.”

“Yes—I knew.”

“You’re the first woman I’ve ever wanted—for my wife.”

The word danced into the soft gloom of night merging into day, out

across the wraith-like Park, up to the sky where pale stars spelled it

before her. She murmured it, and he bent closer.

“Mine! Nancy—you don’t know how much it’s meant, seeing them gather

round you and knowing that you were going to belong to me.”

Their lips were one again. At the moment she took no count of the

assurance that had brooked no denial. She only throbbed to the

strength of him and smiled into the eyes so close to hers.

The car sped past shadowy trees, past lamps paled against the rising

dawn, through a world unreal not because light had not yet come but

because these two were in a world apart. They spoke low, as lovers

will though no one is there to hear; in short phrases, saying little

yet so much, she seeking to hold close this wonder thing, he with the

claim of the possessor.

“Why do you love me, Dick?” came finally the eternal question.

He told her the tale men have told women for centuries and will

continue to tell them as long as the world shall last. “I love you

because you’re different from other women. There’s no one like you.”

“How—different?”

“Why analyze it? You’re _You_, complete, apart—wonderful.”

“But what attracted you—first? What made you—want me?”

“Well, seeing you there in the center of that stage with a first night

audience wearing out its hands, you looked so beautiful and

frightened—give you my word I wanted to go up then and there and take

you in my arms.”

“It was the glamor of the stage then?”

“No. You’re not the first actress I’ve known, dear. But you’re the

only one in town that scandal has never touched.”

She drew back a bit.

“That’s not fair, Dick. We’re a much-talked-of profession but half the

stories you hear aren’t true.”

In the semi-gloom of the car she did not see the smile play about his

knowing lips.

“What does it matter?” was his reply. “You’re in the theater, yet not

of it—sought after, made much of, yet unspoilt. And I’ve won you—for

myself.”

“Yes, you’ve won me.”

He drew her close. “How much do you love me?”

“Before all the world.” She closed her eyes as if to shut out all

other vision.

“I’m going to take you to Hawaii,” he whispered. “That’s the land of

lovers—green lapping waters and purple hills and palm trees with music

in them.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Yes. Then to China and Japan—and if you like, India. We’ll make a

year of it.”

She opened her eyes slowly and into them came a ray of amusement.

“You mustn’t take me too far away, for too long, or the fickle public

will forget me.”

“They’re going to.”

“Going to?”

“Yes. I’m a jealous brute. You’ve got to belong to me exclusively.”

“Dick”—she pulled away then, groping dazedly for one silent

second—“Dick—you don’t mean—you can’t mean you want me to give up the

stage?”

“Yes.”

She stared at him, unbelieving. But his face was nothing more than a

blur against the darkness. As the car rolled out of the Park, it

rolled out of Eden.

“But—but it’s my career—my life!”

“I’ll make a new career—a new life for you.”

“But it’s the biggest—the best part of me.”

“The new life will be all of you.”

“No, Dick! I couldn’t—I couldn’t!”

He caught the hands that were raised to push him from her, caught them

in both of his. “I want you for myself. I’m not satisfied with part of

your time.”

“But dear—can’t you see—”

“Can’t _you_ see that if you remain on the stage, your evenings and

part of your days will go to the public. I’ll still be going round

alone—just as I am now. If you’re my wife you’ve got to take your

place with me.”

“But I can—except for a few hours. Dick, you say I’m different. Let me

stay different!”

“You’ll always be that. Let’s look at it sensibly. Dick Cunningham’s

wife earning her living—why, it’s a joke!”

“Every one would know it’s not a question of money.”

“Then why do it? Give some one else a chance—some one who needs it.”

“But it’s my life,” she repeated desperately. “And now, when success

has just come—”

“You said—‘before all the world’ awhile ago.”

“Yes—and I meant it. I do love you, before everything. You know that.

You’ve swept me off my feet. I can’t reason.” And then her hands came

together and she cried out: “Oh, why did this have to happen—why?”

“It had to happen,” he repeated huskily.

“Why couldn’t you have cared for some one in your own set?”

“I want you.”

“Dick,” she said after a moment’s harsh stillness, “don’t make me

choose. It—it’s too—it hurts too much. I couldn’t! I simply can’t do

it. If you make me give up the stage, you make me tear out my heart.

You wouldn’t ask that?”

“It’s a question of which means more. I’m merely asking what any

normal man has the right to ask of the woman he marries—first place.”

“But you’ll have that.”

“No. You won’t be free to give it to me.”

“It’s queer”—her voice came shakily. “I’ve dreamed of love as every

girl does. But I never dreamed it would mean this—this sacrifice.”

“It won’t mean sacrifice to you. I’ll fill your life, Nancy. I’ll make

you forget there ever was any other bond. Sweetheart—don’t you believe

I will?”

She swayed toward him—then just as quickly pulled back.

“Haven’t I the right to ask it?” he urged.

“Dick—”

“Haven’t I?”

“Oh, I don’t know! I don’t know!”

“Consider my side.”

“I only know it’s everything you’re demanding—everything!”

“I’m giving everything in exchange.”

She closed her eyes with a very different expression from that of a

few moments before. Then it had been to let him fill her vision. Now

it was to shut him out.

Vaguely it came to her that he couldn’t realize the enormity of the

thing he was asking. Vaguely she repeated aloud:

“No—I couldn’t! If I mean to you what you say, you won’t ask it.”

He lifted her face so that the eyes opened to meet his. Even through

the shadows he could read their anguish.

“It’s because you mean what you do, that I can’t let you go on.”

Her hands closed tight on each other and she turned to fasten her gaze

on the awakening streets.

“No, Dick—there’s no use. I couldn’t.”

“Does what I offer balance so little that you can thrust it away

without even stopping to consider?”

“If I stop to consider—”

“You’ll do what I ask,” he put in quickly. “Ah, I thought so! Nancy,

can’t you see? The woman in you is greater than the actress. You won’t

always be young and worshipped by your public but love—”

“Will love last always?” And as his arms went out to answer: “No—no!

Don’t try to influence me—don’t, please! I must think it over alone.

It’s my whole life—just everything.”

His arms dropped. They did not again reach out to her. He said

good-night with the usual handclasp and left her at the door of the

apartment house, haunting white, her dark eyes strained toward the

first flicker of sun as it came haltingly out of the east.

A month later she sent for him. In all that time he gave her no word,

not even the message of a flower. He waited cleverly in silence—a

silence that made the battle she fought all the more difficult. And in

the end she sent for him, so completely had he absorbed her will. Not

once during those weeks of struggle did her mind hark back to the

fragment of conversation at the supper party. Because she could care

with the intensity of the big woman and because she was in love, she

did not realize that in sending for him she bowed before the god she

had scorned—Submission.

And so the curtain fell on Act I of Nancy Bradshaw’s life drama.

CHAPTER II—ACT II

Out Long Island way on the North Shore where Newport goes to stretch

her tired limbs after a busy season, there’s a house set like a long

white couch on a green carpet that spreads straight to the Sound.

The place is called Restawhile—and having some twenty rooms, not to

speak of servant quarters, is known modestly as a cottage.

Here Dick Cunningham brought his bride following their honeymoon trip

through the Orient. Here they spent the greater part of each year. For

with its kennels and stables, Nancy loved it next to the house of the

fir trees which would always be her castle of romance. Besides, it was

not too near Broadway, not near enough for whisperings of the Rialto

to tug at the heart or fill the eyes. Or if the dull ache of longing

too deep for tears did come, it was a place to hide them from a

curious public.

The announcement of Nancy’s marriage and retirement from the stage had

come as a shock to the social world and a bomb to the theatrical.

Broadway buzzed, Fifth Avenue bristled, and poor Jerry Coghlan almost

went crazy. But as the calcium of the society column replaced her

beloved footlights, the star of the theater became a star of the

social realm and another nine days’ wonder became memory.

The column told of her dinners and dances, of her trips to Florida,

her visits to Newport. It listed her with her husband among

inveterate first-nighters and usually added: “The one-time Nancy

Bradshaw whose romantic marriage robbed the stage of one of its most

promising young actresses.”

Eventually it announced with clarion blast the arrival of Dick Junior

and later Nancy the Second, quite as if a chubby Dick and Nancy

Cunningham were more important than the same weight John and Mary

Smith.

A fairy tale come true even the most caustic observer would have

remarked, had he known the history of the beautiful woman seated on

the stone-paved veranda of Restawhile one April afternoon five years

after the curtain descended on Act I.

She wore a short white skirt, green sweater and white sport shoes.

Strands of hair had been tossed across her eyes by a romp on the lawn

with young Dicky. He sat at her feet now, pink legs outstretched, and

mobilized between them a regiment of wooden soldiers.

Ted Thorne and her former manager had driven out to read Thorne’s

latest drama, written with Lilla Grant in mind. She was the season’s

new darling and her hybrid little face with its eyes from the Orient

and nose from Erin’s Isle decorated many a magazine cover and

wood-cut. It might also have been seen at the Ritz lunching daily with

varied and various conquests. She had acquired an air and no longer

spoke of her profession as “the show business.” Her gowns were the

talk of fashion editors, her hats the despair of imitators. She was

colorful as a Bakst drawing and as decorative.

The woman in white skirt and sweater that matched the lawn sat

listening at one side of the tea table, while Coghlan at her right

measured three fingers of Scotch against two of soda and the

playwright’s voice sounded vibrant against the sweet spring stillness.

It was a tense elemental story suggested to him by Nancy, with

Hawaii—land of love—as a setting. Finally he closed the script and

looked across at her.

“What do you think of it?”

“The best thing you’ve done, Ted,” she announced instantly.

“Of course, it’s only in the rough. But I wanted your opinion. Am I

like that fellow who knows all about the Himalayas because he never

got there?”

“Just like him—an authority,” she retorted.

“But straight—how does it strike you?”

“I love it! You’ve never written anything with greater emotional

possibilities.”

“How do you like Lilla for the lead?”

“Just the type. And good from a box-office standpoint, too—she’s made

such a hit this season.”

“Some kid!” put in Jerry, tinkling the ice pleasantly against his

glass. “Always said she’d make her mark. And take it from me, Jerry

Coghlan knows what he’s talking about.”

Nancy smiled. “You couldn’t find any one better to play an Hawaiian.”

“Oh yes, we could!” came from Thorne.

“Who?”

“You.”

She laughed and in her laughter the men detected nothing but mirth.

“Don’t you ever have a hankering for the old game, Nancy?” Coghlan

demanded. “Don’t the theater ever get in your blood?”

She bent and lifted young Dick suddenly to her knees.

“Here’s my theater,” was her answer.

The playwright’s gaze traveled over the two gold heads to the father’s

eyes that smiled from the baby face into his mother’s. Fat arms wound

round her neck and she sank her lips in the fluffy curls.

“You’ve got a part that suits you to perfection,” he said in a low

voice.

“Say, there ain’t any part Nancy couldn’t play! Always said she had

class. And take it from me—”

“It’s good to know you haven’t forgotten us,” Thorne interrupted,

still in that low tone. “Whenever things get balled up I say to

myself: ‘Here goes for a run out to Restawhile. Nancy’ll help me

straighten them out.’”

“It’s good to know you feel that way. You see”—she held Dicky

closer—“I can give you the viewpoint of the audience now.”

That night she told her husband of the play. They had dined at the

Courtleigh Bishop place, some five miles distant, and during the drive

home Nancy had been unusually quiet. She walked up the wide staircase,

head bent, her long velvet cloak pulled close around her as if for

protection against the country chill of April. But as he followed into

her boudoir with its amber lights and drapes of cornflower blue she

dropped into a chair, let the wrap slip from her shoulders and leaned

forward, speaking rapidly.

“Tell me something of your doings to-day, Dick. You haven’t yet.”

He recounted the day’s activities—certain complications that had

arisen in his Western interests. Cunningham, in spite of wealth or

perhaps because of it, was not a waster. She listened eagerly to every

word.

“And, by-the-way,” he added, much as an afterthought; “I lunched with

a former friend of yours, Lilla Grant. Met her as I was going into the

Ritz. She was alone—so was I. So we joined forces.”

She leaned back with a deep sigh.

“I’m glad you told me that.”

His reply held a note of surprise.

“Why?”

“Because Mary Bishop made it a point to inform me to-night that she’d

seen you there. ‘Dicky still has a penchant for the theatrical

profession,’ she said, ‘I saw him lunching to-day with a stage

beauty.’ Of course, it amused me but I just had a feeling that I’d

like to hear about it from you.”

“It was of no importance. I might not have thought of mentioning it.”

“No. Still—I suppose I’m silly and feminine—but if you hadn’t, I think

it would have hurt.”

“Do I demand to know every time Thorne comes out here?”

“You don’t have to, Dick.” Her eyes were still intent on him.

“I’ve lunched with Lilla Grant other days and haven’t thought of

mentioning it.”

“I know that, too.”

His eyebrows shot up. “How?”

“Other women.”

He laughed. “How they do love each other!”

She laughed with him. “It’s all right now. You’ve told me. I just

didn’t want to think you’d deceive me.”

“But, my dear girl, an omission like that is not deliberate deceit.”

“Omission,” came softly, “is often twin sister to commission.”

His lips went tight. “Does that mean you’d ever let anything as cheap

as suspicion of me enter your mind?”

She got up, brushing her mouth across the hard line of his. “If I love

you as much as I do, it’s reasonable to suppose other women might.”

And that was when she gave him the story of Thorne’s play—more to

change the subject than anything else—with eyes shining and slim

jeweled hands sending sparks into the room’s golden shadows. He

listened, watching her, the light on her face, the blaze of enthusiasm

under the thick lashes.

“It’s a splendid part for Lilla,” she ended. “She’ll be fascinating in

it, don’t you think?”

“Great!” And after a moment, “Nancy—does seeing so much of Thorne and

old Jerry ever tempt you to go back on the stage?”

She went close to him as if his bigness were a shelter.

“It’s a temptation I’d never acknowledge, dear heart—not even to

myself.”

“But you haven’t answered me.”

“I did that when I made my choice—when I married you. I couldn’t be

disloyal to that. Besides”—and all the woman of her went into the

words—“you and the two little yous fill my life. I’ve no time for any

other devotion.”

He looked down at the head, reddened under the amber lights, at the

graceful line of throat and shoulder, at the proud lips that were his.

And his arms swept up and round her.

* * * * *

Drama moves swiftly. No pause for explanation once the wheels are set

going, no rambling into far corners for side lights as in the novel,

but a tornado-like gathering of incident that hurls itself without

notice into crashing storm. Life crowded into a few short hours, just

as a few short hours so often crowd life into one crashing crisis.

Without warning, or at least without warning heeded, one answers the

doorbell or opens a telegram or takes up a telephone receiver. And

behold, the face blanches, the heart stops beating, to beat again with

hammer stroke too horrible to bear!

It happened that Thorne’s roadster drew up under the porte-cochère one

May day and, removing dusty goggles, he announced that he had come to

talk about a scene that stumped him.

“I’ve traveled to Mecca to consult the Oracle.”

Nancy shook hands enthusiastically. Dick had been away for several

days; her favorite mount, Lord Chesterfield, had been taken to town by

the head groom for treatment under a famous “vet”; and endless dinners

had bored her to a state of loneliness known only to those whose lives

have hummed with activity. Her husband would not be back until

to-morrow and to put in a few hours with Ted in the atmosphere of the

theater was a welcome diversion.

When they had discussed pros and cons and the kick in the big scene;

when the playwright in hushed voice had told Dicky the usual pirate

tale, and the three had lunched together under the trees, Nancy jumped

up.

“Ted, will you run me into town this afternoon? I want to have a look

at Lord Chesterfield. He went lame last week, you know.”

Thorne beamed.

“Bully! It’s a whale of a day. Why not stay in? We can dine and I’ll

run you out early.”

But she refused. The kiddies were put to bed at six-thirty and she

wanted to be back before then.

“I’ll take the train back. Don’t bother about that.”

She came downstairs presently buttoned into a gray topcoat. From under

a tight little turban the sunset hair waved, held by a gray veil.

They tore out of the grounds, along roads of glass at a pace that left

both breathless. Nancy felt the sluggishness of the past few days

lashed out of her blood. It flew happily to her cheeks, tingled to her

finger tips, sent the laughter into her lips as the man beside her

gave the latest bits of Broadway gossip, the latest funny story from a

region teeming with them. She stored them up for Dick, picturing his

enjoyment when on his return next day she should give them with all

her embellishment of mimicry.

The first pungent scent of summer, clover and sweet grass and

occasional great mounds of hay, rose from the meadows as they sped

past. The vault above was intensely turquoise and without a cloud. It

would be a heavenly night with a young silver moon etched against the

sky and all things filmed by its light. She wished Dick were going to

be home. They could have taken a tearing ride like this with all the

countryside to themselves.

The breezes became sultry. City smoke crept in. The car jerked over

cobbles, dodging barelegged youngsters and wedging at last into the

clatter of Queensboro Bridge. Nancy’s nose crinkled. She had come to

hate the city with its odors and noises and strained faces and heavy

air, all the elements which had passed unnoticed when she was part of

it and a struggler.

From the cluttered Eastside they went through the district whose

boarded doors and windows like the blank eyes of the blind proclaimed

it fashionable; then the dust-covered green of the Park and out at the

street in the Sixties where down the block three windows blinked

coquettishly.

Nancy descended, held out a hand. “Good luck, Ted. And let’s hear it

when you’ve got it ready.”

His alert gaze was bright with satisfaction. “You’ve set me on the

right track. You always do.”

She waved as he drove off, then rang the bell beside the big door. It

swung back slowly, heavily, and the head-groom stood in the opening.

She caught the look of surprise that swept over his face, passing as

quickly after the manner of well-trained servants who are supposed to

have no emotions.

“How is Lord Chesterfield?” she inquired, stepping out of the

sunlight.

“He’s not been so fine to-day, madam. I think there’s pain in the left

forefoot.”

“I want to have a look at him.”

“Yes, madam.”

He closed the door, led the way to the run. But Nancy started toward

the stairs.

He turned. “Is there anything I can do for you, madam?”

“No, that’s all right, Jarvis. I’ll just leave my coat and come down.”

“I can take it.” He stepped forward hastily, with rather a note of

apology. “The painters are up there, madam. The rain of two days ago

made a leak in the roof and I had to have them in. The place is in

something of a mess.”

But Nancy was already halfway up the stairs. “It doesn’t matter.”

She disappeared, dropped her coat on the divan in the gray room, and

looked ceilingward. No sign of repairs there. Probably the leak was at

the front of the house.

Turning into the hall she noticed that Jarvis had followed her.

“Pardon me, madam—will you be coming down to see Lord Chesterfield

now?”

“Just a minute.”

She threw open the double oak doors at the end. And her breath stopped

as she did on the threshold.

A stream of sunshine flecked with motes came through the far window

and centered on the couch. Lounging there in a position of uttermost

comfort was Dick and at his feet, hatless and cross-legged like some

willing slave of the harem, Lilla Grant. A look of flame was in his

non-committal eyes and in her heavy ones, languor. The ripe red lips

were raised. From her fingers a cigarette dangled as he leaned close

and struck a match. All too evident, though, that it was not to light

the cigarette those lips were lifted.

Nancy’s hand went to her throat. That was all. Went to her throat and

clung there.

The two started at the sound of another’s presence. The match halted.

Cunningham looked up. He straightened, sat for an instant without

moving, then got to his feet.

The provocation faded from Lilla’s lips. A moment before she had had

the unmistakable air of being perfectly at home. Now as she followed

the man’s sharp glance she stiffened. Uneasily she too rose and, as

neither of the others spoke, gave a nervous little laugh.

“Why, Nancy, this is a coincidence! We’ve been expecting Ted Thorne

for tea and only half an hour ago tried you on the phone to get you,

too.”

Nancy made no attempt to refute the glib lie. She simply stood gazing

at her husband as if her eyes were touching him. Then she turned away.

“I think—I won’t wait,” she managed to say and went out, closing the

door.

At the other side she stopped, hands pressed tight to her lips, and

waited for courage to go forward.

Partway down the stairs she saw Jarvis looking up. Fright grayed his

face.

“I’ll see Lord Chesterfield now,” she told him and followed to the

run.

With gaze straining through the train window an hour later at meadow

and woodland she did not see, she was carried back to Restawhile, to

the babies waiting for her.

The moon rose, as she had pictured it, paling the trees outside her

room and the lawn beneath.

At last her door opened. Cunningham entered, closing it softly,

switched on the lights and saw her sitting hunched in a chair, with

eyes bewildered as if they could not realize the thing they had

revealed. He spoke her name—once, twice. She did not even glance at

him.

“Nancy, answer me!”

She turned slowly.

“I ask you not to jump at conclusions. Nancy—”

“Yes!”

“Why didn’t you wait?”

Her gaze locked with his incredulously. “You think I could have

waited?”

“I understand,” he put in hastily. “That’s why I made no attempt to

detain you. The situation was awkward.”

She laughed. It might have been a cry from the soul.

“Awkward, nothing more!” he hurried on. “I admit, it looked damning.

I, myself, would have judged as you did. But I give you my word—”

She swept it aside.

“Jarvis tried to keep me from going up. That alone proves—”

“Jarvis is a servant, with the view point of his class.”

She uttered the thought that had been spinning round in her brain. “He

would scarcely have tried to protect you if that had been her first

visit.”

“Why not? He concluded because a woman happened to be there with

me—alone—Bah,” he broke off, “that end of it’s not worth considering!

What you think is all that concerns me. And what you think is only too

evident.”

“What I think—what I think!” Her hands clasped and unclasped

incessantly. Her voice came strangled.

He had been pacing up and down. Now he pulled a chair close to hers.

“But you’re wrong, dear. It’s circumstantial evidence and worth as

much. I came back to-day unexpectedly, looked in at the uptown office

before going home and found a message from Lilla, asking me to see her

this afternoon without fail. I called her hotel and arranged to meet

her at the stable. Jarvis had notified me that Lord Chesterfield was

seedy and it occurred to me that by having her come there, I’d save

time.”

“You—” the words came haltingly as if difficult to speak—“you didn’t

seem in haste when I saw you.”

“Come now—be sporting, dear.” He tried to make a laugh cut the

tension. “You know my interest in the theater.”

“Yes—I know.”

“Well, Lilla’s consulted me any number of times about one thing or

another. And she has a Bohemian way of establishing palship that you

don’t understand.”

“Don’t I?”

“No. I wouldn’t want you to. But the fact remains that Lilla on the

floor with a cigarette in her mouth means no more than another woman

at the tea table.”

She made no reply.

“Of course she lied when she said we were expecting Thorne,” he

pursued. “You knew that, didn’t you?”

“Yes. He was out here to-day and motored me in. But I’d have known

anyway.”

“Can’t understand why it’s so much easier for women to lie than tell

the truth.”

“Perhaps men teach them it’s easier.”

There was a breath without words.

“For instance,” she went on monotonously and her eyes dropped to the

hands clenched against her knees, “you’re going to tell me I’ve no

right to misjudge either you or Lilla.”

“Why, my dearest,” Cunningham lifted her lowered face, looked long

into it. “There’s nothing mysterious in the whole affair. Kane offered

to star her in a new production if she’d get him the backing and she

wants me to put up the money. That’s the long and short of it. I had

every intention of consulting you.”

She drew away, looking at him straight and direct. Her lips opened but

closed without speech. She had been on the point of asking how it

happened that he had arrived in town a day ahead of time without

letting her know, why he had failed to telephone. But she could not

bring herself to question him. And he gave little time.

Lifting both her hands he unlocked them, drew them to his breast and

met her eyes unwavering.

“Lilla and I are nothing more than good pals, like—like you and

Thorne. I want you to believe that.”

“It’s impossible, Dick—after what I saw to-day.”

“Why? Have you ever before had cause to doubt me?”

“No.” She hesitated a bit before admitting it.

“Then why seize on the first occasion?”

“Seize on it? Seize on it?” She gave another low breathless laugh.

“That—that’s funny! Seize on my own misery—seize on the shattering of

all I hold dear!”

“You’re nervous and hysterical now and things look monstrous. But I

know you too well to think this mood can last.” His hands crept toward

her shoulders. All through the interview there had been no conflict on

his part, no man-woman antagonism, just an assumption of honest effort

to convince her. And now he adroitly resorted to the means by which he

had won her, a man’s most convincing way of setting himself right, the

lover’s. He drew her, resisting, out of the chair—enfolded her in his

arms—bent his lips, whispered: “No other woman could mean anything

while I have you. Don’t you know that?”

A moment passed, longer than any she had ever lived through. Then, so

low that he could scarcely hear: “I’m going to believe you,

Dick—because I want to believe you,” she said.

Neither of them referred to it again. As if by mutual agreement the

matter was sealed. Whatever scar the experience had left so far as

Nancy was concerned, her lips were closed as the lips of the dead.

When eventually she heard through Thorne that along the Rialto it was

whispered Lilla actually was considering an offer from Kane, she felt

immensely relieved. Dick had told her the truth then about that end of

it. Why was the rest not true as well?

And as if to assure her, his devotion duplicated that of their

honeymoon. Her happiness seemed the thought paramount, her peace of

mind his topmost concern. It continued so until business called him

West, the tangle that for some time had been knotting his California

interests. The letters he sent, when they were not of her and the

children, spoke of his boredom after affairs of the day were done

with, of the humidity and discomfort of the rainy season and

emphasized his eagerness to return. They came from various coast

cities—San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles.

“It’s possible you may not hear from me the next few weeks,” a final

communication told her. “I find it necessary to go to New Mexico to

look into a railroad proposition. For a time I may be located miles

from any post office. But know that I’m safe and thinking of you, my

dearest, and expect me back sometime in September.”

Nancy packed when it arrived and left to visit the Bishops at Newport.

Stopping overnight in town, she ran into Coghlan on his way to the

Knickerbocker Grill, daily trysting place of managers.

“Say, what d’you think of Lilla?” He chortled in the midst of pouring

out plans for the coming season. “Gone to Hawaii to get atmosphere

before she signs up for that lead. Atmosphere! Can you beat it? Paying

her own expenses, too. Told her she was crazy, but nothing to it—had

to go. Developing too much temperament for her own good, that kid!”

Nancy had not yet brought herself to the point of hearing Lilla’s name

without wincing. But she managed a smile and asked: “When does she

return?”

“Next month sometime. Told her rehearsals begin the fifteenth whether

she’s on the job or not. So you can bank on it, she’ll be here.” His

appraising yet impersonal glance ran the length of Nancy’s graceful

figure, from the wide hat shading her eyes to the narrow brown pumps

and slim ankles. “All to the good, Nancy,” he sighed regretfully, “all

to the good! Just home and mother stuff too! And, by golly, five years

ago I guyed myself into thinking I’d turn you out the greatest actress

in America!”

She wondered vaguely as she sped toward the worldly paradise whose

gates had swung wide to her whether old Jerry was right. Would she

have become a great actress or just the darling of a few fickle years?

That girl with her wild dark eyes and swirl of golden hair, would the

public she had loved have wept and laughed with her to-day? She

wondered and smiled reminiscently, a smile with a tear, like some

bittersweet memory of the dead.

At the station she was met by her host, otherwise known as Mary

Bishop’s husband, and in a supremely groomed car was driven through

supremely groomed streets, ultra as the leaders who dwelt there.

Courty Bishop sat back beside her, caressed his waxed mustache and

regaled her with choice bits of news, just as Coghlan had regaled her

the day before. After all, she told herself, there wasn’t much

difference in the two worlds. Appraisingly, but with a look not quite

so impersonal as that of her former manager, the sophisticated eyes

turned to scan her beauty while his facile tongue rambled on.

“I say—you top ’em all, Nancy! What a risk that boy, Dick,

takes—leaving you alone so long!”

“Not so much of a risk,” she laughed, mentally placing her husband

next to the little man.

“But what the deuce takes him such a distance this time of year?”

“Oh, railroad stuff.”

“Bore—the tropics in midsummer!”

“Tropics?”

“Well,—that’s what I’d call the Hawaiian Islands. One of my men,

McIntyre, met him on the way out. Wrote that if Cunningham didn’t kick

at going, guessed he couldn’t. But why in hades—”

The woman beside him heard no more. Hawaii!! Like some giant machinery

against her ears, his words became a whirr. She smiled mechanically,

as so many women have done, while the world stood still.

Fate had lifted the prompter’s hand and slowly the curtain descended

on Act II of Nancy Bradshaw’s life drama.

CHAPTER III—ACT III

The hum of arrival in that great hive, the Grand Central, kept up an

incessant drone. Scurrying figures swarmed like bees from the gates to

disappear into the night. Red caps raced back and forth, elbowing one

another in the rush for spoils. City husbands reached out eagerly from

roped-off lines to country wives and sunburned youngsters. Embraces

and laughter and inarticulate efforts to tell everything in one moment

kept the air abuzz. Life, centralized in one small area of space, was

at its busiest.

Into this hubbub from the Lake Shore Limited swung a man in tweed

suit, the porter at his side laden with the trappings of a long trip.

His big shoulders pushed through the throng into the lighted terminal

and he looked around. Rapidly his glance traveled from face to face,

then back along the congested line and once again its length. A look

of annoyance that brought brows together followed the swift scrutiny

and he made for the telephone booths. Impatiently he gave the operator

a number, concentrating his gaze on her while she made the Long Island

connection. When some three minutes later he emerged from the booth,

the look of annoyance had changed to anger.

With characteristic stride of authority he moved across the crowded

stone floor, bounded up the steps and waited, peering at his watch in

the outer gloom as taxis unloaded their burdens and took on others.

When his turn came he sprang in, gave the address of a small select

hotel off Fifth Avenue and all the way there sat staring fixedly out

at the lighted shops, his lips a thin, angry line.

The line had not disappeared as he stepped from the elevator to the

door of a suite and imperatively rang the bell. It was opened by a

girl in nursemaid’s cap who gave a start when she saw who it was. He

pushed past with the same look he had cast about the station. Then he

turned abruptly, sending at her a volley of rapid-fire questions.

Madam was not there, she answered. Yes, the children were, but

Mrs. Cunningham had gone to dinner and the theater. No, she did not

believe any telegram had been received from him. Madam, she was sure,

had not expected him to-night. They had been in town since the

beginning of the week. No, Mrs. Cunningham had not gone out with any

one. To The Coghlan Theatre, she believed.

Her curious gaze followed him as he went down the hall to the

elevator. Then softly she shut the door.

At ten minutes to nine he strolled into The Coghlan Theater, the last

of a fashionably late audience.

The place was packed and he leaned leisurely against the rear

balustrade to wait for the curtain before trying to locate his wife.

Across the footlights palm trees swayed, recalling the land of secrets

he had left behind. Something about the sensuous atmosphere so

realistically reproduced made him turn away. Then his eyes took in the

woman who held the center of the stage. Her voice—low, beautifully

modulated—rolled toward him. Her eyes, burning black, turned in his

direction. He gripped the rail, bent over it.

Nancy!! In spite of the dark wig and olive tinted skin, there was no

mistake! Nancy—on the stage of The Coghlan! The sudden sharp crackle

of a program broke the stillness.

NANCY BRADSHAW

in

“Broken Wings”

There it was—Nancy Bradshaw—staring at him from the sheet he had not

troubled to read.

Nancy! Mrs. Richard Cunningham!

He made the lobby like a bull gone mad. Generations of training, years

of the will to control, were as if they had never been. He was the

outraged male, bent on destroying the thing which had defied him.

Outside he found Coghlan who, from the box-office, had glimpsed him

sauntering in and evidently anticipated precisely what had happened.

Jerry’s good-natured face with its row of chins was hard as an iron

mask as he blocked Cunningham’s onrush.

“Hello, there,” he said genially, reaching out a hand.

Cunningham’s fists clenched white.

“I’ve got to see my wife.”

“Well, can’t see her from anywhere but in there until after the

performance. Nobody goes backstage—strict orders.” Then smiling

broadly, “Made a hell of a hit! You ought to be damn proud of her.”

“I’m going to see her _now_!”

Jerry grinned serenely. “Don’t blame you. Should have been here Monday

for the opening—sensation, old man! Always said that in five years

she’d be the greatest actress in the country. And take it from me—”

From within, a swelling volume of applause told the fall of the

curtain.

Cunningham made a lunge to pass the figure that blocked him.

“Careful, careful, old boy!” came firmly from the manager. “Hold tight

there! They’ll be coming out—take it easy.”

The other man’s face was set.

“I’ve told you—”

“And I tell _you_! This is my theater! Anybody who causes any

disturbance gets out!”

A prominent clubman sighted Cunningham at this juncture and hurried

across the lobby. From that moment Nancy’s husband was forced to

assume an easy pride calculated to disarm gossip, forced to become the

center of a throng bent upon congratulating him on his wife’s success.

During the ten minutes of intermission he bore it with a smile

chiseled on his handsome face, then left the theater as the lights

went low. Back to the hotel he tramped, turned and retraced his steps

like some madman muttering to himself. Then up and down the dark alley

of the stage entrance, watching for signs that the final curtain had

fallen, unable to consider the sane and sensible alternative of

waiting for his wife in the privacy of her own rooms.

When at last they stood face to face under the brilliant lights of

her dressing-room it was evident Coghlan had warned her.

She was alone. In the little room where they had met five years ago

they met once more. And to-night as that night a flame like a living

thing darted between them. Then it had been white and warming. Now it

filled the place, a devastating fury. But in the face of it she stood

calm.

It would have taken an observer less self-absorbed to note that her

hand trembled as it grasped a chair-back, that her breath came

quickly. In silence they measured each other. In silence she waited,

her eyes never leaving him.

At last he spoke and his voice was as hard as that of a judge

pronouncing extreme penalty.

“Well—have you anything to say for yourself?”

She shook her head and not defiance but sadness was in the look she

sent him. “Nothing I _want_ to say.”

“You realize, of course, that I’m going to put a stop to this business

here and now.”

Again that look—half regret, half sorrow.

“You can no longer put a stop to anything I do.”

In his unreasoning wrath the actual import of her words missed him.

“I don’t care what contracts you’ve made—to-night finishes them.”

“Suppose we try to talk this over quietly”—she gave a slight gesture

of weariness as she sat down before her dressing-table—“if it must be

discussed.”

“Must be discussed? Good God! I come back after three months, ring my

home, find that my wife has moved into town without a word to me—”

“You forget—you had overlooked giving me your address.”

“And come up against the fact,” he rushed on, “that she’s taken

advantage of my absence to put over— What’s your explanation of this

damned outrage?” he broke off hotly.

Her eyes, tense and brilliant, held his. He gave a short laugh.

“I assume you and Coghlan have concocted one.”

“Coghlan has no idea of my reason for doing it. He merely knows that

in July I sent word to him that I would take this part if Lilla Grant

refused it. He didn’t wait to find out, though she cabled him a week

later saying Kane was going to star her.”

“And you thought I’d let you get away with it! After five years of

living with me you thought I’d stand for anything like this!”

“It doesn’t matter whether you stand for it or not.”

He had been pacing up and down, hands thrust into his pockets, ready

to plunge through the walls. Now suddenly he veered about, stood

rooted.

“I mean it.” Softly she answered his amazement. “I’m back on the stage

because I realize how little my leaving it meant to you.”

He went close to her then, threat in every line of his big frame.

“You’re my wife—the mother of my children.”

“Yes—that’s all.”

“All?”

“I bore your name, I bore your children. I gave up the stage to do

both. And in giving it up, I sacrificed your love.”

Her back was turned but out of the shadows of her triple mirror gazed

a face white with pity of him, with suffering for the thing which,

through him, both had lost.

“Sacrificed my love?” he began as a man feels his way along paths he

is not sure of. “What in heaven’s name gave you that idea?”

“Please,” she stopped him with a swift gesture, “please—don’t speak of

it! I can’t bear it!”

“Look here, Nancy,” came somewhat more calmly, “this is nonsense—silly

woman stuff. I’m not saying you didn’t think you had some rational

excuse for doing this thing. But it’s out of the question. It simply

can’t continue. I made that clear when I married you. Boredom or

restlessness or the sort of unreasoning mood that gets hold of women

probably drove you to it.”

“You drove me to it,” she answered quietly.

“What’s got over you?” he came back sharply. “You talk like a mad

woman.”

“No—I’m quite sane. I see quite clearly—too clearly. I’ve had plenty

of time to go over it—to face the truth. I thought when I married you

that you loved the woman in me. Now I know it was the actress. You

loved me for the thing I gave up because I loved you—the glamour of

the stage. Popularity—the fact that I was conspicuous made me

desirable. You demanded that I sacrifice all that. And when I did, I

became the same to you as hundreds of women you’d known, women you

were tired of. You cut me off completely from my old life, except as

a spectator—then sought in that old life the thrill and interest I

could no longer give you.”

She paused. Her hand went to her throat as it had that day in the

house of the fir trees.

“All these five years when I’ve longed for a glimpse of it—just a

glimpse—to become part of it again if only for a little while, I’ve

felt guilty, almost as if I’d been untrue to you. I’ve thrust the

thought aside as something unworthy. I’ve let you fill my life. Well,”

she paused, “now I’ve gone back to it. I’ve gone back to the thing

that made you love me. And I’ve gone—to stay.”

Defiance at last leaped at him. It tore from her, as they stood

measuring each other, like a panther from some rustling jungle. It

gripped his throat.

“Woman excuses!” he brought out at last. “Without rhyme or reason to

back them! Well, they won’t answer. I’m still waiting for a straight,

rational explanation. Suppose you let me have it—now.”

“All right, I will. I didn’t want to, but since you demand it you

shall have it. I’ve given you my reason, my motive. I’ve told you what

sent me back to the stage. But the thing that brought me to my senses,

that made me realize the truth, can be summed up in just three words:

Hawaii—Lilla Grant.”

She spoke as if merely voicing them were tearing open a wound

unhealed, spoke them so low that they came like a breath.

And hearing, he straightened, stood silent, too stunned to think of an

answer.

The noise of slamming doors and scurrying feet beat instead against

the stillness, all the echoing movements that strike bare walls when

the play is done.

“It was rather funny—wasn’t it?—that I should have believed you that

first time,” she went on. “But I told myself what I had seen was

impossible; that if I had given up the thing that was life to me,

surely you wouldn’t go back to it for the fascination of grease-paint

and footlights. Surely you couldn’t seek in another woman the thing

you had denied me! That’s why I accepted your half truths—eagerly.

Because I wanted to—and one does so many foolish things when one wants

to. That’s why it was so much harder when I did find out.”

“Nancy—” he began.

“Please don’t try to explain this away!” came breathlessly. “It can’t

be set right. It’s done! And I’d like to go on being friends, because,

you see, I _did_ love you.”

“Then—” he seized on the note in her voice.

“No! Never!”

They were just two words, low as a conscience whisper. But they closed

the gates of what had been with the grim certainty of fate. His

steel-colored eyes—habitually so sure of themselves—wavered. His fists

gripped against an enemy unknown. And only the woman whose gaze locked

with his knew that the enemy was himself.

He looked down at the blonde head round which the lights of the

theater glimmered once more; those lights he had torn away to make her

entirely his.

“You mean that?” he brought out at last.

“Yes.”

“Finally?”

“It can’t be otherwise—now.”

He turned swiftly on his heel and went the length of the room, then

back to where she stood. He pulled up sharp and his lips snapped

together.

“All right. But you leave one item out of the reckoning. As long as

you bear my name, you respect it! If you persist in this—I’ll divorce

you.”

“The name is yours. I am Nancy Bradshaw again.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Only what I said. You can have it back any time you want. I won’t

make a move to stop you. You can have everything you’ve ever given

me—everything. The one thing I had a right to keep—you’ve taken away.

So what else matters?”

She walked slowly over to where her clothes hung behind a cretonne

curtain, took down a black hat and pulled it over her shining hair.

She stood there, shoulders drooping, head bent.

Outside the soft shuffle of the old watchman’s feet told he was going

the rounds. Good-nights had been tossed from one to another of the

departing company. That heavy quiet of night in a darkened theater

rolled backstage. The world of make-believe had vanished. Only the

shell remained.

Cunningham leaned a bit heavily against the door. For the first time

life had thwarted, left him impotent, and a new sensation, when

unpleasant, is difficult to handle.

The woman he had loved and desired, the woman who had stirred him, who

had been his, came toward him as to a stranger.

“I’m afraid I must go,” she said.

He roused himself to a final stand.

“You realize,” came hoarsely, “that I’ll fight this—fight it to a

finish? You realize as well that the children will come to me?”

Pain for what had been and what might have been; memories, all that

had made these moments a requiem, vanished from her voice. She went

close to him. Like his own her body went taut, her hands tense, her

head high. Primitive even as himself, she met him, ready for combat.

Suddenly something in her answering gaze, in the black of her eyes

that could flame up like two live things, made clear the writing on

the wall.

“I don’t think you’ll try to do that. I shan’t attempt to keep them

from you, of course. But they’re mine, you know,—and _I_ haven’t

forfeited the right to them.”

Without another word, she stood waiting for him to step aside. He

hesitated, made as if to speak, then turned abruptly and the slam of a

door resounded like thunder.

One by one she turned off the lights. Out across the familiar boards

she went to the center of the stage, set for to-morrow. Face lifted to

the darkness, she stood where had come to her the struggle

eternal—success, conflict, love, renunciation. And to her lips came

the question woman will always ask, the question always unanswered:

“Why?”

And so the curtain descended on Act III of Nancy Bradshaw’s life

drama.

THE CURTAIN FALLS

The lights of the auditorium flame high. The audience rises. It has

stepped down from the footlights. It moves in undulating tide toward

the wide-flung doors.

Beyond those doors is night, the world of care. The brief hours of

living in a house of dreams is over. Forgetfulness gives place to

memory. The spirit of the theater lifts its magic touch from tired

eyes.

Backstage all is dark and wondering. Have we played our parts as an

audience and sensed its heartbeats? Have we smiled its smiles? Teased

its vanity? Gained its approval? We of this little play—have we

succeeded in our striving to make a critical throng throb to it? Back

of the swaying curtain, before which one of asbestos has dropped

heavily, all is wild hope, eager prayer, despairing question.

The house of dreams is empty, the soft-armed chairs shrouded as if

each held a pale ghost. Is it to be alight or dark? Do we live or die?

To-morrow holds the answer.

* * * * * *

Transcriber’s note:

A small number of clear typographic errors have been corrected.

Consistent period spelling has been retained, as has inconsistent

hyphenation.