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Owen Johnson

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THE SALAMANDER

Doré

THE
SALAMANDER

By
OWEN JOHNSON

Author of

The Varmint, Stover at Yale
The Sixty-First Second, Etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
EVERETT SHINN

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

TO MY WIFE

FOREWORD

Precarious the lot of the author who elects to show his public what it does not know, but doubly exposed he who in the indiscreet exploration of customs and manners publishes what the public knows but is unwilling to confess! In the first place incredulity tempers censure, in the second resentment is fanned by the necessity of self-recognition. For the public is like the defendant in matrimony, amused and tolerant when unconvinced of the justice of a complaint, but fiercely aroused when defending its errors.

In the present novel I am quite aware that where criticism is most risked is at the hands of those entrenched moralists who, while admitting certain truths as fit subjects for conversation, aggressively resent the same when such truths are published. Many such will believe that in the following depiction of a curious and new type of modern young women, product of changing social forces, profoundly significant of present unrest and prophetic of stranger developments to come, the author, in depicting simply what does exist, is holding a brief for what should exist.

If the type of young girls here described were an ephemeral manifestation or even a detached fragment of our society, there might be a theoretical justification for this policy of censure by silence. But the Salamanders are neither irrelevant nor the product of unrelated forces. The rebellious ideas that sway them are the same ideas that are profoundly at work in the new generation of women, and while for this present work I have limited my field, be sure that the young girl of to-day, from the age of eighteen to twenty-five, whether facing the world alone or peering out at it from the safety of the family, whether in the palaces of New York, the homesteads of New England, the manors of the South or the throbbing cities and villages of the West, whatever her station or her opportunity, has in her undisciplined and roving imagination a little touch of the Salamander.

That there exists a type of young girl that heedlessly will affront every appearance of evil and can yet remain innocent; that this innocence, never relinquished, can yet be tumultuously curious and determined on the exploration of the hitherto forbidden sides of life, especially when such reconnoitering is rendered enticing by the presence of danger—here are two apparent contradictions difficult of belief. Yet in the case of the Salamander's brother, society finds no such difficulty—it terms that masculine process, "seeing the world," a study rather to be recommended for the sake of satisfied future tranquillity.

That the same can be true of the opposite sex, that a young girl without physical temptation may be urged by a mental curiosity to see life through whatever windows, that she may feel the same impetuous frenzy of youth as her brother, the same impulse to sample each new excitement, and that in this curiosity may be included the safe and the dangerous, the obvious and the complex, the casual and the strange, that she may arrogate to herself the right to examine everything, question everything, peep into everything—tentatively to project herself into every possibility and after a few years of this frenzy of excited curiosity can suddenly be translated into a formal and discreet mode of life—here is an exposition which may well appear incredible on the printed page. I say on the printed page because few men are there who will not recognize the justice of the type of Salamander here portrayed. Only as their experience has been necessarily individual they do not proceed to the recognition of a general type. They know them well as accidents in the phantasmagoria of New York but they do not comprehend them in the least.

The Salamander in the last analysis is a little atom possessed of a brain, thrown against the great tragic luxury of New York, which has impelled her to it as the flame the moth.

She comes roving from somewhere out of the immense reaches of the nation, revolting against the commonplace of an inherited narrowness, passionately adventurous, eager and unafraid, neither sure of what she seeks nor conscious of what forces impel or check her. She remains a Salamander only so long as she has not taken a decision to enter life by one of the thousand avenues down which in her running course she has caught an instant vista. Her name disappears under a new self-baptism. She needs but a little money and so occasionally does a little work. She brings no letters of introduction, but she comes resolved to know whom she chooses. She meets them all, the men of New York, the mediocre, the interesting, the powerful, the flesh hunters, the brutes and those who seek only an amused mental relaxation. She attracts them by hook or crook, in defiance of etiquette, compelling their attention in ways that at the start hopelessly mystify them and lead to mistakes. Then she calmly sets them to rights and forgives them. If she runs recklessly in the paths of danger, it is because to her obsessed curiosity it is imperative for her to try to comprehend what this danger can mean.

She has no salon to receive her guests—she turns her bedroom at noon into a drawing-room, not inviting every one, but to those to whom she extends the privilege fiercely regulating the proprieties. She may have a regular occupation or an occasional one, neither must interfere with her liberty of pleasure. She needs money—she acquires it indirectly, by ways that bear no offense to her delightfully illogical but keen sensibilities. With one man she will ride in his automobile, far into the night—to another she will hardly accord the tips of her gloves. She makes no mistakes. Her head is never dizzy. Her mind is in control and she knows at every moment what she is doing. She will dare only so far as she knows she is safe.

She runs the gamut of the city, its high lights and its still shadows. She enters by right behind its varied scenes. She breakfasts on one egg and a cup of coffee, takes her luncheon from a high-legged stool in a cellar restaurant, reluctantly counting out the change, and the same night, with supreme indolence, descends from a luxurious automobile, before the flaring portals of the restaurant most in fashion, giving her fingers to those who rank among the masters of the city.

This curiosity that leads her to flit from window to window has in it no vice. It is fed only by the zest of life. Her passion is to know, to leave no cranny unexplored, to see, not to experience, to flit miraculously through the flames—never to be consumed!

That her standard of conduct is marvelous, that her ideas of what is permitted and what is forbidden are mystifying, is true. So too is it difficult to comprehend, in the society of men of the world, what is fair and what is unfair, what is "done" and what is not "done." To understand the Salamander, to appreciate her significance as a criticism of our present social forms, one must first halt and consider what changes are operating in our social system.

If one were privileged to have the great metropolis of New York reduced to microcosm at his feet, to be studied as man may study the marvelous organism of the anthill or the hive, two curious truths would become evident. First that those whom the metropolis engenders seldom succeed their fathers, that they move in circles as it were, endlessly revolving about a fixed idea, apparently stupefied by the colossal shadows under which they have been born; secondly that daily, hourly even, a stream of energetic young men constantly arrives from the unknown provinces, to reinvigorate the city, rescue it from stagnation, ascending abruptly to its posts of command, assuming direction of its manifold activities—ruling it.

Further, one would perceive that the history of the city is the result of these two constantly opposed forces, one striving to conserve, the other to acquire. The inheritors constantly seek to define the city's forms, encase its society, limit its opportunities, transform its young activities into inheritable institutions; while the young and ardent adventurers who come with no other baggage than their portmanteaux of audacity and sublime disdain, are constantly firing it with their inflaming enthusiasm, purifying it with their new health, forcing the doors of reluctant sets, storming its giant privileges, modernizing its laws, vitalizing its arts, capturing its financial hierarchies, opposing to the solidifying force of attempted systems their liberating corrective of opportunity and individualism. Of the two forces, only the conqueror from without is important.

This phenomenon of immigration is neither new nor peculiar to our civilization. It is indeed the living principle of a metropolis which, as it requires food, water, fire for its material existence, must also hourly levy, Minotaur-like, its toll on foreign youth. Woman has had no counterpart to this life-giving fermentation of young men. The toll of the metropolis has been the toll of corruption, spreading corruption, and this continuous flow of the two sexes through the gates of the city has been like the warring passage through the arteries of red life-defending corpuscles and disease-bearing germs.

Now suddenly to one who thus profoundly meditates this giant scheme, a new phenomenon has appeared. All at once amid the long stretching lines of young men that seek the city from the far horizon appear the figures of young women, not by hundreds but by the thousands, following in the steps of their brothers, wage-earners animated by the same desire for independence, eager and determined for a larger view of life, urged outward by the same imperative revolt against stagnation, driven by the same unrest for the larger horizon. This culminative movement, begun in the decline of the nineteenth century, may well be destined to mark the twentieth century as the great era of social readjustment.

In the past the great block to woman's complete and equal communion with man has been her economic dependence on him; while she has not been necessary to man, man has been necessary to her. Hence her forced acceptation of his standard of her position and her duties. In one generation, by this portentous achievement of economic independence, woman in a night, like Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, has suddenly elevated herself to a position of aggressive equality. Those who see in the feminine movement no further than a question of political expediency perceive no more than a relatively unimportant manifestation. What has happened is that the purely masculine conception of society has been suddenly put to the challenge. Man's conception of religion, of marriage and the family, of property rights versus sentimental rights, of standards of conduct and political expediency, imperfect and groping as they have been, will, in the future, progress according to a new alliance between man and woman. And this world revolution has come, day by day, month after month, in the spectacle of young women, bundles in arms, light of purse, rebel in heart, moving in silent thousands toward the great cities. In this new army of women who have now intrenched themselves in the strongholds of economic independence, there are two distinct but related divisions, the great mass who must work and the relatively smaller class, socially more significant, who must live, those, of whom the Salamanders are the impatient outstripping advance, who are determined to liberate their lives and claim the same rights of judgment as their brothers.

What has brought this great emigration to pass? Several causes, some actively impelling, others merely passively liberating—the taking down of weakened bars.

The causes which have actively impelled this liberating emigration are more clearly perceived, the causes which have passively permitted this removal of the bars are less obvious. We are a society of passage—between two ports. Scarcely can we recall the thin shores we have departed, nor can any one foretell what outlines, at the end of the voyage, will rise out of the sea of experiment. In every social revolution there are three distinct generations, the first of intrenched traditions, the second of violent reaction and the third of reconstruction. And if it seem a law of nature's tireless action and reaction that fathers and sons should be ever set against one another, ever misunderstanding one another, the true measure of human progress lies in that degree of change which results between the first and the third generations. Between this old generation of authority and this present generation of logic has come a feminine revolution startling in the shock of its abruptness. Yet a social revolution that obliterates in an hour the landmarks of ages, frequently resembles a cataclysm of nature—the gathering torrent only becomes possible with the last six inches of earth. What has broken out in these last half a dozen years has been accumulating without beginning—for ideas can have no beginnings. They have existed in the unconscious human soul as the germ of physical evolution has lain among the glaciers and the wilderness.

What then was the position of women under the old order? That generation of authority was intrenched in the great social domination of the church. What in effect did religion say to women? It said:

"Remember always that this life is of no moment. It is given you that you may inherit eternity. Reckon not the present, aspire to the next. Abnegation is glorious, suffering is to be prized, sacrifices patiently made bring you by so much nearer to Heaven. Subordinate yourself, bear everything, accept all burdens gladly. Live for others; forgive, inspire. If this life seem to you narrow and motherhood staggering, bleak, joyless, think not on the fatigue but on the awakening."

With the turning of men's minds to the dormant truths of science came a great agnostic revolt that brought a scientific questioning of all facts and a demand that everything should fall or stand by the test of the reason. In this new enthusiasm for logic, which has overturned so many rooted institutions with its militant individualism, the authority of the home has been shattered, divorce has been multiplied in the protest against the old unreasoning tyranny of marriage, and the Puritan domination of the church has too often become a social institution for the better ordering of the masses and an outward form of polite respectability. In this complete breaking down of authority the voice of the church that spoke to women has been lost.

Another troubling phase began simultaneously, the period of miraculous material opportunity, the fungus growth of fortunes great and little. The suddenly prosperous parents began to plan for their children those opportunities which had been denied them, seeking to educate them beyond what they had known—a process ever linked with tragedy and disillusionment. What now results, with the thousands of young girls who have learned of magazines and novels or who have gone out from the confining narrowness of little homes to a broader education—not simply in books but in the experience of life, of a certain independency, of the opportunities beyond?

At about the age of eighteen the Salamander returns to town or village, to the mediocrity of the home from which she has escaped, and at once the great choice of life presents itself to her. What she has learned, what she has absorbed from every newspaper has awakened her curiosity and given her a hunger of the great life which is throbbing somewhere, far away, in great cities, in a thousand fascinating forms.

To remain, to take up a mild drudgery in the home, means closing the door on this curiosity. Marriage to such men as remain means at best the renunciation of that romance which is stirring in her imagination. Why should she have been educated, if but to return to a distasteful existence? The parents by the very education which has thrust their daughter so far above their simple needs have destroyed their old authority. No other voice of authority commands her in credible tones to renounce the follies of this life—to consult only the future.

In fact she is none too certain of what is beyond, but she is certain of what she wants to-day. She spurns the doctrine that it is woman's position to abnegate and to immolate herself. New ideas are stirring within her, logical revolts—equality of burden with men, equality of opportunity and of pleasure. She is sure of one life only and that one she passionately desires. She wants to live that life to its fullest, now, in the glory of her youth. She wants to breathe, not to stifle. She wants adventure. She wants excitement and mystery. She wants to see, to know, to experience....

And one fine day, inevitably, she packs her valise as her brothers may have done before her, and despite commands, entreaties, tears, she stands at last on the platform of a shivering creaking train, waving the inevitable farewell to the old people, who stand bewildered, straining their eyes after the fast-fading handkerchief, feebly fluttered by the daughter whom they have educated for this. She will come back soon. She will return in a few months—in a year, surely. She never returns.

Sometimes the home has been disrupted by divorce, by death or by indifference; in which case her departure is the sooner. Sooner or later if she is clever or attractive she reaches New York. New York is the troubling light whose rays penetrate to her wherever she may start. At last, one fine day, she crowds impatiently forward to the front of the choked ferry-boat, beholds the play of a million lights starting against the twilight, vast shapes crowding to the water's edge like mythological monsters, towers flinging up new stars among the constellations—and the battle has begun.

What will she become? In six months she has learned the anatomy of the complex struggling city, flinging herself into a ceaseless whirl of excitement. She usually finds a facile occupation which gives her the defense and the little ready money she needs. She goes into journalism, stenography or the office of a magazine. Sometimes she has already been trained to nursing, which opens many avenues of acquaintance to her deft planning. Sometimes she has a trick with pen or pencil and plays at art. More often she touches the stage in one of a dozen ways. But all this is beside the mark. Her real occupation is exploration—how do they act, these men, clever or stupid, rich, poor, mediocre, dangerous or provokingly easy to manage? What is the extent of the power that she can exert over them?

Her education has been quickly formed. The great fraternity of the Salamanders has taught her of their curious devious understanding. Her acquaintance with women is necessarily limited, but she can meet what men she wishes, men of every station, men drawn to her by the lure of her laughter and tantalizing arts, men who simply wish to amuse themselves, or somber hunters who have passed beyond the common stuff of adventuresses and seek with a renewal of excitement this corruption of innocence. She has no fear of these last, matching her wits against their appetites, paying them back cruelly in snare and disillusion. She lives in automobiles and taxi-cabs, dines in a new restaurant every night—and with difficulty, each week, scrapes up the necessary dollars to pay her board. She knows the insides of pawn-shops, has secret treaties with tradesmen and by a hundred stratagems procures herself presents which may be converted into cash. She is fascinated by "dangerous" men. She adores perilous adventures and somehow or other, miraculously, she never fails in saving her skirts from the contagion of the flames.

The period in which she whirls in this frantic existence—the day of the Salamander—is between eighteen and twenty-five. She does not make the mistake of prolonging, beyond her youth and her charm, this period fascinating though it be. By twenty-five, often sooner, she comes to some decision. Frequently she marries, and marries well, for the opportunities at her disposal are innumerable. Then what she becomes must depend on the invisible hazards that sport with all marriages. Sometimes she selects a career—few women, indeed, are there in the professions who have not known their years among the Salamanders—but as she is always ruled by her brain, she does not often deceive herself; she sees clearly the road ahead and seldom ventures unless she is convinced. Sometimes she prefers her single existence, resigning herself to a steady occupation, slipping back into Salamanderland occasionally. Sometimes—more rarely than it would seem—she takes the open step beyond the social pale, conquered at length by the antagonists she has so long eluded—but then she has betrayed the faith of a Salamander.

To a European, the Salamanders are incomprehensible. He meets them often en voyage, often to the cost of his pride, and for his vanity's sake he denies their innocence. In his civilization they could not exist Even the New Yorker, who analyzes her surface manners, recounts her tricks and evasions, her deceptive advances, is still ignorant of the great currents beneath, and of how profound is their unrest.

For, capricious, inconsistent, harum-scarum, dabbling with fire—yet is she not the free agent she so ardently believes? Back of all the passionate revolt against the commonplace in life, back of all the defiantly proclaimed scorn of conventions, there are the hushed echoes of the retreating first generation, there are old memories, whispers of childhood faith, hesitations and doubts that return and return, and these quiet suspended sounds constantly turn her aside, make of her a being constantly at war with herself, where will and instinct are ever opposed without she perceives or comprehends the where-for.

We see clearly two generations, the old order of broken authority passing sadly away, the new which is bravely seeking a logical standard of conduct beyond that of blind obedience—if yet the time be arrived when humanity be ready. The third—that coming generation in which woman will count for so much, where for the first time she will construct and order—where will it go? Backward a little or forward? Will those who have been Salamanders to-day, turned mothers to-morrow, still teach what they have proclaimed, that what is wrong for the woman is wrong for the man and that if man may experience woman may explore?

THE SALAMANDER

CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXII.
EPILOGUE.

List of Illustrations

PAGE
Doré2
"What do you really think?"4
The chorus girls befan to talk35
"No, no, not so fast!"52
She did not notice him64
"Please don't bother me again."81
Doré vaulted to a seat on the desk118
"Why did you do this?"169
What would he think180
A Fury impelled her224
They had gone to the Hickory Log291
She was riotous with Christmas cheer337
She gave a cry of horror341
"No, I won't leave you."348
"Good-by, Miss Baxter. You're a trump."392
She was hovering before the fatal window424

THE SALAMANDER

CHAPTER I

The day was Thursday; the month, October, rushing to its close; and the battered alarm-clock on the red mantel stood at precisely one o'clock. The room was enormous, high and generally dim, the third floor front of Miss Pim's boarding-house on lower Madison Avenue. Of its four windows, two, those at the side, had been blinded by the uprising of an ugly brick wall, which seemed to impend over the room, crowding into it, depriving it of air. The two windows fronting on the avenue let in two shafts of oblique sunlight. The musty violet paper on the walls, blistered in spots, was capped by a frieze of atrocious pink and blue roses. The window-shades, which had been pulled down to shut out the view of the wall, failed to reach the bottom. The curtain-rods were distorted, the globes on the gas fixtures bitten and smoked. At the back, an alcove held a small bed, concealed under a covering of painted eastern material. An elongated gilt mirror, twelve feet in height, leaned against the corner. Trunks were scattered about, two open and newly ransacked. A folding-bed transformed into a couch, heaped with cushions, was between the blind windows: opposite, a ponderous rococo dressing-table, the mirror stuffed with visiting-cards, photographs and mementoes. Half a dozen vases of flowers—brilliant chrysanthemums, heavily scented violets, American Beauty roses, slender and nodding—fought bravely against the pervading dinginess. On the large central table stood a basket of champagne, newly arrived, a case of assorted perfumes, a box of white evening gloves and two five-pound boxes of candy in fancy baskets.

Before the mirrored dressing-table, tiptoe on a trunk, a slender girlish figure was studying solicitously the effect of gold stockings and low russet shoes with buckles of green enamel. She was in a short skirt and Russian blouse, rich and velvety in material, of a creamy rose-gold luster. The sunlight which struck at her ankles seemed to rise about her body, suffusing it with the glow of joy and youth. The neck was bare; the low, broad, rolling silk collar, which followed the graceful lines of the shoulders beneath, was softened by a full trailing bow of black silk at the throat. A mass of tumbling, tomboy, golden hair, breaking in luxuriant tangles over the clear temples, crowned the head with a garland. Just past twenty-two, her figure was the figure of eighteen, by every descending line, even to the little ankles and feet, finely molded.

She had elected to call herself, according to the custom of the Salamanders, Doré Baxter. The two names, incongruously opposed, were like the past and the present of her wandering history: the first, brilliant, daring, alive with the imperious zest and surprise of youth; the second baldly realistic, bleak, like a distant threatening uprise of mountains.

On the couch, languidly lost among the cushions, Winona Horning (likewise a nom de guerre) was abandoned in lazy attention. In the embrasure of one window, camped tailor fashion in a large armchair, a woman was studying a rôle, beating time with one finger, mumbling occasionally:

"Tum-tum-ti-tumpety-tum-tum-tum! I breakfast in diamonds, I bathe in cream. What's the use? What's the use?"

Snyder—she called herself Miss, but passed for being divorced—was not of the fraternity of the Salamanders. Doré Baxter had found her in ill health, out of a position, discouraged and desperate; and in a characteristic impulse, against all remonstrances, had opened her room to her until better days. The other Salamanders did not notice her presence or admit her equality. She seemed not to perceive their hostility, never joining in their conversation, going and coming silently.

The sharp shaft of the sun, bearing down like a spot-light, brought into half relief the mature lines of the body and the agreeable, if serious, features. The brown head, with a defiance of coquetry, was simply dressed, braided about with stiff rapid coils. The dress was black, the waist unrelieved—the costume of the woman who works. What made the effect seem all the more severe was that there was more than a trace of beauty in the face and form—a prettiness evidently disdained and repressed. One shoe, projecting into the light, was noticeably worn at the heel.

"What do you really think?"

All at once, without turning, the girl on the trunk, twisting anxiously before the mirror, exclaimed:

"Winona, what do you really think?"

"It doesn't show from here."

"How can you see from there? Come over nearer!"

Winona Horning, taller, more thoughtful in her movements, rose reluctantly, fixing a strand of jet-black hair which had strayed, and seated herself according to the command of a little finger. Her complexion was very pale against the black of her hair, her eyes were very large, given to violent and sudden contrasts, more intense and more restless than her companion's.

"And now?" said Doré, lifting the glowing skirt the fraction of an inch.

"Still all right."

"Really?"

"Really!"

"And now?"

"Um-m—yes, now it shows!"

On the golden ankle a mischievous streak of white had appeared—a seam outrageously rent.

"Heavens, what a fix! I've just got to wear them!" said Doré, dropping her skirts with a movement of impatience.

"Estelle has a pair—"

"She needs them at three. We can't connect!"

"Bah! Dazzle with the left leg, then, Dodo," replied Winona, giving her her pet name.

Doré accepted the suggestion with a burst of laughter, and springing lightly down, seated herself on the trunk.

"Yes—yes, it can be done," she said presently, after a moment's practising. "If I don't forget!"

"You won't," said Winona, with a smile.

Snyder rose from her seat, and without paying the slightest attention to this serious comedy, crossed the room and returned to her post, bringing a pencil, with which she began eagerly to jot down a few notes.

"Like the effect?" said Doré, leaving the mirror with a last glance, the tip of her tongue appearing a moment through the sharp white rows of teeth, in the abstraction of her gaze.

She turned, and for the first time her eyes raised themselves expectantly. They were of a deep ultramarine blue, an unusual cloudy shade which gave an unexpected accent of perplexity to the fugitive white and pink of the cheek.

"Perfectly dandy, Dodo; but—"

At this moment from the little ante-chamber outside the door came the irritable silvery ring of the telephone.

"See who it is," said Doré quickly. "Remember! you don't know if I'm in—find out first."

As Winona crossed toward the back, Doré turned with a mute interrogation toward the figure in the window, and extending her arms, pirouetted slowly twice. Lottie Snyder responded with a sudden smile that lighted up her features with a flash of beauty. She nodded twice emphatically, continuing to gaze with kindness and affection. Then she took up her rôle bruskly as Winona returned.

"It's a Mr. Chester—Cheshire? What shall I say?"

"Chesterton," said Doré. "I'll go."

She consumed a moment searching among the overflow of gloves on the trunk-tray, and went to the telephone, without closing the door. Winona, not to speak to Snyder, began to manicure her hands. From the hall came the sounds of broken conversation:

"Hello? Who is it?... Yes, this is Miss Baxter.... Who?... Huntington?... Oh, yes, Chesterton ... of course I remember.... How do you do?... I'm just up.... Yes, splendid dance!... What?... To-night?... No-o.... Who else is in the party?... Just us two?... No, I guess not!... Aren't you a little sudden, Mr. Chesterton?... Not with you alone.... Oh, yes; but I'm very formal! That's where you make your mistake.... Certainly, I'd go with a good many men, but not with you.... Not till I really know you.... Now, I'm going to tell you something, Mr. Chesterton. I'm not like other girls, I play fair. I expect men to make mistakes—one mistake. I always forgive once, and I always give one warning—just one! You understand? All right! I won't say any more!... No, I'm not offended.... I'm quite used to such mistakes: they sort of follow dances, don't they?... Well, that's nice; I'm glad you understand me.... Some men don't, you know!... That's very flattering!... If what?... If it's made a party of four?... That would be different, yes.... Try—telephone me about six and I'll let you know.... No, I couldn't say definitely now; I'll have to try and get out of another party.... No, I haven't seen that play yet.... Phone at six.... Oh, dear me! How easily you repeat that!... Why, yes, I liked you; I thought you danced the Hesitation perfectly dandy...." (A laugh.) "Well, that's enough.... I can't promise.... Phone, anyhow.... Good-by.... Yes, oh, yes.... Good-by.... Not offended! Oh, no!... Good-by!"

She came back, and extending her fingers above her head, said:

"So high!" She brought her hands close together: "So thin! A monocle—badly tamed—a ladylike mustache—all I remember! Oh, yes, he said he had two automobiles—most important!" She shrugged her shoulders and added maliciously: "We'll put him down, anyhow—last call for dinner!... So you don't like my costume?"

"That isn't it!" said Winona. She turned, hesitating: "Only, for an orgy of old Sassoon's."

"Orgy," in the lexicon of the Salamanders, is a banquet in the superlative of lavishness; on the other hand, a dinner or a luncheon that has the slightest taint of economy is derogatorily known as a "tea-party."

"It's my style—it's me!" said Doré, with a confident bob of her head.

"Those girls will come all Gussied up for Sassoon," persisted Winona. "Staggering, under the war-paint!"

"Let me alone," said Dodo; "I know what I'm doing!"

She knew she had made no blunder. The costume exhaled a perfume of freshness and artless charm, from the daintiness with which the throat was revealed, from the slight youthful bust delicately defined under the informality of the blouse, to the long descending clinging of the coat, which followed, half-way to the knee, lines of young and slender grace which can not be counterfeited.

"It's individual—it's me," she repeated, running her little hands caressingly down the slim undulation of the waist, caught in by the trim green belt.

The telephone rang a second time.

"Joe Gilday," said Winona presently, covering the mouthpiece with her hand.

"Say I'm in," said Doré hastily, in a half whisper. "Now go back and say I'm out!"

"What's wrong?" said Winona, opening her eyes.

"Needs disciplining."

"He knows you're here—says he must speak to you," said the emissary, reappearing.

"Tell him I am, and won't," said Doré mercilessly.

Snyder, with a sudden recognition of the clock, rose, and going to a trunk, pounced on a sailor hat, slapping it on her head without looking in the mirror. She came and planted herself before Doré, who had watched her, laughing.

"Beating it up to Blainey's," she said. The voice was low, but with a slur that accused ordinary antecedents. "Say, he's dipped on you; got a fat part salted away—if you ever turn up! Why don't you see him?"

"I will—I will."

"Look here. You're not going to let everything slip this season, too, are you?"

"How do I know what I'll do to-morrow?" said Doré, laughing.

"Aren't you ever going to settle down?"

"Yes, indeed; in a year!"

"It's a real fat part; you're crazy to lose the chance!"

"Tell Blainey to be patient; I'm going to be serious—soon!"

"See him!"

"I will—I will!"

"When?"

"To-morrow—perhaps."

She took Snyder by the shoulders, readjusting the hat.

"Aren't you ashamed to treat yourself this way! You can be real pretty, if you want to."

"When I want to, I am," said Snyder, shrugging her shoulders, but opposing no resistance to the rearrangement of her costume.

"Snyder, you do it on purpose!" said Doré, vexed at the hang of the skirt, which resisted her efforts.

Winona reentered. She had heard the conversation with one ear, while extending comfort to the frantic Gilday in disgrace. Snyder, with the entrée to Blainey, manager for the Lipswitch and Berger Circuit, aroused her respect with her envy.

"Snyder, what do you do all the time?" she said in a conciliatory tone.

"Meaning what?"

"You never go out—never amuse yourself!"

"I amuse myself much more than you!"

"What!" exclaimed Winona.

"Much more. I work!"

Saying which, she flung into her jacket like a schoolboy, and went out without further adieus.

"Pleasant creature!" said Winona acidly.

"It's you who are wrong," said Doré warmly. "Why patronize her?"

"There is a difference between us, I think," said Winona coldly. "Really, Dodo, I don't understand how you can—"

"Let Snyder alone," said Doré, with a flash of anger. "No harm comes from being decent to some one who's down. Don't be so hard—you never know what may happen to you!" Seeing the flush on Winona's face, she softened her tone and, her habitual good humor returning, added: "If you knew her struggle— There! Let's drop it!"

Fortunately, the telephone broke in on the tension. Another followed, even before she had left the anteroom. The first was an invitation from Roderigo Sanderson, one of Broadway's favorite leading men, to a dress rehearsal of a new comic opera that promised to be the rage of the season. While secretly delighted at the prospect, Doré answered, in a tone of subdued suffering, that she was in bed with a frightful head-ache—that, though it seemed to be improving, she couldn't tell how she would feel later, and adjourned a decision until six, at which hour he was to telephone. She gave the same reply to the second invitation, a proposition from Donald Bacon, a broker, who was organizing a party for a cabaret dance later in the evening.

"Hurray! Now I can have a choice," she said, tripping gaily back and pirouetting twice on her left foot. Suddenly she stopped, folding her arms savagely.

"Winona!"

"What?"

"I'm bored!"

"Since when?"

"Don't laugh! Really, I am unhappy! If something exciting would happen—if I could fall in love!"

"You will be when you come back!"

"Yes—that's the trouble!" said Doré, laughing. "But it never lasts!"

"And day before yesterday?"

"What about it?"

"That wonderful Italian you came home raving about?"

"Ah, yes! that was a great disappointment!" She repeated, in a tone of discouragement: "A great disappointment! It's the second meeting that's so awful! Men are so stupid, it's no fun any more!" All at once she noticed her friend's attitude. "What's the matter? You're not angry!"

"No, not that!" Winona rose, flinging down the manicuring sticks, drawing a deep breath. "Only, when I see you throwing over a chance like that from Blainey—"

"What! You want the job?" exclaimed Doré, struck by the thought.

"Want it?" cried the girl bitterly. "I'd go up Broadway on my knees to get it!"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Ah! this has got to end sometime," said the girl, locking and unlocking her fingers. "Snyder was right. It's work—work! She's lucky!"

Doré became suddenly thoughtful. Between Salamanders real confidences are rare. She knew nothing of the girl who was separated from her but by a wall, but there was no mistaking the pain in her voice.

"I'm sorry!" she said.

"Yes, I've come to the end of my rope," said Winona. "I'm older than you—I've played too long!"

"You shall have the job!"

"Oh, it's easy to—"

"I'll go to-morrow. I'll make Blainey give it to you."

"He won't!"

"He? Of course he will! That old walrus? He'll do anything I tell him! That's settled! I'll see him to-morrow!"

Winona turned, composing her passion.

"I'm a fool!" she said.

"Hard up?"

"Busted!"

"The deuce! So'm I! Never mind; we'll find some way—"

"Why don't you take the job yourself?"

"I? Never! I couldn't! It's too soon to be serious!" exclaimed Doré, laughing in order to relieve the tension. "When I'm twenty-three—in six months—not before! It's all decided."

"First time you've been to one of Sassoon's parties?" asked Winona abruptly.

"First time! I'm quite excited!"

"You've met him, then?"

"No, not yet! I'm going as a chorus girl."

"What?"

"He's entertaining the sextette of the Gay Prince—I'm to replace one. I got the bid through Adèle Vickers—you remember her? She's in the sextette."

"Adèle Vickers," said Winona, with a frown.

"It's on the quiet, naturally," said Doré, not noticing the expression. "I'm to be taken for a chorus girl, by old Sassoon too—complications, heaps of fun!"

"You're crazy! Some one'll recognize you!"

"Bah!"

"Sassoon doesn't play fair!" said Winona abruptly.

"Dangerous?"

"He doesn't play the game fair!" repeated Winona, with more insistence.

"I like precipices!" said Doré, smiling.

"How you express things, Dodo!"

"Why? Don't you like 'em?"

"Yes, naturally. But with Sassoon—"

"It's such fun!" said Doré, shaking her curls.

Her companion crossed her fingers and held them up in warning.

"Dodo, be careful!"

"I'll take care of myself!" said Doré scornfully, and a flash of excitement began to show in the dark blue shadows of her eyes.

"Different! Sassoon is on the black list, Dodo!"

Albert Edward Sassoon, whom two little Salamanders were thus discussing in a great barn of a room, third floor front of Miss Pim's boarding-house, was the head of the great family of Sassoon, which for three generations had stood, socially and financially, among the first powers of the city.

"Thanks for the warning. When you know, you know what to do!" said Doré carelessly. "Just let him try!"

The admonition troubled her not at all. She had met and scored others before who in the secret code of the Salamanders were written down unfair. The prospect of such an antagonist brought to her a little more animation. She bolted into a snug-fitting fur toque, brightened by a flight of feathers at the side, green with a touch of red.

"There!" she exclaimed merrily. "A bit of the throat, a bit of the ankle, and a slash of red—that's Dodo! What's the time?"

"Twenty past. Who's your prop?"

"Stacey."

"Prop," in the lexicon of the Salamanders, is a term obviously converted from the theatrical "property." A "prop," in Salamanderland, is a youth not too long out of the nest to be rebellious, possessed of an automobile—a sine qua non—and agitated by a patriotic craving to counteract the evil effects of the hoarding of gold. Each Salamander of good standing counts from three to a dozen props, carefully broken, kept in a state of expectant gratitude, genii of the telephone waiting a summons to fetch and carry, purchase tickets of all descriptions, lead the way to theater or opera, and, above all, to fill in those blank dates, or deferred engagements, which otherwise might become items of personal expense.

At this moment the curly brown head of Ida Summers, of the second floor back, bobbed in and out, saying in a stage whisper:

"Black Friday! Beware! The cat's loose—rampaging!"

It was a warning that Miss Pim, in a periodic spasm of alarm, was spreading dismay through the two houses in her progress in search of long-deferred rents.

"Horrors!" exclaimed Winona Horning. She sprang to the door which gave into her room, ready to use it as an escape from either attack.

"Twice this week. Um-m—means business!" said Doré solemnly. "I'm three weeks behind. How are you?"

"Five!"

"We must get busy," said Doré pensively. "I have just two dollars in sight!"

"Two? You're a millionaire!"

"The champagne will bring something," said Doré, fingering the basket, "but I can't let it go until Mr. Peavey—If he'd only call up for to-night! Zip might take the perfume, but I need it so! Worse luck, the flowers have all come from the wrong places. There's twenty dollars there, if it were only Pouffé. And look at this!"

She went to her bureau, and opening a little drawer, held up a bank-note.

"Fifty dollars!" exclaimed Winona, amazed.

"Ridiculous, isn't it?" said Doré, with a laugh, shutting it up again. "Joe Gilday had the impertinence to slip it in there, after I had refused a loan!"

"What! Angry for that?" said Winona, carried away by the famine the money had awakened in her.

"Certainly I am!" said Doré energetically. "Do you think I'd allow a man to give me money—like that?"

This ethical point might have been discussed, but at the moment a knock broke in upon the conversation. The two girls started, half expecting to behold Miss Pim's military figure advancing into the room.

"Who is it?" said Doré anxiously.

"It's Stacey," said a docile voice.

"Shall I go?" inquired Winona, with a gesture.

"No, no—stay! Always stay!" said Doré, hastily stuffing back the overflowing contents of a trunk and signaling Winona to close the lid nearest her.

Stacey Van Loan crowded into the room. He was a splendid grenadier type of man, with the smiling vacant face of a boy. He wore shoes for which he paid thirty dollars, a suit that cost a hundred, a great fur coat that cost eight times more, enormous fur gloves, and a large pearl pin in his cravat. On entering, he always blushed twice, the first as an apology and the second for having blushed before. The most captious Salamander would have accepted him at a glance as the beau ideal of a prop—a perfect blend of radiating expensiveness and docile timidity. Van Loan Senior, of the steel nobility of Pennsylvania, had insisted on his acquiring a profession after two unfortunate attempts at collegiate culture, and had exiled him to New York to study law, allotting him twenty thousand dollars a year to defray necessary expenses.

"Bingo! what a knock-out!" said Stacey, gazing open-mouthed, heels together, at the glowing figure that greeted him.

Doré, who had certain expectations as to his arrival, perceiving that he held one hand concealed behind his back, broke into smiles.

"You sly fellow, what are you hiding there?"

"All right?" said Van Loan, with an anxious gulp. "How about it?"

He thrust out an enormous bouquet of orchids, which, in his fear of appearing parsimonious, he had doubled beyond all reason. The sight of these flowers of luxury, the price of which would have gone a long way toward placating Miss Pim, brought a quick telegraphic glance of irony between the two girls.

"Isn't he a darling?" said Doré, taking the huge floral display and stealing a glance at the ribbon, which, alas, did not bear the legend Pouffé, who was approachable in time of need. "Stacey is really the most thoughtful boy, and everything he gets is in perfect taste. He never does anything by halves!"

As she said this in a careless manner, which made the young fellow redden to the ears with delight, she was secretly smothering a desire to laugh, and wondering how on earth she was to divide the monstrous display without discouraging future exhibitions of lavishness. She moved presently toward the back of the room, saying carelessly:

"Look at my last photographs, Stacey."

Then she quickly slipped a third of the bouquet behind a trunk, signaling Winona, and turning before the long mirror, affixed the orchids, spreading them loosely to conceal the defection.

"Quarter of. You'll be late!" said Winona, masking the trunk with her skirts.

"I want to be! I'm not going to have a lot of society women find me on the door-step!" said Doré, for the benefit of the prop. "Come on, Stacey; you can look at the photos another day!" She flung about her shoulders a white stole from the floor below, and buried her hands in a muff of the same provenance. "Good-by, dear. Back late. Go ahead, Stacey!"

A moment later she reentered hurriedly.

"Give me the others, quick!" she said, detaching those at her waist. "These are from Granard's. Take them there—tell them Estelle sent you; she has an arrangement with them. See what you can get. Tell them we'll send 'em custom."

She completed the transfer of the smaller bunch, carefully arranging the wide stole, which she pinned against accidents.

"Listen. If Joe telephones again, make him call me up at six—don't say I said it! It's possible Blainey may get it in his head to call up. I'll go with him, unless—unless Peavey wants me for dinner. I must see him before I dispose of the champagne—understand? You know what to answer the rest." She hesitated, looking at the orchids: "We ought to get fifteen out of them. Remember, promise them our custom; use Pouffé on them. Good-by, dear!"

"Be careful!"

"Yes—yes—yes!"

"Dangerous!"

"Bah! If they only were—but they're not!"

She rejoined Stacey, whose nose was sublimely at the wheel, crying:

"Let her go, Stacey. Up to Tenafly's. Break the speed law!"

She started to spring in, but suddenly remembering the offending stocking, stopped and ascended quietly—on the left foot.

CHAPTER II

At this time, it happened that the highest democratic circles of New York were thrown into a turmoil of intrigue and social carnage by the visit of representatives of one of the royal houses of Europe, traveling under the title of the Comte and Comtesse de Joncy. A banquet had been respectfully tendered these rare manifestations of the principle of divine right. The list of guests, directed by the autocratic hand of Mrs. Albert Edward Sassoon, tore New York society to shreds, and reconstituted that social map which had been so opportunely established by the visit of the lamented Grand Duke and Royal Imperial Highness Alexis. Twenty-five young gentlemen of irreproachable standing had flung themselves enthusiastically at the distinguished honor of offering soup to such exalted personages, and the press of New York scrupulously published the list of honorary waiters high among the important details of the probable cost per plate of this extraordinary banquet.

Now, the Comte de Joncy, being profoundly bored by such amateur exhibitions, had remarked to Sassoon that, in his quality of traveler and student of important social manifestations, what had impressed him most was the superior equipment, physically and mentally, of the American chorus girl.

It was a remark that Sassoon was eminently fitted to comprehend—having, indeed, received the same confidential observation from the Comte de Joncy's last royal predecessor. The present luncheon was the prompt response, and to insure the necessary freedom from publicity, Harrigan Blood, editor of the New York Free Press, was invited.

They waited in the brilliant Louis XVI salon of that private suite which Tenafly reserved for his choicest patrons, patiently prepared for that extra half-hour of delay which the ladies of the chorus would be sure to take in their desire to show themselves ladies of the highest fashion. The curtains were open on the cozy dining-room, on the spectacle of shining linen, the spark of silver and the gay color of fragrant bouquets. Two or three waiters were giving the last touches under the personal supervision of Tenafly himself, who accorded this mark of respect only to the master who had raised him from head waiter in a popular roadside inn to the management of a restaurant capitalized in millions.

There were six: Sassoon, slight, waxen, bored, with a wandering, fatigued glance, oriental in the length of his head and the deep setting of the eyes; the Comte de Joncy, short, round-bellied, hair transparent and polished, parted from the forehead to the neck, with nothing of dignity except in his gesture and the agreeable modulation of his voice; Judge Massingale of the magistrates court, urbane, slightly stooped in shoulders, high in forehead, set in glance, an onlooker keenly observant, and observing with a relish that showed in the tolerant humor of the thin ever-smiling lips; Tom Busby, leader of cotillions and social prescriber to a bored and desperate world, active as a young girl, bald at thirty, but with a radiating charm, disliking no one, never failing in zest, animating the surface of gaiety, blind to ugliness below, well born and indispensable; Garret Lindaberry, known better as "Garry" Lindaberry, not yet thirty, framed like a frontiersman, with a head molded for a statesman, endowed with every mental energy except necessity, burning up his superb vitality in insignificant supremacies, a magnificent man-of-war sailing without a rudder, supremely elegant; never, in the wildest orgies, relaxing the control of absolute courtesy; finally, Harrigan Blood, interloper, last to arrive, abrupt and on the rush, in gray cheviot, which he had assumed as a flaunting of his independence before those whose motive for inviting him he perfectly understood. Neck and shoulders massive, head capacious and already beginning to show the stealing in of the gray, jaw strong and undershot like a bulldog's, cropped mustache, forehead seamed with wrinkles, incapable of silence or attention except when in the sudden contemplative pursuit of an idea, disdaining men, and women more than men on account of the distraction they flung him into, passionately devoted to ideas, he bided his time, knowing no morality but achievement.

The group formed an interesting commentary on American society of the day, which parallels that of modern France, with its Bourbon, its Napoleonic and its Orleanist strata of nobility. Sassoon and Massingale were of the old legitimists, offshoots of families that had never relaxed their supremacy from colonial days; Lindaberry and Busby were inheritors in the third generation of that first period of industrial adventure, the period of the gold-fields of 1845, while Harrigan Blood was of the present era of volcanic opportunity, that creates in a day its marshals of the Grand Army of Industry, ennobles its soldiers of yesterday, and forces the portals of established sets with the golden knocking of new giants, who cast on the steps the soiled garments of the factory, the mining camp and the construction gang.

Past and present have given the American two distinct types. The characteristics of the first are aristocratic, the thinly elongated head, the curved skull balancing on a slender neck, nose and forehead advancing, the jaw less and less accentuated. Of the second, the type of the roughly arriving adventurer, Harrigan Blood was the ideal. His was the solid, crust-breaking, boulder type of head, embedded on shoulders capable of propelling it upward through the multitude, the democrat who places his chair roughly in the overcrowded front rank, whose wife and daughters will crown, by way of Europe, the foundation which he flings down.

"Mon cher Sassoon," said the Comte de Joncy, studying Blood,—who, in another group, was discussing the coming political campaign with Massingale,—"I'll give you a bit of advice. The animal is dangerous! I know the kind!"

"Words—words!" said Sassoon, his wandering eye flitting a moment to the group. "We manage him very well."

"If you could dangle the prospect of a title before his eyes," said the count, with a sardonic smile. "But you—what have you to offer him?"

"Money!" said Sassoon indifferently. "We make him a partner in our operations. He won't attack us!"

"He will use you!" said De Joncy shrewdly. "That type doesn't love money! When he gets as much as he wants, beware! Do you receive him?"

"Oh, we invite him to half a dozen of these affairs," said Sassoon, without looking at his companion and speaking as if his mind were elsewhere. "That keeps him to generalizations!"

This word, which was afterward repeated, and reaching the ears of Harrigan Blood, made of him an overt enemy, made the Comte de Joncy smile.

"I see you, too, have your diplomacy," he said, studying Sassoon with more interest.

"Yes. Generalizations are blank cartridges: they can be aimed at any one," Sassoon said, without animation. He ran a thin forefinger over the scarce mustache that mounted in a W from the full upper lip. Then, raising his voice a little, he called Busby:

"I say, Buzzy, hurry things up a bit!"

Busby, like Ganymede at a frown from Jove, departed lightly in the direction of the ladies' dressing-room.

"It's Buzzy, my darlings," he said, sticking in his beaky nose and wide grinning mouth. "You've prinked enough; I'm coming in!"

He was immediately surrounded and assailed with exclamations:

"Oh, Buzzy! why didn't you tell us!"

"A Royal Highness!"

"Mean thing!—not to warn us!"

"What d'ye call His Nibs?"

"We're tickled to death!"

"Don't suffocate me, sweethearts," said Busby, defending himself. "I didn't tell you for a damn good reason. No press-agent stunts before or after. Understand? Besides, the papers are bottled up—democratic respect for His Highness."

"I've a mind to have appendicitis," said one in a whisper to a companion. "Gee! What a chance!"

"If you do, Consuelo, dear," said Busby urbanely, "we'll ship you down in a service elevator, and see you get the operation, too. Now, no nonsense, girls. You know what that means."

"What we've got to keep it out of the poipers? What, no publicity? Gee!"

"None, now or after," said Busby firmly.

All at once he looked up, astonished, perceiving Doré, who floated in at this moment like a golden bird.

"Gwendolyn had the sneezes," said Adèle Vickers hastily. "This is her sister."

"What's her name?" said Busby suspiciously, while the chorus girls, with their mountainous hats and sweeping feathers, their overloaded bodices and jeweled necks, studied with some concern the simple daring of this new arrival, uncertain and apprehensive.

"Miss Baxter," said Miss Vickers in a low voice.

"She's not a reporter?" said Busby, hesitating.

"Honest to God, Buzzy," said Adèle Vickers vehemently. "She's on the stage, the legitimate—Doré Baxter, a friend of mine!"

"I know her!" said Busby, suddenly enlightened by the full name, and going to her, he said: "Met you at a party of Bruce Gunther's, I believe, Miss Baxter."

Doré, who thus found herself, to her vexation, sailing under her own colors, said, with a pleading look:

"Don't give me away, will you? It's just a lark, and," she added lower, "don't call me Miss Baxter!"

"A stage name, eh?"

"Splendid one—Trixie Tennyson. Doesn't that sound like a head-liner?" she added confidentially, in the low tone in which the conversation had been conducted.

Busby repeated the name, chuckling to himself, yielding to his sense of humor. "All right! Now, girls, come on!"

"But what shall we call him?"

"Call him anything you like ... after the soup!" said Busby, laughing. "Remember! he's here to be amused!... Have any of you girls changed your names since I saw you last?... No?... Then I know them!..." He told them off, counting with his fingers: "Adèle Vickers, Georgie Gwynne—it used to be Bronson last year—"

"It never was!" exclaimed a petite Irish brunette, with a saucy smile and a roguish eye: "Baron—"

"I'll give you a better one: Georgie Washington!" continued Busby. "Why not? Fine!... A press-agent would charge for that!... I see an inch of nose, a gray eye and a brown cheek under an avalanche of hat—must be Viola Pax!"

"Violetta, please!" said a southern type with soft consonants.

"To be sure!... to be sure!... Both are up-to-date, though!... Trixie Tennyson ... ah, there's a name!... Do you know who Tennyson was, little dears?... A great scientist who discovered the reason why brooks go on forever!" Adèle and Doré smiled, but the rest accepted the information. "Paula Stuart and Consuelo ... dear me! I never did know your last name, Consuelo, darling!"

"Vincent! and cut out the guying!" said a fair buxom type, child of the Rialto. "Let's get a move on!"

"Quite right!" said Busby, offering an arm to Adèle Vickers and Violetta Pax. "Follow me ... always!"

The dressing-room emptied itself, with a last struggle for the mirror, a few hurried applications of rouge, and a loosening of perfumes, while, above the pleasant rustle of skirts, the voice of Georgie Gwynne was heard in a stage whisper:

"Remember, girls! Act refined!"

Consuelo Vincent, under pretext of a cold, insisted on keeping a magnificent sable cape, which she shifted constantly the better to display it.

On perceiving Busby arriving with this bouquet of vermilion smiles, polished teeth and flashing eyes, the Comte de Joncy, who had begun to be restless under the strain of serious conversation, brightened visibly, and holding out both hands, exclaimed with the practised familiarity of a patron of all the arts:

"Why you make me wait so long? Jolis petits amours! Ah, she is charming, this one. What a naughty little eye! Oho! something Spanish—do you dance the Bolero? Ah, but each is perfect—adorable! I could eat every one of them!"

But to this royal affability the ladies of the chorus, very stiff, very correct, lisping a little, made answer:

"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure!"

"It's quite an unexpected pleasure!"

"Indeed, most glad to meet you!"

The introductions continued, and presently the room resounded with such phrases as these:

"I hope we're not terribly late!... New York streets are so crowded!"

"Delightful weather, don't you think?"

"What a charming view!... I dote on views, don't you?"

"Have you seen Péléas and Mélisande?"

And Georgie Gwynne, picking her words with difficulty, was remarking to Harrigan Blood:

"You're such a celebrity, Mr. Blood!... I'm tick ... I'm delighted to know you!"

The Comte de Joncy, overcome by this flood of manners, said to his host:

"The devil, mon cher Sassoon, they overawe me! You are sure it is no mistake? It is not some of your dreadful wives?"

"Wait!" said Sassoon, raising a finger.

Busby, who knew their ways, arrived with a tray of cocktails, scolding them like a stage-manager:

"Now, girls—girls! Unbend! Warm up, or His Highness will catch a cold! Come on, Consuelo, you've aired your furs enough; send them back—you give us a chill! This will never do! Now perk up, girls, do perk up!"

Doré took the cocktail offered, and profiting by the stir, emptied it quickly behind her in the roots of a glowing orange tree. She raised her eyes suddenly to Massingale's. He had detected the movement, and was smiling. She made a quick, half-checked gesture of her arm, imploring his confidence, as, amused, he came to her side.

"What a charming name, Miss Tennyson," he said, without reference to what he had seen. "Are you related?"

She understood that he would not betray her.

"Alfred's a sort of distant cousin," she said with a lisp, affecting a mannerism of the shoulders. "Of course, I haven't kept my full name—my full name is Rowena Robsart Tennyson; but that wouldn't do for the stage, would it? Trixie—Trixie Tennyson is chicker, don't you think?"

"Is what?"

"Chicker—French, you know!"

"Ah, more chic," he said, looking at her steadily with a little lurking mockery in the corners of his eyes.

"I'm not fooling him," she said to herself, impressed by the steadiness of his judicial look, half inquisitorial, half amused. Nevertheless, she continued with a mincing imitation of Violetta Pax, who could be heard discoursing on art.

"What charming weather! Do you like our show? Have you seen it?"

"Yes—have you?" he said, with malice in his eyes.

"What do you mean by that? I'm sure I don't know!"

"I understood you came in place of your sister. Did you forget?"

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, knowing the comedy useless, but continuing it. She was easily impressed, especially at a first meeting, and she had a feeling that to be a judge one must know all, see through every subterfuge.

"'Course I've only been in the sextette a couple of nights."

"And what is your ambition? Tragedy?"

"Oh, no!" she said, with an important seriousness. "I don't think tragedy's in my complexion, do you? I dote on comedy, though; I'd like to be a Maude Adams s-some day."

"So you are serious?" he said gravely.

"Oh, much so—'course, I don't know. I haven't any prejudices against marriage," she continued, allowing her great blue troubling eyes to remain on his. "I sometimes think I'd like to go to London and marry into the English aristocracy."

He bit his lips to keep from laughing.

"Society is so narrow here—there's more opportunity abroad, don't you think?"

He did not answer, considering her fixedly, plainly intrigued.

She moved into the embrasure of a window with a defensive movement.

"The view's quite wonderful, isn't it?"

They were on the fifteenth floor, with a clear sweep of the lower city. He moved to her side, looking out gravely, impressed as one who reads beneath the surface of things. From the window the spectacle of the city below them irrevocably rooted to the soil, caged in the full tide of labor, gave an exquisite sense of luxury to this banquet among the clouds. To the south a light bank of fog, low and spreading, was eating up the horizon of water and distant shore, magnifying the checkered chart of the city as it closed about it. It seemed as if the whole world were there, the world of toil, marching endlessly, regimented into squares, chained to the bitter gods of necessity and the commonplace.

"It gives you the true feeling of splendor," he said. "The world does not change. We might be on the Hanging Gardens of Babylon." He continued, his eyes lit up by a flash of imagination that revealed the youth still in his features: "It is Babylon, Assyria, Egypt. The Pyramids were raised thus, man in terms of a thousand, harnessed and whipped, while a few looked down and enjoyed."

She forgot the part she had assumed, keenly responsive. Her mind, still neglected, was not without perceptions, ready to be awakened to imagination. She saw as he saw, feeling more deeply.

She extended her hand toward the Egyptian hordes beneath them, looking at him curiously.

"And that interests you?"

"Both interest me. That and this. Everything is interesting," he said, with a smile that comprehended her. "Especially you and your motive."

"You know I'm not one of—" she began abruptly.

He shrugged his shoulders good-humoredly, and in his eyes was the same look of delighted malice that had brought him to her.

"You needn't explain. Your manner was perfect. I quite understand you—much better than you believe."

He moved forward, joining the movement into the dining-room. She followed, watching him covertly, enveloped still by his unusual personality.

As the chorus girls still persisted in their display of mannered stateliness, the men listened to Harrigan Blood, who had begun to coin ideas.

"Count, here you have America in a thimble." He elevated his second cocktail, speaking in the slightly raised tone of one who is accustomed to the attention of all listeners. "Your Frenchman takes an afternoon sipping himself into gaiety; your German begins to sing only when he has drunk up a river of beer; but your American—he's different! What do we do? We've won or we've lost—we've got to rejoice or forget—it's all the same. We bolt to a bar and cry: 'Tom, throw something into me that'll explode!' And he hands us a cocktail! Here's America: a hundred millions in a generation, a century's progress in a decade—the future to-morrow, and a change of mood in a second!"

He ended, swallowing his drink in a gulp. Like most mad geniuses of the press, he drank enormously, feeding thus the brain that he punished without mercy.

Busby, who peddled epigrams, murmured to himself with a view to future authorship, "A cocktail is an explosion of spirits; a cocktail...."

The chorus girls, who regarded Harrigan Blood as a sort of demigod who could make a reputation with a stroke of his pen, acclaimed this sally with exaggerated delight. The party crowded into the dining-room, seeking their places.

CHAPTER III

Doré found herself between Judge Massingale and Lindaberry, Harrigan Blood opposite between Georgie Gwynne and Violetta Pax. Sassoon was at the farther end, opposite Lindaberry, with Adèle Vickers and Busby to his right, and Paula Stuart and the Comte de Joncy on his left, Consuelo Vincent sharing the noble guest, with Massingale next to her.

Beside each feminine plate a bouquet of orchids and yellow pansies, daintily blended, was waiting, and from the loosely bound stems the edge of a bank-note showed—a slit of indecipherable green.

Immediately there was a murmur of voices, a quick outstretching of hands, and a sudden careful pinning on to waists, while each glance affected unconsciousness of what it had detected. Doré did not imitate the others. Her eye, too, had immediately caught the disclosed corner. She contrived, while folding her gloves, to turn the bouquet slightly, so that no trace of what it contained showed. Then, when the opportunity came, she examined the faces of the men. So quickly had the flowers been transferred to the bodices that the male portion remained in ignorance. Massingale was too close to her to be sure of. Had his quick eye detected what the others had missed? To refuse the bouquet meant to bring down on her head a torrent of explanations; ignorance were better.

At this moment there was a hollow pause. The caviar had just been served, and the chorus girls, watching for a precedent, were in a quandary between a fork which inclined to a knife, and a fork that was a tortured spoon. But Georgie Gwynne, too long repressed, exclaimed:

"Oh, hell! Buzzy, tell us the club."

This remark, and the roar with which is was greeted, dispelled at once the gloom that had settled about the Royal Observer. The chorus girls, unbending, began to talk American—all at once, chattering, gesturing. Doré profited by the moment to affix the bouquet among the orchids she already wore. The success of Georgie Gwynne's ice-breaking was such that the Comte de Joncy, charmed by such naturalness, wished to invite her to his side; but, amid protests, it was decided, on a happy motion of Busby's, that the guests should rotate after each course.

The chorus girls began to talk

"Sorry it's so," said Massingale, turning; "I shall lose you!"

"Oh, now you know I'm a counterfeit," Dodo said maliciously, "I shall spoil your fun. Never mind; I promise to go early!"

"Who are you?" he said, by way of answer.

"Trixie Tennyson!"

"I've half a mind to denounce you!"

"Oh, Your Honor, you wouldn't do that!"

"So you won't tell me who you are?"

"It'll be so much more fun for you to find out!"

She listened to him with her head set a little to one side. She rarely gave the full of her face, keeping always about her a subtle touch of evasion.

"I know her kind well," he had said to himself. But he continued to watch her intently, interested in that innate sense of the shades of coquetry she displayed in the lingering slanted glances, and the eerie smile which gathered from the malicious corners of her eyes, slipping down the curved cheek to play a moment about her lips.

"Why did you come?" he said, wishing that she would turn toward him.

"Curiosity!"

"Precipices?"

She turned to him, genuine surprise in the blue clouded eyes, her rosy lips parted in amazement.

"How did you know?"

"It wasn't difficult!"

"You're uncanny!"

His sense of divination had so startled her that she turned from him a moment, wondering what attitude to assume. While feigning to listen to the declaiming of Harrigan Blood, she took every opportunity to study him. Massingale, scarcely forty, had an intellectual aristocracy about him that lay in the impersonality of his amused study of others. Yet in this scrutiny there was no accent of criticism. His lips were relaxed in a tolerant humor, and this smile puzzled her. Was he also of this company who sought amusement in a descent to other levels, or was he simply an observer, a man who had ended a phase of life, but who still delighted in the contemplation of the ridiculous, the grotesque and the absurdity of these petty contests of wits? She was aware that he had attacked her imagination in a way no man had tried before, and this presumption awoke an instant spirit of resistance. She stole a glance from time to time in the mirror, but she avoided opportunities for conversation.

From the farther end of the table she beheld the guest of the day radiating happiness under a storm of questions from the chorus girls:

"Perfectly horrid of you to call yourself count!"

"Count, lord, I've got a string of 'em!"

"Barons."

"Dukes, too. I know Duke of What's-His-Name Biscay. He's a nice boy! Do you know him?"

And Georgie Gwynne, flushed with her first success, said to Harrigan Blood, in a permeating aside:

"When I get to His Nibs, watch what I'll hand him!"

But Harrigan Blood, absorbed in an idea, answered her:

"Be quiet now, Georgie—gorge yourself!"

"Composing an editorial on luxury, Harrigan?" said Lindaberry, speaking for the first time.

Harrigan Blood admitted the patness of the guess with a wave of his hand, leaning heavily on the table with his elbows. He had always an air of being in his shirt-sleeves.

"See the Free Press to-morrow," he said, moving his large hand over his face and frowning spasmodically. His eye ran quickly over the menu, calculating the cost per plate, the value of the rare wines, the decorations, the presents and the tips. "Two thousand dollars at the least—four thousand dinners below Fourteenth Street, five years abroad for a genius who is stifling, twenty thousand tired laborers to a moving-picture show. And with what we turn over with our fork and regret, the waste that will be thrown away, a family could live a year! This is civilization and Christianity!"

"Appetite good, Harrigan?" said Lindaberry, with an impertinence that few would have ventured.

"Better than yours," said Blood impatiently. "Ideas and personalities have no connection. Ends are one thing, instruments another. Who was the greatest of the disciples? St. Paul. He had experienced! Shakespeare—Tolstoy. The caviar is delicious!"

In his attitude he felt no hypocrisy. He looked upon himself as a machine, to be fed and to be kept in order by sensations—experiences: a privileged nature dedicated passionately to ideal ends. For the rest, his contempt for mankind in the present was profound. He had conquered success early, but he retained an abiding bitterness against the world which had misunderstood him and forced him a short period to wait.

"And this is Harrigan Blood!" Doré thought, wondering. Another day flashed before her—two years old—when, just arrived, a despairing claimant, she had pleaded in vain for opportunity in the great soul-crushing offices of the Free Press. The sport of fate had flung her a chance, and watching Harrigan Blood from the malicious corners of her busy eyes, she planned her revenge.

Lindaberry had not as yet addressed a single word to her. He had gradually come out of the stolid dull intensity that had lain on him with the weight of last night's dissipation, but one felt in the awakening vivacity of his eye, the impatient opening and shutting of his hand, the quick smile that followed each outburst of laughter, a struggle to reach the extreme of gaiety which such a company brought him to relieve him from that depression which closed over him when condemned to be alone.

For her part, she had scarcely noticed him—having a horror of men who drank. At this moment a butler, under orders from Busby, placed before him a bottle of champagne for his special use. He turned courteously but impersonally, without that masculine impertinence in the eye which is still a compliment.

"May I freshen up your glass?"

"Thank you, no!" she said icily. "I'm afraid I don't appreciate your special brand of conversation!"

He looked at her, startled—her meaning gradually dawning on him. But, before he could reply, Busby had risen, sounding his knife against his plate.

"Next course, ladies will please chassé! Gentlemen, make sure of your jewelry!"

Doré rose, and, as she did so, addressing the butler who drew out her chair, said:

"In order that Mr. Lindaberry may feel quite at home, do please place a bottle on each side of him!"

She made him an abrupt mocking bow, and went to her place past Massingale, next to the Comte de Joncy, while Lindaberry, flushing, was left as best he could to face the laughter and clapping of hands that greeted her sally.

The Comte de Joncy had risen courteously, studying her keenly from his pocketed, watery blue eyes, seating her with marked ceremony, too keen an amateur of the sex not to feel a difference in her.

"Bravo!" he said, laughing, and in a confidential tone: "Madame de Staël could not have answered better!"

The allusion was not in her ken, but she felt the compliment.

"Are you what? Wolf in sheep's clothing, or sheep—"

"Beware!" she said maliciously, converting a fork into a weapon of attack. "I am a desperate adventuress who has taken this way to meet Your Highness!"

"If it were only true!" he said, looking questions.

"Why not?" The game amused her, and besides, something perversely incited her to recklessness. Massingale was on the other side of her—Massingale, who, after the impudence of having comprehended her, treated her with only tepid interest. "Where shall I follow you? Paris or Dresden?"

He stared at her with squinting eyes, not quite deceived, not quite convinced. At the end he laughed.

"Pretty good—almost you fool me!"

"You don't believe me?" she said, raising her eyes a moment to his.

"Mademoiselle, your eyes have a million in each of them!" he said, after a moment, but not quite so calmly. "Will you give me your address?"

"Why not?" she said, opening her hands in a gesture of surprise.

"I will come!" he said, yet not entirely the dupe of her game.

"Poor Count!" she said, with a quick change of manner. "You don't know what a dangerous animal we have here. Beware!"

"What?"

"The great American teaser!" she said, laughing.

"Teaser—teaser! What is that?"

She entered into an elaborate explanation, glancing into the mirror, striving from there to catch Massingale's look.

"I say, angels!" said Buzzy, bubbling over with mischief. "I've got an idea!"

"Buzzy has an idea!"

"Good for Buzzy!"

"We want to amuse the Count, don't we?" said Busby artfully.

"Sure!..."

"You bet!..."

"Well, then, let's tell our real names!"

Violetta Pax gave a scream of horror and retired blushing under her napkin at the storm of laughter her scream of confession had aroused.

"Real name's Lou Burgstadter!" said Consuelo Vincent in a whisper to De Joncy, who had forgot her.

Violetta Pax was on her feet in an instant.

"Consuelo Vincent, I like your nerve!... Consuelo, indeed! Cassie Hagan!" she cried furiously. "Yes, and Carrie Slater, too, needn't put on airs!"

The rest was lost in an uproar; the chorus girls were on their feet, protesting vigorously, all chattering at once, the men applauding and fomenting the tumult, Busby secretly enjoying the mischief he had exploded, running from one to the other, pleading, provoking, adding fuel to the burning.

"Ladies!... Ladies! Remember there are gentlemen present!... Georgie, Violetta's giving you away!... Girls! Girls! Remember His Highness!... Paula, dear, you ought to hear what Georgie said, of you! Awful ... awful.... Now, dearies, behave!... remember your manners!"

At the end of a moment, overcome with laughter, he capsized on a sofa in weak hysterics. Blood exclaimed that Busby had a fit, and thus procured a diversion which restored calm. Nevertheless, the storm had been so sudden that the wreckage was strewn about the room; Busby gathered them together again, conciliated every one and brought them back to their seats.

Doré was excited by this outburst. At last the party promised something to her curiosity. She waited eagerly, her eyes dancing, her fingers thrumming on the cloth, curious to see these men, of whom she had heard so much, unmask.

While continuing her banter with De Joncy, she had turned her attention to Sassoon, who, in the midst of the hilarity, preserved the fatigue and listlessness of his first appearance, a smile more contemptuous than amused lurking about the long oriental nose and burnt-out eyes without abiding quite anywhere. He paid no attention to the girls at either side, peering restlessly at those farther away, dissatisfied, unamused.

His reputation was of the worst, his name bandied about in big places and in small; nor, as is usually the case, did gossip bear unmerited reproaches. Neither a fool, as most believed, nor of originating imagination, as a few credited who witnessed from the inside the shrewd and infallible success of his colossal schemes, Sassoon at bottom was a prey to an obsession that stung him like a gadfly to restless seeking, eternally tormented by the fever of the hunter, eternally disillusioned. For thirty years, following the exigencies of a maladive heredity, he had raked the city with his craving eye, always alert, always disappointed, running into dark side streets, ringing obscure bells, pursuing a shadow that had awakened a spark of hope. And at the end it was always the same—emptiness! To-day he sat moodily, fiercely resentful at a fresh deception.

A certain disdainful defiance, a trick of Violetta Pax, fleeing, bacchante-like, in the sextette, had stirred in him a flash of expectancy, a hungering hope, which had died in hollowness now that she was at his side, unresisting, too ready. So he sat, brooding, heavy-lidded, already turning to other fugitive forms that he might follow in a vague impulse—of all the millions in the city the one most enslaved. When, in her turn, Doré came to take her place beside him, after the first listless acknowledgment he spoke no word to her. She responded by turning her back to him at once, with a complete ignoring. This attitude, so different from the challenging eyes of the others, struck him—he who craved opposition, resistance. All at once, as she was leaving him to take her place between Busby and Harrigan Blood, he said, his soft hand on her arm, in his low, rather melodious feminine voice:

"You haven't paid much attention to me, pretty thing!"

"Your own fault, Pasha!" she said impertinently. "Men run after me!"

And she was aware that his eye, dead as a cold lantern, followed her now, running over her neck and shoulders, aroused as from its lethargy. Satisfied that her instinct had not failed, she took her seat. Then, all at once, she felt a new annoyance: Massingale, the observer, was smiling to himself.

The hilarity began to freshen. Consuelo Vincent, who had magnificent hair, was heard exclaiming:

"I say, girls! we're stiff as a bunch of undertakers. Let's slip our roofs!"

Amid general acclaim, the top-lofty, overburdened hats were consigned to a butler. Every one began to chatter on a higher key, across the constant rise of laughter. Georgie Gwynne, installed by the Royal Observer, saucy and unabashed, was saying:

"Well, Kink, how do you like us?"

In another moment the Comte de Joncy, sublimely content, was being initiated into the art of eating brandied cherries from the ripe lips of Violetta Pax and Georgie Gwynne.

From the moment Doré had taken off her toque, Sassoon and Harrigan Blood had not ceased to stare at her.

"A hat is not becoming to me," she said to Harrigan Blood, and added: "Besides, I have nothing to conceal."

Amid the pyramided and confectioned head-dresses, the simplicity of her own, playing about her forehead like a golden cloud, stood out. For the first time, her youth and naturalness appeared, depending on no artifice.

Harrigan Blood did not go to what attracted him by four ways, or around a hill.

"You don't belong to this crowd," he said pointblank. "Don't lie to me! What are you?"

"The story of my life?" she said. "It's getting to the time, isn't it?"

"You know what I mean," he said roughly. "People don't often interest me. You do! I've been watching you. Do you want backing?"

She was surprised—genuinely so. She had felt that Blood was different—too powerful, too merciless, to be caught as other men were caught. She did not look up at him, as others would have, but remained smiling down at the cloth, running her mischievous fingers through the low dish of yellow pansies before her. And, with the same averted look, which brought her a complete understanding of the impetuousness of his attack, she felt Sassoon's awakened stare and the scrutiny of Judge Massingale, who, while he pretended to talk to Paula Stuart, was listening with a concentrated interest. She was pleased, quite satisfied with herself. Only Lindaberry remained.

"You are very impulsive, aren't you?" she said slowly.

"On the stage? A beginner?"

She nodded.

"Come to me—at my office, any afternoon, after five." And he added, without lowering his voice: "If you're after a career, don't waste your time on this sort. I can put you in a day where you want."

She rose to take her seat on his right, next to Lindaberry.

"Will you come?" he said, detaining her.

"Why not?" she said, lifting her eyes, with a little affectation of surprise at so simple a question.

During her progress about the table she had kept Lindaberry in mind, with a lurking sense of antagonism, a desire to return to the attack, to punish him further. A certain grace that he had, which appealed to her instinct, the quality of instinctive elegance, only increased her resentment. At the bottom, the intensity of this resentment surprised her—without her being able to analyze it.

He had risen with a bow that was neither exaggerated nor curt. There was undeniable power in his face, boyish and weak as it was in its unrestraint, like a flame spurting fiercely on a trembling wick. He brought to men a little sense of fear—never to women. To-day this intensity seemed clouded, not fully awake as if there were still dinning in his ears the echoes of the night before. The dullest observer, looking on his face, would have seen where he was riding. In his own club (where he was adored) bets were up that he would not last the year.

Presently he leaned toward her and said, protected by the shrieks of laughter that surrounded De Joncy:

"Don't you think you were in the wrong? What right had you to come here?"

She understood that Busby had betrayed her to him and to Harrigan Blood.

"Even if I were a—" she gave a glance up the table, "you should make a difference between a woman and a—bottle!"

"You are quite right," he said, after a moment. "Will you accept my apologies? I am seldom discourteous to a woman—never intentionally."

She looked at him, and saw with what an effort he spoke, his brain on fire, yet making no mistake in the precision of his words. She nodded, and turned again to Harrigan Blood, all her nature aroused to opposition at this weakness in such a man. Yet ordinarily her sympathies were quick.

"You are too hard on him," said Harrigan Blood, who had listened. "It's gone too far; he can't help it. He's got his coffin strapped to his back."

"Why doesn't some one help him?" she said irritably.

Blood shrugged his shoulders, answering with the superiority of the self-made man before the misfortune of the friend who has thrown everything away:

"Help him? There's your feminism again! The world's turned crazy on sentimentalized charity! Charity is nothing but a confession of failure! Build up! Let derelicts go! Save him? For what? In New York? We are too busy. The best that can be said is, he's drinking himself to death like a gentleman—doing it royally! His self-control's a miracle—some day there'll be an explosion! If you knew his history—"

"What is his story?"

As Blood was about to begin it, he was interrupted by a general pushing back of chairs. Busby, at the piano, flung out the chords of the sextette that had made a mediocre opera famous.

Half the party crowded, laughing and bantering, to render the chorus, the Comte de Joncy insisting on being taught the latest curious American dance. Tenafly entered to see to the clearing of the room.

He was the type of the valet ennobled, a mask of incomparable vacuity, a secret smile that missed nothing, internal rather than outward, yet still chained to the servant's habit of picking up his feet.

Sassoon summoned him with a nod which Tenafly perceived instantly across the room.

"The little girl in yellow—who is she?"

The eye of the restaurateur passed vaguely over the company, but the instant sufficed to photograph each detail.

"She's new," he said, without moving his lips.

"She's not of the sextette?"

Tenafly shook his head.

"She's dined here—below—I've seen her!"

"Know her name?"

Tenafly searched the pigeonholes of his memory.

"I don't know her."

"Find out what you can—soon!"

"I will, sir!"

He spoke a moment in low tones with the master, who had no evasions with him. At the end Sassoon said impatiently:

"Can't be bothered ... see her for me and get a receipt."

Every one wished to dance, whirling and bumping, none too restrained in their movements, the Royal Observer awkwardly enthusiastic, enjoying himself immoderately. Doré, a little apart, Harrigan Blood at her side, watched with eyes keen with curiosity. Busby, De Joncy, Lindaberry amused themselves hugely, caricaturing the eccentricities of the dance, their arms about their partners, clinging, bacchanalian, in their movements. Doré followed Lindaberry, frowning, feeling a blast of anger that set her sensitive little nostrils to quivering with scorn. The feeling was unreasonable. She did not know why he should disturb her more than another, and yet he did. He seemed so incongruous there; she could not associate his refinement, his courtesy, with Georgie Gwynne, who held him pressed in her arms, her head thrown back, her throat bared, laughing provokingly. She had come to see behind the scenes, and yet this one roused her fury. Besides, there was in his attitude a scornful note—a contemptuous valuation of the woman, of women in general, she felt, as if he were thus proclaiming: "See, this is all they are worth!"

She began to glance at the door, counting the minutes. Judge Massingale came to her side.

"Dance?"

"I turned my ankle this morning."

"You don't want to!"

"No!"

He began to dance with Adèle Vickers, but not as the others, not with the same immoderate abandon. She noted this swiftly.

At last, in a pause between the dances, to Doré's relief, a footman, entering, announced:

"Miss Baxter's car is waiting."

It was an effect she had carefully planned, taking a full half-hour to lead Stacey Van Loan to an innocent participation. A group came up, protesting, acclaiming the discovery of her name—as she had wished.

"Oho! Miss Baxter, is it?"

"We won't let you go!"

"The fun's just beginning!"

"My chauffeur can wait!" said Doré superbly, perceiving the danger of an open retreat before this over-excited group. Her curiosity was satisfied. She began to foresee what she did not wish to witness, ugliness appearing from behind the carnival mask of laughter. She began to glance apprehensively at Harrigan Blood, who clung to her side, wondering how she could elude him. Then, as the group of protestants broke up, Sassoon, advancing deliberately, in that silken effeminate voice that expected no refusal, said abruptly: "Miss Baxter, where do you live?"

She was on the point of an indignant answer, but suddenly checked herself. She gave the address, but in a sharp muffled tone, boiling with anger within, with a quick resolve to punish him later.

"When are you in?"

Before she could answer, Harrigan Blood pushed forward, determined and insolent.

"Too late, Sassoon, my boy; nothing here for you!"

"I fail to understand you," said Sassoon.

"Don't you? Well, I'll make it plainer!"

"You'll kindly not interfere."

"And I'll thank you not to trespass!"

"What?"

"Don't trespass!"

Sassoon responded angrily; Harrigan Blood retorted with equal heat. In a moment the room was in an uproar.

Doré seized the confusion of the hubbub to slip from the group which rushed in to separate these two men whom a glance from a little Salamander had turned back into the raw.

She went quickly, frightened by the sounds of anger and the increasing uproar, flung into her furs, and stole toward the door.

All at once it opened before her, and in the hall was Lindaberry, roguishly ambushed.

"No, no, not so fast!"

"No, no—not so fast!" he cried.

He flung out his arm, barring the way. For a moment she was frightened, seeing what was in his eyes, hearing the tumult in the salon behind. Then, without drawing back, she raised her hand gently, and put his arm away.

"Please, Mr. Lindaberry, protect me! I need it! I ought not to be here."

"What?" he said, staring at her.

"I'm a crazy little fool!" she said frantically. "Help me to get away!"

"Crazy little child!" he said, after staring a moment as if suddenly recognizing her. "Get away, then—quickly!"

She felt no more resentment, only a great pity, such as one feels before a magnificent ruin. She wished to stop to speak to him—but she was afraid.

"Thank you," she said, with a look that appealed to him not to judge her. "I am crazy—out of my mind! Come and see me—do!"

CHAPTER IV

The faithful Stacey was below, lounging at the door of the grill-room, as she came tripping down, the sensation of escape sparkling on her delicate features. She was so delighted at the effect he had achieved for her that she gave him an affectionate squeeze of the arm.

"Stacey, you're a darling! When the footman announced 'Miss Baxter's car' you could have heard a pin drop among the squillionairesses!"

Stacey had been told, and dutifully believed, that the luncheon was a heavy affair, very formal, very correct.

"I say, you didn't bore yourself, did you?" he said, noticing the excitement still on her cheeks.

"No, no!"

"Fifth Avenue, or Broadway?"

"Fifth first."

"Bundle up; it's turning cold!"

The next moment the car had found a wedge in the avenue, and Stacey, solicitous, relapsed into gratifying silence.

She was all aquiver with excitement. Her little feet, exhilarated by the memories of music, continued tapping against the floor, and had Stacey turned he would have been surprised at the mischievous, gay little smile that constantly rippled and broke about her lips. Indeed, she was delighted with her success, with the discord she had flung between Sassoon and Harrigan Blood. She could scarcely believe that it could be true.

"What! I, little Dodo, have done that!" she said, addressing herself caressingly, overjoyed at the idea of two men of such power descending to a quarrel over a little imp like herself.

She had no illusions about these flesh hunters. If she had given Sassoon her address instead of hotly refusing, it was from a swift vindictive resolve to punish him unmercifully, to entice him into fruitless alleys, to entangle and mock him, with an imperative desire to match her wits against his power, and teach him respect through discomfiture and humiliation. Sassoon did not impress her with any sense of danger. She rather scoffed at him, remembering his silken voice, the slight feminine touch of his hand, the haunted dreamy discontent in his heavy eyes.

Harrigan Blood was different. In her profound education of a Salamander, she knew his type, too: the man without preliminaries, who put abrupt questions, brushing aside the artifices and subtleties that arrest others. She would make no mistake with him—knowing just how little to venture. And yet, always prepared, she might try her fingers across such hungry flames. Strangely enough, she did not resent Harrigan Blood as she did Sassoon; for men of force she made many allowances.

She thought of Lindaberry and Judge Massingale: of Lindaberry rapidly, with a beginning of pity, but still inflamed with an irritation at this magnificent spectacle of a man going to destruction so purposelessly. He, of all, had been the most indifferent, too absorbed to lift his eyes and study what sat by his side. She did not know all the reasons why he so antagonized her, nor whence these reasons came ... yet the feeling persisted, already mingled with a desire to know what was the history that Harrigan Blood had started to tell. Perhaps, after all, there may have been a tragic love-affair. She reflected on this idea, and it seemed to her that if it were so, then in his present madness there might be something noble ... magnificent.

"How stupid a man is to drink!" she said angrily.

"Eh? What's that, Dodo?" said Stacey.

She perceived that, in her absorption, she had spoken half aloud.

"Go down Forty-second and run up Broadway!" she said hastily.

Massingale she could not place. She comprehended the others, even the Comte de Joncy, whom she had left with a feeling of defrauded expectation. But Massingale she did not comprehend, nor did she see him quite clearly. Why was he there? To observe simply, with that tolerant baffling smile of his? What did he want in life? Of her? He had been interested; he had even tried to arouse her own curiosity. She was certain that the effort had been conscious. Then there had come a change—a quiet defensive turn to impersonality. Tactics, or what?

What impression had she left? Would he call, or pass on? She did not understand him at all; yet he excited her strangely. She had a feeling that he would be too strong for her. She had felt in him, each time his glance lay in hers, the reading eye that saw through her, knew beforehand what was turning in her runaway imagination, and that before him her tricks would not avail.

Then she ceased to remember individuals, lost in a confused, satisfied feeling of an experience. It seemed to her as if she had taken a great step—that opportunity had strangely served her, that she had at last entered a world which was worthy of her curiosity.

She had met few real men. She had played with idlers, boys of twenty or boys of forty, interested in nothing but an indolent floating voyage through life. For the first time, she had come into contact with a new type, felt the shock of masculine vitality. Whatever their cynical ideas of conduct, she felt a difference here. They were men of power, with an object, who did not fill their days with trifling, but who sought pleasure to fling off for a moment the obsession of ambitions, to relax from the tyranny of effort, or to win back a new strength in a moment of discouragement. Perhaps if she continued her career she might turn them into friends—loyal friends. It would be difficult but very useful. The men she met usually, at first, misunderstood her.

"Perhaps one of them will change my whole life! Why not? I have a feeling—" she said solemnly to herself, nodding and biting her little under lip.

The truth was, she felt the same after every encounter, dramatizing each man, and flinging herself romantically on a sea of her imagining. But to-day it was a little different. The feeling was more profound, calmer, more penetrating. She felt, indeed, under the influence of a new emotion, a restlessness in the air, an unease in the crowded streets.

Since morning, the glowing warmth of the last summery stillness had slipped away unperceived. The wind in an hour had gone round to the north, and from each whipping banner threaded against the sky one felt the whistling onrush of winter. In the air there was something suspended, a melancholy resounding profoundly, penetrating the soul of the multitude. The gray sluggish currents in the thoroughfare quickened, stirring more restlessly, apprehensive, caught unawares. Little gusts of wind, scouts heralding the chill battalions piling up on the horizon, drove through the city clefts, sporting stray bits of paper to the rooftops, in turbulent dusty, swooping flight, uncovering heads and rolling hats like saucers down the blinded streets. Then suddenly the gusts flattened out. A stillness succeeded, but grim, permeating, monstrous; and above the winter continued to advance.

She felt something in all this—something ominous, prophetic, vaguely troubling, and being troubled, sought to put it from her. She began to dramatize another mood. About her she felt the city she adored: the restaurants, the theaters, the great hotels, the rocket-rise of the white Times building, towering like a pillar of salt in accursed Sodom. But her mind did not penetrate to ugliness. The febrile activity, the glistening surface of pleasure, the sensation of easy luxurious flight awoke in her the intoxication of enjoyment. She adored it, this city whom so many curse, whose luxuries and pleasures opened so facilely to her nod, whose conquest had borne so little difficulty.

She forgot the unease that lay in the air at the sight of the feverish restaurants where so often she had dipped in for adventure of the afternoon. The sight of the theaters, even, with their cold white globes above the outpouring matinée crowds, brought an impatience for the garlanded night, when elegant shadows would come, slipping into flaming portals, amid the flash of ankles, the scent of perfume, glances of women challenging the envy of the crowd.

The multitude churned about her, roaring down into the confusion of many currents: the multitude—the others—whom she felt so distant, so far below her. They were there, white of face, troubled, frowning, harassed, swelling onward to clamoring tasks, spying her with thousand-eyed envy; and everywhere darting in and out, dodging the gray contact of the mass, alert, light, skimming on like sea-gulls trailing their wings across the chafing ocean, the luxurious women of the city sped in rolling careless flight. She felt herself one of them, admiring and admired, glancing eagerly into tonneaus bright with laughter and fashion, deliciously registering the sudden analytical stare of women, or the disloyal tribute boldly telegraphed of men.

She had lunched with Sassoon, De Joncy, Massingale. She was a part of all this—of the Brahmin caste; and her little body rocking to the swooping turns, deliciously cradled, her eyes half closed, her nostrils drawing in this frantic air as if it were the breath of an enchanting perfume, she let her imagination go: already there by right, married to Massingale or Lindaberry—she saw not which quite clearly. Nor did it matter. Only she herself mattered.

"Riverside or park, Dodo?"

"Through the park," she said; and roused from her castle-building, she laughed at herself with a tolerant amused confusion.

"Good spirits, eh?"

"So-so!"

In the park there were fewer automobiles. She no longer had the feeling of the crowd pressing about her, claiming her for its own. There were no restaurants or climbing façades. There was the earth, bare, shivering, and the sky filled with the invader.

She had a horror of change, and suffered with a profound and uncomprehended trouble when, each year, she saw summer go into the mystery of winter, and again when came the awakening miracle. Yesterday, when she had passed, the splendor of the trees, it is true, lay shorn upon the ground; but the earth was warm, pleasant, with a fragrant odor, the air soft and the evening descended in a glow. Now there was a difference. Over all was the dread sense of change. Each tree stood alone, aghast, against the sky, the ground bleak, bare, the leaves wandering with a little moaning, driven restlessness. Even against the gray banks piling up against the north there was something vacant and horribly endless. From tree, sky and empty earth a spirit had suddenly withdrawn, and all this change had come within an hour, in a twinkling—without warning.

Now she could no longer put it from her, this resistless verity that laid its chill fingers across her heart. It was not of the change in nature she thought—no; but of that specter which some day, inexorably, would rise from a distant horizon, even as the wind in an hour goes round to the north and winter rushes in. She was twenty-two and she had a horror of this thief, who came soft-footed and unreal, to steal the meager years.

She stiffened suddenly, clutching her stole to her throat.

"Too cold?"

"Yes!"

"I've got a coat for you."

"No; go back!"

"Already?"

"Yes!"

"Tea?"

"No! Go back!"

She closed her eyes, not to see, but the thing was there, everywhere, in the air that came to her, in the sad tiny sounds that rose about them. Yes, she herself would change inexorably, as all things filled their appointed time. What she had was given but for a day—all her fragile armament was but for a day. Not much longer could she go blithely along the summery paths of summer. She thought of Winona Horning, who had played too long. She thought of thirty as a sort of sepulcher, an end of all things! She felt something new impelling her on—a haste and a warning.

"It can't go on always!" she said to herself, in her turn using the very words that Winona had uttered. "Not much longer. A year, only a year, then I must make up my mind!"

"Blue, Dodo?" said Stacey.

"Horribly!"

The word seemed so incongruously ridiculous, after what she had felt, that she burst into exaggerating laughter.

"Going to change your mind?"

"No, no! I'm out of sorts—a cold! Get me back!"

They reentered the city as the first owlish lights were peeping out, futile, brave little rebels against the spreading night. Below, high in the air, suspended above the ghostly town whose sides had faded, the great illumined eye of the Metropolitan tower shone forth. Then all at once long sentinel files of lights rose on the avenue and down the fleeting side streets, miraculous electric signs burst out against the night, a myriad windows caught fire, and the city, which a moment ago had seemed flat, climbed blazing into the air. They were again nearing the great artery, which changes its name with the coming of the artificial night, no longer Broadway, but the Rialto, with its mysteries of entangled beams and profound pools of darkness, its laughter free or suspect, its mingled virtue and vice, elbowing and staring at each other, its joy and its despair treading in each other's steps.

But the dread reminder was still above, hurling its black engulfing storm across the bombardment of a million lights, that painted it with a strange red glare, but could not destroy its menace. A few cold drops of rain, wind driven, dashed against their faces, as they went with the crowd, scuttling on. There was something unreal now in all this, something artificial in the glimpse of vacant restaurants setting their candles for the guests who went fleeing home. Of plunging temperament, she had a horror of these rare depressions, striving frantically against the realization of what must be, and striving thus, always suffering the more keenly. In seeing all this fugitive world, flat shadows driven restlessly as the shorn splendor of the streets, she asked herself of what use it was after all, to be young, to be attractive, to go laughing and dancing, to dare, to conquer ... why, indeed, childhood, maturity and old age should stretch so far, and youth, the exultant brilliant hour she clung to, should be allotted only the few, the fingered years! She felt a sense of loneliness, of terrified isolation, the need of some one to come and talk to her, to interpose himself between her and these unanswerable questions, to close her eyes and stop her ears.

When they reached Miss Pim's the rain was beginning in little flurries. She ran in and up-stairs hurriedly. She had hoped that she would find her room lighted, that Snyder or Winona would be home. No one was there, and when she opened the door she entered a region of obscure shadowy forms, faintly lighted by the reflection of a street lamp below. Across the windows on the avenue was the cyclopean eye of the Metropolitan tower, which she saw always every night with her last peeping glance from her covers—enormous eye, bulging, swollen with curiosity. At the other side was the wall of brick pressing against the window-pane, this wall she hated as she hated the idea of the commonplace in life.

She stood in the luminous pathway, gazing outward.

"What is the matter with me?" she thought. "Am I like Winona? Am I getting tired of it all? Or is it—what?"

The metallic summons of the telephone broke upon her mood. She lighted the gas quickly. The telephone continued to clamor, but she took no step toward it. All that she had planned as a choice for the evening no longer interested her. She was in another mood. She flung down her things rapidly. Then, remembering the bouquet of Sassoon's, she took it off, pricking her fingers. Inclosed was a bank-note for a hundred dollars!

Then she began to laugh—a bitter incongruous note. She understood now why he had gone so abruptly to his questions, confident in the test he had prepared among the fragile stems of orchids and dainty yellow pansies.

All at once her eye went to her pin-cushion, caught by the white note of visiting-cards left there by Josephus, the colored chore-boy. She crossed quickly, stretching out her finger impatiently. Which of the four had come, as she had determined? The first bore the name of Harrigan Blood, the second Albert Edward Sassoon. She stood staring at the last, the hundred-dollar bill still wrapped in her fingers.... Sassoon and Harrigan Blood! She let the cards drop, profoundly disappointed, prey to a sudden heavy return of disillusionment.

The telephone, querulous, impatient, again called her, but she turned her shoulder impatiently. Now the thought of an evening of gaiety revolted her. She changed quickly, wrapped herself up in an ulster, took an umbrella and went out, though by the wide-faced clock in the skies it was scarcely six. Before, she had sought to break away, to escape recklessly from the depression that claimed her: now she sought it out, surrendering to this tristesse that whirled her on with its exquisite benumbing melancholy.

She supped at a lunch-room in Lexington Avenue, paying out a precious thirty cents for a cup of coffee, a bowl of crackers and milk, a baked potato. Not many were there yet. A young fellow without an overcoat, stooping already, pinched by struggle, came and sat at her table, seeking an opportunity to offer her the sugar. But, seeing her so silent and inwardly tortured, he did not persist.

She did not notice him

She did not notice him. She was thinking always of Massingale, and a little of Lindaberry. Why had she succeeded with Sassoon and Blood only to fail where she wanted to win?

"He carries a coffin on his back!" she found herself repeating, in the cynical words of Harrigan Blood. He would not seek her out; nor would Massingale. All her castles in the air had collapsed. It was only to the others, then, that she could appeal—the flesh hunters!

She returned, swaying against the wind, holding her umbrella with difficulty against the spattering rain-drops, that seemed to rise from the glistening sidewalks. The young man, who had no umbrella, remained in the shelter of a doorway, watching her undecidedly.

"Ah, yes! I must be getting tired of it!" she said suddenly, as she reached her steps. A taxicab was turning in the avenue, having just drawn away. As she went slowly up the interminable, impenetrable, dark flights to her room, she said, revolting against an injustice:

"Well, if he doesn't come, I'll go and find him!"

She entered her room, lagging and depressed, knowing not how to spend the hours until sleep arrived. She had no feeling of reticence in seeking out Massingale and Lindaberry, since they appealed to her and would not come, any more than she felt the slightest diminution of her self-respect in situations labeled with the appearance of suspicion. Her ideas of morality and conduct were not even formulated. They existed as the sense of danger exists to a pretty animal. For, ardently as she desired it, there had not come into her soul the awakening breath of love, which, in despite of old traditions and lost heritages, alone would be to her rebellious little Salamander soul the supreme law of conduct.

Suddenly she saw that on her pin-cushion another card had been placed while she had been absent. She went to it without expectation. It was from Massingale—Massingale, who must have left in the taxicab even as she returned hopelessly.

Then it seemed to her as if a thousand tons had slipped from her. She felt an extraordinary joy and confidence, the alertness of a young animal, a need of light and laughter, a longing to plunge into a rush of excitement.

The telephone rang. Donald Bacon was clamoring to take her to the cabaret party. She disliked him cordially. She accepted with wild delight.

CHAPTER V

The morning was well spent when Doré awoke, after a gray return from the cabaret party where, in a revulsion of emotions, she had flirted scandalously. But the men with whom she had danced, laughed and fenced, provokingly were lost in a mist. They had only served to eat up the intervening time; she had not even a thought for them.

The busy bubbling whistle of a coffee-pot in fragrant operation sounded from the table. She opened one eye with difficulty, peering out the window at her friend, the clock. It was already thirty-five minutes past ten—what might be called a dawn breakfast in Salamanderland.

Snyder, moving about the table with a watchful eye, came to her immediately.

"Take it easy, Petty! Don't wake up unless you feel like it!"

She stood at the foot of the bed, and the smile of fond solicitude with which she bent over Dodo, lightly touching her hair, seemed like another soul looking through the tired mask of Lottie Snyder.

"You're an angel, Snyder! You spoil me!" said Dodo, rubbing her eyes and twisting her body in lazy feline stretches.

"Me an angel? Huh!" said Snyder, grinding on her heel.

She went to the improvised kitchen with the free gliding grace of the trained dancer, and lifting the top of the coffee-pot, dropped in two eggs.

Breakfast at Miss Pim's was an inviolable institution ending at eight-thirty sharp. Wherefore, as the Salamanders would as soon have thought of getting up to see the sun rise, coffee was always an improvisation and eggs a visitation of Providence. Besides, the Salamanders, for the most part, made their arrangements for lodgings only, trusting in the faithful legion of props, but supplementing that trust by an economical planning of the schedule ahead. In a week, it was rare that a Salamander was forced to a recourse on her purse for more than one luncheon—dinner never.

"Did you hear me come in?" said Doré, raising her gleaming white arms in the air and letting the silken sleeves slip rustling to her shoulders.

"Me? No!" said Snyder, who had not closed her eyes until the return. "Here's the mail."

Doré raised herself eagerly on one elbow.

"How many? What! only four?" she said, taking the letters from Snyder.

She frowned at the instant perception of Miss Pim's familiar straight up and down, sharp and thin writing, concealing the dreaded summons quickly below the others, that Snyder, who paid nothing, might not see.

Two she recognized; the third was unfamiliar. She turned it over, studying it, characteristically reserving the mystery until the last. But, as she put it down on the white counterpane, she had a feeling of expectant certitude that it was from Massingale.

"Well, let's see what my dear old patriarch says!" she said, settling back in the pillows and taking up a stamped envelope, typewritten, with a business address in the corner.

"Dear Miss Baxter:

"Will be in town to-morrow, Friday, the twenty-second. It would give me great pleasure if you could lunch with me at twelve-thirty. Will send my car for you at twelve-twenty. I trust you are following my advice and giving attention to your health.

"Very sincerely yours,
"Orlando B. Peavey.

"P. S. Am called to important business appointment at one-thirty sharp, but take this brief opportunity to see you again. Telephone my office only in case you can not come.

"O. B. P."

"Sweetest old thing!" she said, smiling at the postscript characteristically initialed. "So thoughtful—kindest person in the world!"

Snyder brought her coffee and an egg broken and seasoned in a tooth-mug. Doré glanced at it suspiciously, seeking to discover if the division had been fair.

"My! Eggs are a luxury," she said, applying the tip of her tongue to the tip of the spoon; and she added meditatively: "I wish Stacey went in for chickens!"

She took up the unknown letter, turned it over once more, and laid it slowly aside in favor of the second, a fat envelope covered with the boyish scrawl of the prop in disgrace. She spread the letter, frowning determinedly. Joe Gilday was difficult to manage, too alert to be long kept in the prop squad. It began without preliminaries and a fine independence of punctuation:

"Look here, Do—what's the use of rubbing it in on a fellow? You've made me miserable as an Esquimo in Africa, and why? What have I done? Supposing I did slip fifty in your bureau honest to God Do you don't think I'd do anything to jar your feelings do you? Lord, I'll lay down and let you use me for a door mat for a week if it'll help any. Kid you've got me going bad. I'm miserable. I'm all shot to pieces—insult you, why Do, I'd Turkey Trot on my Granny's grave first. Won't you let up—see a fellow won't you? I'll be around at noon if you don't see me I swear I'll warm the door-step until the neighbors come out and feed me for charity: that's straight too! Now be a good sort Do and give me a chance to explain.

"Down in the dumps,
"J. J. (Just Joe.)"

This note, inspired with the slang of Broadway, would have made Doré laugh the day before, but the experiences of the last twenty-four hours had given her a standard of comparison. Between Joseph Gilday, Junior, and the men she had met there was a whole social voyage. Nevertheless, props were necessary, and undecided, she laid the scrawl on Mr. Peavey's neat invitation, postponing decisions. She opened the third, drawing out a neat oblong card, neatly inscribed in a minuscule graceful handwriting, slightly scented:

"My dear Miss Baxter:

"I shall call this afternoon at two o'clock.

"A. E. Sassoon."

She was not surprised at the signature nor the pasha-like brevity.

"Harrigan Blood won't take chances; he'll telephone," she thought. At the bottom she was pleased at this insistence of Sassoon's; it worked well with the plan she had determined on for his disciplining. "You're sure that's all?" she said aloud, wondering what Massingale would do.

"Yes."

"Wonder why he called so soon?" she thought pensively; and then, remembering the warring cards of Blood and Sassoon, added: "To warn me, perhaps?"

She smiled at this possibility, sure of herself, knowing well how weak the strongest man is before the weakest of her sex, when he comes with a certain challenge in his eyes.

"So Sassoon is coming, is he? Good!" she said musingly, a little far-off mockery in her smile; and to herself she rehearsed again the scene she had prepared, coddling her cheek against her bare soft arm, dreamily awake.

She would receive him with carefully simulated cordiality there below in the dusky boarding-house parlor; she could even lead him to believe that he might dare anything; and suddenly, when she had led him to indiscretions, she would say suddenly, as if the thought had just suggested itself:

"What! you have no flowers. You shall wear mine!"

She smiled a little more maliciously at the thought of the look that would come into those heavy foolish eyes at this. Then, taking a few violets from her corsage, she would fix them in his buttonhole, saying:

"No, no; look up at the ceiling while I fix them nicely—so!"

And, when she had coaxed him into a ridiculous craning of his neck, she would deftly pin the hundred-dollar bill on the lapel under the little cluster of purple, and turning him toward the mirror, say, with a mocking farewell courtesy:

"Mr. Albert Edward Sassoon, I have the pleasure of returning your visiting-card!"

She was so content with this bit of romance that she laughed aloud.

"Hello! what's up?" said Snyder, taking away the tooth-mug.

Dodo could not restrain her admiration.

"You know, Snyder," she said seriously, "I am really very clever!"

But she did not particularize. She had a feeling that Snyder, who watched over her in a faithful, adoring, dog-like way, might not quite approve. She did not know quite what made her feel this, for they had not exchanged intimacies; yet she felt occasionally in Snyder's glance, when she met it unawares, a dormant uneasy apprehension.

"Now for it!" she thought, and taking up the last note, unstamped, she tore it open.

"Miss Doré Baxter, Dr.

"To Miss Evangelica Pim

"Four weeks' lodging, third floor double room front at $10 per week ...............................................$40

"Kindly call to see me as to above account."

"Four—impossible!" exclaimed Doré, bolt upright, now thoroughly awake. But instantly she repressed her emotions, lest Snyder might guess the cause. She made a rapid calculation, and discovered that in fact she had to face four deficiencies instead of three. But finances never long dismayed her.

"Anyhow," she thought, "I can turn over the champagne. If only Winona raised something on the orchids! There are a dozen ways, but I must give it some attention!"

Suddenly she remembered Harrigan Blood's estimate of the cost of yesterday's luncheon, and of what she had herself turned over with her fork. She thought of what Sassoon spent so carelessly, and of what he might squander were he once awakened, really interested.... Not that there was the slightest temptation,—no—but it did amuse her to consider thus the irony of her present dilemma. Well, there certainly were funny things in life!

Snyder had silently cleared away breakfast, and seated herself with a book by the window. Now, glancing at the clock, she rose.

"Ready for tub, Petty? I'll start it up."

"Snyder, you're too good to me!" said Doré, rousing herself from her reveries.

"Huh! Wish I could! Hot or cold?"

But Doré, catching her wrist, detained her, her curiosity excited.

"You're the queerest thing I ever knew!" she said, looking at her fixedly.

"That's right, too!"

"Why do you insist upon my calling you Snyder?"

"Don't like to get fond of people," said the other shortly.

"Why not?"

"Too long a story."

She sought to detach her wrist, but Doré held it firmly.

"And aren't you fond of me?"

Snyder hesitated, frowning at thus being forced to talk.

"Sure! Couldn't help it, could I?"

Doré smiled, pleased at this admission.

"And yet, you have such a funny way of watching me!"

"Me? How so?"

"Yes, you have! I often wonder what's back of a certain queer look you get—"

"What I'm thinking?"

"Yes!"

"I want to see you married and settled, girlie!"

No more unexpected answer could have been given.

"Heaven forbid!" said Doré, sitting up in astonishment. For this commonplace solution to all the romantic possibilities she imagined always infuriated her. But at this moment Ida Summers came, after a little rippling knock, a grapefruit in hand.

The new arrival was in bedroom slippers and pink peignoir, her disordered hair concealed under a tasseled negligee cap. She was a bit roly-poly, but piquant, merry, still new to Salamanderland, hugely enjoying each little excitement.

"Breakfasted already?" she said in astonishment. "Heavens! Dodo, how do you get up in the middle of the night?"

She began to laugh before she finished the sentence, she laughed so hard as she said it that it was almost incomprehensible, and she continued laughing long after Doré had ceased. She could hardly ever relate an incident without being overcome with laughter, but the sound was pleasantly musical, infectious even, and the blue devils went out the window as she came in the door.

"Heavens!... thought I had a swap for a cup of coffee," she said, beginning to laugh again at the thought of her exploded stratagem.

"There ought to be some left," said Doré, venturing one rosy foot from under the covers in search of a warm slipper. She was still thinking of Snyder's strange speech.

Having teased from the coffee-pot a bare cup of coffee, Ida camped down on the couch, and while waiting for the coffee to cool, applied the end of her forefinger to the tip of her nose in the way to uplift it contrary to the gift of nature.

"Ida, do leave that nose alone," said Doré.

"I must have a retroussé nose," said the girl merrily. "This doesn't go with my style of laughter. All the artist-men tell me so. Ah, this nose!" And she gave it a vicious jolt, in her indignation. Her coloring was gorgeous, her lines were delicate, her expressions vivacious and quick with natural coquetry. Wherefore she was in great demand among the illustrators, who had reproduced her tomboy smile on the covers of a million magazines. She was in great demand, but she was capricious in her engagements—like all Salamanders, sacrificing everything to pleasure.

Winona Horning, aroused by the sounds of laughter, appeared through the connecting door, in a green and black negligee, rubbing her eyes, quite indignant.

"Heavens, child! No one can sleep when you're round! Hello, Snyder. Morning, Dodo!"

She said the last words in a tone that made Snyder look up at her, surprised. There was a note of reluctance, even of apprehension.

"Ida's drunk up the coffee; make her give you a grapefruit," said Dodo, nodding and departing.

When she darted in twenty minutes later, tingling and alert for the day, Snyder had gone and Ida Summers, curled like an Angora cat on the couch, was chatting to Winona, who stood in the doorway, undecidedly, turning a cigarette in her fingers, watching Dodo from under her long eyelashes.

"You certainly made the big hit last night, Win," said Ida rapidly. "Do, you should have seen her. She gets the men with that quiet waiting manner of hers. I can't do it to save my life. I have to rush in, barking like a white fluffy dog, to get noticed."

"Where were you?" said Doré, opening all the trunks and ransacking the bureaus. When she dressed, the room had always the look of a sudden descent by the police.

"Up at Vaughan Chandler's studio," said Ida, giving the name of one of the popular illustrators, who catered to the sentimental yearnings of the multitude. "Quite some party, too, celebrities and swells. I say, Do, why don't you go in for head and shoulders? They're perfect gentlemen, you know ... flirty, of course, ... but it pays well, and they'd go daffy over you."

"Don't know ... hadn't thought of it," said Doré, who, having decided to see Gilday and lunch with Peavey, was in a reverie over the subject of the dramatic costume. "By the way, Winona, raise anything on the orchids?"

"Only eight bones—hard enough getting that," said Winona slowly.

"Old brute! Pouffé would have given double," said Doré indignantly. "By the way, Joe's coming at noon. I must dress the stage up for him. What flowers have you girls got?"

"Three vases," said Ida joyfully. "Couple of southern millionaires are getting quite demonstrative over little me. What's up?... Going to coax the Kitty?" she added,—meaning in Salamanderish, "Are you going to encourage him to make presents?"

"Must raise something on this confounded rent," said Doré briefly. "Then, there are other reasons."

As Ida went tripping off, her little white ankles gleaming, Winona entered with two jars of chrysanthemums which she placed, one on the table and one on the mantel, slowly, frowning. Then she turned and said, with a gesture like a blow:

"Do, I took it! I had to!"

"Took what?" Said Doré, startled.

"Joe's fifty!"

Doré sprang precipitately to the drawer and opened it.

"Winona, you—you didn't!"

"It was that or get out!" said Winona doggedly, her back against the wall. "The Duchess made a scene. I'll pay it back—sure!"

"But, Winona, what am I to do? Joe's coming. I must—I have to return it to him. What can I say?" said Doré in dismay, staring at the empty drawer. "You had no right! You should have asked me. I can't—oh, you've put me in an awful hole! It wasn't right!"

"Don't! Dodo—don't!"

The girl clasped her hands, extending them in supplication, and burst into tears.

Doré could not resist the spectacle of this misery. She sprang to her side, seizing her in her arms, all her anger gone.

"Never mind! I don't care! You poor child! It isn't the money—it isn't that! I'll find some way." All at once she remembered the hundred dollars of Sassoon's bouquet. "Stupid! Why, of course!" She recounted hastily the incident to Winona, smoothing her hair.

"But, Do, you can't take it. How can you?" said Winona, becoming more calm.

"Why not? It was a present to each."

"But what can you say to Sassoon?"

"Him? Let me alone; I'll invent something—he'll never know! Bah! I shall miss a fine scene, that's all!" she added with a dramatic regret. "Well, that's over! How much did you use?"

"Thirty-five."

"Keep the rest!"

"I'll pay."

"Bur-r—-shut up! I'm not lending. Borrowing breaks up friendships. It's yours—it's given!"

She looked at the distressed girl a moment and added apprehensively:

"Winona, you're losing your grip!"

"Losing? It's gone!"

"Decidedly, I must see Blainey this afternoon and get that job for you," said Doré pensively. She disliked these sudden bleak apparitions and hated long to consider them. "You'll see in a few days, all will be changed—all!"

Ida returned with long-stemmed chrysanthemums towering over her brown curls, and made a second trip for some hydrangeas which she had found at Estelle Monks' below. The room had now quite the effect of a conservatory.

"Why don't you work the birthday gag?" said Winona helpfully.

"Can't! November's my month for Joe," said Doré reluctantly.

Birthdays, needless to say, are legitimate perquisites in Salamanderland, and pretty certain to occur in the first or second months of each new acquaintance.

As the three Salamanders were thoughtfully considering this possibility, three knocks like the blow of a hammer sounded on the door, and the next moment the dreaded form of Miss Pim, yclept the Duchess, swept, or rather bounded, in.

"Humph! and what's this folderol mean?" she said, stopping short, sniffing and folding her hands over her stomach. "Very fine! Plenty of money for cabs, perfumes, silks, hats, flowers, luxuries—"

"You certainly don't object to my having plenty of money, do you, Miss Pim?" said Doré in a caressing voice, as she went to her purse before the landlady could make the demand direct. "You seem rather anxious about my little bill, I believe!"

"Little!" exclaimed Miss Pim, sitting down with the motion of a jack-knife shutting up.

Doré's calmness took away her breath, but a certain joy showed itself eagerly over her spectacled nose. She understood that such impudence meant pay. Nevertheless she sat stiffly and suspiciously, ready to pounce upon the slightest evasion.

Miss Pim's face advanced in three divisions—forehead, keen nose and sharpened chin. She wore a high false front, of a warmer brown than the slightly grizzled hair that she piled en turban on her head, a majestic note which had earned her the sobriquet of "the Duchess." She adhered to the toilets of the late seventies—flowing brown shotted silks, heavy medallions, hair bracelets, and on state occasions appeared in baby pinks, as if denying the passage of years. She had had a tragic romance—one only, for her nature was too determined to risk another, and at the age of fifty-four she still showed herself implacable to the male sex, although not unwilling to let it be known that she could choose one of three any day she selected. She carried a hand-bag, which jingled with the warning note of silver dollars. She was horribly avaricious, and the Salamanders who courted her favor paid her, whenever possible, in specie. Then she would open her bag, holding it between her knees, and drop into it, one by one, the shining round dollars, listening eagerly to the metallic shock.

"My dear Miss Pim," said Doré, returning with her pocketbook, in a tone of calm superiority that left the landlady dumfounded, "I've told you frequently that I prefer my bill monthly. These weekly rounds are exceedingly annoying. Please don't bother me again. I have nothing smaller than a hundred; can you change it?"

"Please don't bother me again."

And flirting the fabulous bill before the eyes of the landlady, she nonchalantly let it flutter from the tips of her disdainful fingers.

Miss Pim, who liked to inspire terror, was so completely nonplused that, though her lips worked spasmodically, she found nothing to say. She took the bill furiously, and went out. A moment later Josephus appeared with the change in an envelope. The Salamanders were still in gales of laughter over the discomfiture of their common enemy.

Dodo, left alone, dressed in a simple dress of dull black, relieved by a lace edging at the throat and sleeves, and a tailor hat with the invariable splash of a red feather; for she made it a superstition never to be without a little red flutter of audacity and daring. Then she zealously applied the powder, to give a touch of ailing melancholy to her young cheeks—it would never do to appear before Mr. Peavey in too healthy a manifestation. In general, it must be noted that no Salamander is ever in perfect health. There is always lurking in the background a melancholy but most serviceable ailment that not only does for a thousand excuses, but encourages concrete evidences of masculine sympathy.

Her costume finished, she exercised her prevaricatory talents at the telephone, soothing irate admirers, who had clamored ineffectually for her the evening before, with plausible tales which, if they did not entirely believe, they ended by weakly accepting, which amounted to the same thing.

At noon, according to orders, Joseph Gilday, Junior, arrived with a carefully simulated hang-dog look. He was a wiry, sharp-eyed, jingling little fellow, just twenty, already imbued with the lawyer's mocking smile, on the verge of being a man of the world, eager to arrive there, but not quite emancipated. For the last month in this growing phase Doré had found the lines of discipline difficult to maintain. She even foresaw the time when it would be impossible. He had to be handled carefully.

"Hello, Dodo," said Gilday in a hollow tone of misery, dragging his cane into the room and fastening humble eyes on his yellow spats.

"Good morning," said Doré frigidly, for she perceived his maneuver was to force a laugh.

"Thunderation! what is it?" said Gilday, lifting his head and perceiving for the first time the floral display on the trunk tops, the bureaus and the mantelpieces. "I say, is this your October birthday?"

"What do you mean?" said Doré blankly, shaking the water from the stems of Sassoon's orchids.

"Never saw so many flowers in my born life!"

"Many?... do you think so?" said Doré with the air of a marquise.

"Ouch!" said Gilday; "I got it!... I got it!"

"I think you came here to...."

Gilday flushed; apologies were not easy for him.

"What's the use of kicking up a tempest about a little bill of fifty?" he said sulkily. "You could take it as all the other girls do!"

"My dear Joe," said Doré, seizing her opportunity instantly, "other girls do, yes—the kind that I think you see entirely too much of. The trouble with you is, you are not man of the world enough to distinguish. That's the trouble of letting boys play around with me; they make mistakes—"

"Come, now," he broke in furiously, for she had touched him on the raw of his vanity.

Doré stopped his exclamations with an abrupt gesture, and picking from her purse a fifty-dollar bill, held it to him between two fingers.

"Take it!"

"You don't understand."

"I understand perfectly, and I understand," she added, looking him in the whites of the eyes, "just what thoughts have been in the back of your head for the last two weeks!"

Her plain speaking left him without answer. He reddened to his ears, took the bank-note and thrust it in his pocket.

"Now I am going to say to you what I have to say many times," she said, without softening her accusing glance. "I expect to be misunderstood—often. I live independently, and as men are mostly stupid or brutal, I expect to have to set them right. I forgive always one mistake—one only. If you make a second, I cut your acquaintance! Now we'll consider the matter closed!"

Gilday gulped, suddenly enlightened, overcome with mortification, and in a sudden burst of sentimentality exclaimed:

"Dodo, if you'll take me I'll marry you to-night!"

This unexpected turn, the value of which she did not overestimate, brought her a mad desire to burst out laughing. It was not the first time that she had been surprised by such sudden outbursts, and not being given to the study of psychology, had always been puzzled—with a little disdain for the superior masculine sex.

"Neither now nor ever!" she said, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Don't be a silly! Hand me my muff—there on the table. It's time to be going!"

She replaced the orchids, deciding it was best to appear alone and unbefriended before Peavey. Joe, going to the table, stole a glance at the cards of Sassoon, Harrigan Blood and Judge Massingale, apparently carelessly thrown there, and returned with enlarged eyes.

"Damn it, Do," he said, with a new respect, "I wish you'd let me buy you a diamond necklace or an automobile. This money burns my pocket!"

"Presents, all you wish. Send me a little bouquet of orchids, if it will make you feel better," she said, descending the stairs. "Orchids I never get tired of. If I were rich I'd wear a new bunch every day. Pouffé has such exquisite ones...."

The stairs were so dark that she had to feel her way: she could smile without fear of detection.

"He will leave an order for a bouquet every day," she thought confidently, and she began busily to calculate the advantages of her understanding with that justly fashionable florist.

CHAPTER VI

Of all the men Dodo met, paraded and ticketed to her own satisfaction, Mr. Orlando B. Peavey was perhaps the one she had the most difficulty in keeping in the status quo. Not that a wounding thought could ever cross his timid imagination, but that she feared a crisis which by every art she sought to postpone. On the day he found courage to propose, she knew their friendship would end. This exact and vigorous man of business, indefatigable, keen and abrupt in the conduct of affairs, was as shy and disturbed in her presence as a wild fawn. At the age of twelve he had been forced, by the sudden death of his father, to give up an education and fling himself into the breach. For thirty-five years he had worked as only an American can who is resolute, ambitious, passionately enwrapped in work, without the distractions of a youth that had been closed to him, or without other knowledge of women than the solitary devotion he gave to an invalid mother, who querulously and jealously claimed his few spare hours. All the depth of sentiment and affection he lavished in small attentions on this invalid. Yet at her death a great emptiness arrived—life itself seemed suddenly incomprehensible.

For the first time he perceived that he had almost reached fifty, and had he taken stock of his demands on life he would have found that business had ceased to be a means, but had become the sole end, the day and the night of his existence. Several times he had had a furtive desire to marry, to create a home, to look upon children whom he might shower with the enjoyments of youth, which he might thus in a reflected way experience. But the complaining shadow at his side was a jealous tyrant, always on the watch for such an eventuality, bitterly resisting it with hysterical reproaches and frightened prognostications of abandonment. But when at last, two years ago, he had found his life set in solitary roads, he had at first said to himself that the opportunity had come too late, that he was past the age when marriage would be safe. The word "safe" was characteristic of the man. He had a horror of becoming ridiculous.

Nevertheless, a life which had been conceived in sacrifice could not endure selfishly. There were great depths of compassion, yearnings toward the ideal in this walled-in existence, that had to be fed. He felt imperatively the need of doing good, of generosity toward some other human being. He thought of adopting a child, and as this idea grew he was surprised to find that his thoughts constantly formed themselves not in the image of his own sex, but of a young girl, fragile and unprotected, innocent, with the dawning wonder of the world in her eyes, light of foot, warm of voice, with the feeling of the young season of spring in the rustle of her garments.

Then he had met Doré.

He had met her through the daughter of a western business acquaintance, who had confided her to his care. From the first meeting, he had felt a turbulent awakening in him at the sight of her glowing youth. At the thought of her, so inexperienced and candid, subject to all the hard shocks of metropolitan struggle, standing so fragile and alone amid the perils, the temptations and the hunger of the flaring city, he had felt an instant desire to step between her and this huddled snatching mob, to give her everything, to make all possible to her, to watch her face flush and her eyes sparkle at the possession of each new delight that youth craves. But other thoughts came, and he began to suffer keenly, afraid of fantastic perils that tossed before him in his silent hours. If, after all, she should find him ridiculous—he an old man, and she so fresh, so delicate! Then another horrible fear came. What did he know of her—of any woman? If he were deceived, after all? He became suspicious, watching her with a woman's spying for significant details, alarmed, poised for instant flight.

This was the man who was waiting for her in the long corridor of the Waldorf-Astoria, black coat over his arm, derby in hand, not too portly, not too bald, square-toed, dressed in the first pepper-and-salt business suit, ready-made, which had been presented him, low turn-down collar, and a light purple tie, likewise made up. Small nose and aquiline, eyes gray under bushy eyebrows, lip obscured under heavy drooping fall of the mustache. He steadied himself on his heels, beating time with his toes, wondering what others would think when they saw he was waiting for a young and pretty girl.

He saw her flitting down the long hall, head shyly down, light, graceful, scattering imaginary flowers on her way; and the sensation of life and terror that she set leaping within him was so acute that he pretended not to perceive her until she was at his elbow.

"It's very good of you to come," he said at last, when they had reached their table in a discreet corner.

"It's very kind of you to think of me," she said instantly, a little touched by the confusion in his manner. She understood the reason, and it saddened her that it should be so—that he could not always be kept just a devoted friend.

"I'm rushing through; wanted to know how you were!"

"Don't you think I look better?" she said, raising her eyes in heavy melancholy. "The champagne has done wonders."

He was not able to do more than glance hastily at her.

"You don't look yet as you ought to," he said, shaking his head. "You need air. I have a plan—I'll tell you later."

"I'm taking fresh eggs, two a day," said Doré, wondering what he had in view. "Only it's so hard to get real fresh ones!"

"My dear girl, I'll send you the finest in the market," he said joyfully, delighted at the opportunity of such a service.

He took out a note-book and wrote in a light curved hand, "Eggs," and replacing it, said:

"If I send you a pint of the finest dairy cream each morning, will you promise faithfully to make an egg-nogg of it? It's splendid—just what you need!"

"I'll do anything you tell me," said Doré, genuinely touched by the pleasure in his face. It was not entirely self-interest that had made her lead up to the subject, for she could have secured a response from a dozen quarters. It was perhaps an instinctive understanding of the man and what it meant to him to find even a small outlet to his need of giving.

Mr. Peavey methodically had taken out his memorandum and by the side of "Eggs" had added "and cream."

She would have preferred that he should need no reminders; but at this moment, on taking up her napkin, she gave a cry of pleasure. Inserted between the folds was a package of tickets. She scanned them hastily—groups of two for each Monday night of the opera.

"Oh, you darling!" she exclaimed, carried away with delight.

He reddened, pleased as a boy. "Want you to hear good music," he said in self-excusation. "Shan't be here always; you'll have to take a friend."

"Oh, but I want to go with you!" said Doré, genuinely moved.

"When I'm here—can't tell," he said, in the seventh heaven of happiness. "But I want you to go regularly; besides, my car is to call for you."

"You are so kind," said Doré, looking at him solemnly, and forgetting for the moment all thought of calculation. "Really, I don't think there is another man in the world so kind!"

"Nonsense! Stuff and nonsense!" he said, resorting hastily to a glass of water. The waiter came up. He took the menu in hand, glad for the diversion.

"How good he is!" she thought, watching the solicitude with which he studied the menu for the dishes she ought to take. "He would do anything I wanted. If he were only a colonel or a judge!"

She was thinking of the ponderous mustache, and wondering in a vague way what it would be like to be Mrs. Orlando B. Peavey. Perhaps, she could get him to cut his mustache like Harrigan Blood. At any rate, he ought to change his tie. Purple—light purple! and made up, too! With any other man she would have attacked the offending tie at once, for she had a passion for regulating the dress of her admirers; but with Mr. Peavey it was different. A single suggestion that he could not wear such a shade, and she fancied she could see him bolting through the shattering window.

"Will you do me a favor—a great favor, Miss Baxter?" he said finally, turning to her in great embarrassment.

"What is it?"

"It would make me happy—very happy," he said, hesitating.

"Of course I will," she said, wondering what it could be.

"It's not much—it really is nothing. I mean, it means nothing to me to do it! It's this: I am away so much; my car is here—nothing to do; you need a ride,—good air every afternoon,—and, besides, I don't like to think of you going around alone in taxi-cabs or street-cars, unprotected. The car is standing idle; it's bad for the chauffeur. Won't you let me put it at your disposal for the winter—for a month, anyway?"

"Oh, but, Mr. Peavey, I couldn't! How could I?"

"You don't think it would be proper?" he said in alarm.

"No, no, not that!" she said, and a strange thought was at the back of her head. "For the opera, yes! And occasionally in the afternoon. But the rest—it is too much; too much! I couldn't accept it!"

He was immensely relieved that this was the only objection.

"I should feel you were protected," he said earnestly. "That worries me. Such horrible things happen!"

"But I am a professional! I must take care of myself!" said Doré, with a sudden assumption of seriousness.

She began to talk of her career, of her independence, her ambitions—rapidly, feeling that there were sunken perils in the course of his conversation.

"Really, it isn't difficult. American men are chivalrous; they always protect a young girl—really, I've been surprised! And then, I don't think it's quite right that I should have advantages other girls haven't. If I'm going on the stage, I should take everything as it comes. Besides, it teaches me what life is, doesn't it? Then, it's such fun being independent, and making yourself respected! By the way, I feel so much stronger now, I shouldn't wonder if I could be on the stage again soon. Blainey wants to talk to me—I may see him this afternoon. He's such a good kind fellow, just like you, Mr. Peavey! Really, all men seem to try and protect me!"

But the real reason she did not wholly accept his offer she did not tell him.

"Are you sure you want a career?" he said abruptly.

"Do I?... I don't know!" she said, eating hungrily. "But you see the trouble is, I've got to find out! Oh, I don't want anything small! No holding up a horse in the back row of an extravaganza, as Ida says!"

"You won't like the life!..."

"Won't I? Perhaps not!... I know some women have a bad time! But every one looks after me!..."

She shifted the conversation to his interests, and kept it there, with one eye on the clock. It was difficult choosing her questions, for all would not do. For instance, she wished to ask him why he did not stop working and enjoy his money; but that would have opened up a direct and personal reply.

"Why do you work so hard?" she said, instead.

"I've got to do something!" he answered; "and, besides, I'm on the point of something big—if I carry it through. In another year I'll be a rich man—quite a rich man!"

He looked away as he said it, ashamed, knowing at heart why he had offered it up to her thus against his fifty years! But in a moment, chirping ahead rapidly, she had put him at his ease, and keeping the conversation on light topics, avoided further dangers.

He left her with stiff formal bows, placing her in his automobile and giving the chauffeur directions.

The car went smoothly through the crush. It was a good car,—she was a judge!—in perfect order. Whatever Peavey did was always of the best. The chauffeur had quite an air, too. She disturbed the heavy fur rugs that had been so carefully wrapped about her little feet, sunk her head gratefully against the cushions, and thought, with a long easy breath:

"Well, that's one thing I could do!"

She began to consider it from all points of view:

"I wonder what it'd be like to be Mrs. Orlando B. Peavey?"

An automobile—two or three; seats at the opera—a box in the upper row, perhaps; a big house; big dinners. Or, better still, travel, strange countries, curious places. Then she remembered the mustache. On a colonel or a judge, perhaps. What a pity he wasn't either! To be the young wife of a colonel or a judge was quite distinguished!

He was good, kind, gentle. She might even go in for charity. Perhaps, after ten or fifteen years, she might be left a widow, with lots of money. Fifteen was rather long—ten would be better! There was a girl she knew who had married an old man worth ten millions, who had died before the year was out. What luck! But then, all husbands are not so obliging!

This reverie did not last long. She tied it up, so to speak, in a neat package and put it in a pigeonhole. It was comforting to think of it as a possibility! Why had he offered her his automobile every day—just for her own? Was it pure generosity, or was there something else? She smiled; such motives she read easily. Wasn't it, in fact, to know what her daily life was!—whom she saw, where she went, to know absolutely, before he took the final plunge? She smiled again. She was sure there was something of all this in the gift, and leaning forward, she sought to study the face of Brennon, the chauffeur, wondering if she could make him an ally, could trust him—if he were human.

She had no time for conversation. Hardly had she arrived before Miss Pim's than she perceived Sassoon's automobile turning the corner. She did not wish to meet him thus, though she was not sorry that he had seen her return. So she ran hastily up-stairs to her room, and was in the midst of a quick change of toilet when Josephus brought the card.

"Tell him to wait!"

She took pains that this waiting should not be too short, maliciously studying the clock for a good twenty minutes before, prepared for the street, she went down.

"Now to be a desperate adventuress," she thought to herself; and assuming a languid indifferent manner, she entered the room.

CHAPTER VII

Sassoon was on his feet, moving restlessly, as she entered. He was not accustomed to be kept waiting, and to wait half an hour after he had seen her enter just ahead of him was interminably vexing. And yet, he was profoundly grateful for this teasing delay. It awakened him; it made him hope. There was a resistance, a defiance, in it that was as precious as it was rare. He had wondered much about her as he moved with slow irritation, stopping occasionally to catch a reflection in the foggy mirror of his long, oriental, slightly hanging head, and the grizzled mustache which, with its mounting W, gave to his dulled eyes a sharp staccato quality of a blinking bird of prey.

The drawing-room, or parlor, was like ten thousand other parlors of boarding-houses—brown, musty, with an odor of upholstery and cooking, immense tableaux sunk into the obscurity of the walls, imitation Dresden shepherdesses on the mantel, an album of Miss Pim's on the table and a vase containing dried flowers, cheap furniture, a crippled sofa placed in a shadow, and weighing down all, the heavy respectability of a Sunday afternoon. Occasionally the front door opened to a latch-key, and a feminine form flitted by the doorway, always pausing curiously to survey the parlor before sorting the mail that lay displayed on the seat of the hat-rack.

Once a couple with cheery voices came full into the room before perceiving his tenancy. They withdrew abruptly, and he heard the girl saying to her escort:

"Oh, well, come up to the room; there's never a chance at the old parlor!"

This mediocrity, this quiet, these flitting forms of young women, the cub escort who was privileged to enjoy intimacy, strangely excited him. There was something really romantic in following a fancy into such a lair, and the longer the plaguing clock sounded its tinny march, the more vibrantly alert he felt, in the anticipation of her coming.

"I saw you come in!" he said directly. He did not move forward, but stood blinking at her like a night-bird disturbed in the day. "You've kept me waiting quite a while, young lady."

"Really?" she said indifferently. She stopped in the middle of the room. "Well, Pasha, do you expect me to come to you?"

He roused himself, hastily advancing. In truth, waiting for others to throw themselves at him had become such a habit that he had not noticed the omission.

"Pardon me! I was enjoying—you are a delightful picture!" he said in his silky voice.

She accepted the evasion with an unduped smile.

"You are lucky to catch me at all," she said. "I have an engagement up-town at three."

"Do you always wear the national costume?" he said, indicating her Russian blouse.

"Yes, always."

"But my flowers, Miss Baxter?" he said, standing after she had motioned him to a seat; and the glance from under the prominent, hanging upper lids, that half covered the irises, seemed to sift wearily down at her.

"Your flowers? What flowers? Sit down!"

"My orchids—yesterday—"

"Oh! Your orchids." She stopped suddenly, as though confused. "You won't be angry? I know you won't when I tell you about it! I gave them away."

He took his seat, rubbed the back of one hand with long soft fingers, and slowly raised his mocking glance to hers.

"Ah—you gave them away?"

"Yes! and you'll quite approve," she said, meeting his inquisitorial scrutiny without confusion. "I'll tell you just how it was. I have a protégée, an old woman who sells newspapers under the elevated station—such an old woman! If I were rich I'd send her off to a farm and make her happy for the rest of her life! The first day I came to New York I hadn't any money. I didn't know what to do! I sold newspapers!"

"You?"

"Yes! You didn't hear? Oh, it made quite a fuss at the time! The newspapers had it, 'Mysterious Society Woman Sells Papers.' And I made a lot of money—no change, naturally! Too bad I didn't know you then; you would have paid at least a dollar a paper!"

She laughed gaily, a little excited at the recollection.

"It was quite romantic! Well, my old woman gave me the idea. She's been my mascot ever since. Every day I get my papers from her. Last night, coming back after a spin, I stopped as usual. I had the orchids here at my waist; I noticed her eying them.

"'What are you looking at? These?' I asked.

"She bobbed her head. She has only five teeth—the funniest teeth! You ought to see them; none of them meet.

"'At these flowers?'

"She bobbed again.

"'You like flowers?'

"Then she came up close to me—the way old people do, you know—and said in my ear:

"'When I was your age, my darling, I had flowers, like those, every day!'

"And she drew back, nodding and bobbing, smiling her toothless smile."

Doré stopped, pressed her hand to her throat and said in a muffled voice:

"It just took me. Something came right up in my throat—I could have cried! I tore them off and threw them in her arms. If you could have seen the look she gave me! She kissed them. Ah! it made me very happy, I can tell you!"

Did he believe her? He didn't care! Perhaps he preferred that it should have been invented.

"It will mean a great deal to her," he said, his eyes on hers—his eyes, that began to light up as lanterns showing through the fall of night.

"It will mean a great deal!" she said, with an expression of such beatitude that his abiding doubt began to waver. "I just couldn't have kept them!"

"I want you to lunch with me—to-morrow," he said slowly.

"Where?"

"In my apartments. They overlook the park. It's quite delightful."

He watched her eagerly, for eagerness could occasionally show on his face, as a sudden joy may recall a past youth to the face of a mature woman. She considered thoughtfully:

"To-morrow? At what time?"

"At one," he said; and she noticed again the curious gesture of his feminine fingers sliding caressingly over the back of his hand.

"One's all right. I'll be delighted to meet Mrs. Sassoon."

He raised his head with an ironical smile; but the smile fled as he noticed that her face was blankly serious.

"I don't like that!" he said abruptly.

"What?"

"You know very well I am not inviting you to meet my wife."

"What do you want with me, then, Mr. Sassoon?" she said calmly, looking directly at him with her cloudy blue eyes of a child.

He rose, nonplused, walked to the window and slowly back. What was she—straightforward or deep? Did she wish to come directly to a business understanding, or—or was she truly independent and seeking this method to terminate the acquaintance? An instinct warned him of the danger in an answer. He returned, and said, leaning on the mantelpiece:

"Bring a friend, if you wish. I'll have in the Comte de Joncy.... You've aroused his curiosity—"

"At your private apartments?"

"Of course!"

"No!"

"At Tenafly's, then."

"At Tenafly's—down-stairs—yes!"

"A party of four?"

"No. Come to think of it, it'll be more interesting just with you."

This unexpected answer, said in the most natural manner imaginable, perplexed him more than ever. She noticed it, quite delighted at the helplessness of the experienced hunter.

"You won't lunch in a party of four at my apartments, but you will lunch with me alone at a public restaurant."

"Quite so!"

"And your reputation?"

"It isn't a question of reputation—my security! I wouldn't trust you—that's all!"

He didn't choose to discuss this, but sought to give the conversation a different turn.

"You are satisfied with this?" he said, with a sudden crook of his arm.

"You are delightfully direct, aren't you?" she said. "You usually don't have so much trouble coming to an understanding with women, do you?"

"No, I don't."

"Well, what do you want to know?"

"I'm curious to see how you live—your room—"

She shook her head.

"That you'll never see."

"But—"

"Oh, yes, I make a difference. There are men you receive in your room, and men you receive always in a parlor, and there's no trouble at all in classifying them!" She jumped up, with a laugh. "And you, with all your experience among my sex, can't make up your mind about me."

"You pay what? Eight—ten—fifteen a week. And you have your automobile," he said, pursuing his idea.

"Ah, that's it! Have I an auto or not? But that's not what you want to know! You want to know if some one gives me an automobile, and, if so, why? Well, have I or haven't I? Find out!"

"You know," he said in his deliberate dragging way, "I don't believe that story about the orchids!"

"What do you mean?" she said, with such a swift turn from provoking malice to erect gravity that he hesitated.

"There was a hundred-dollar bill in that bouquet, Miss Baxter!" he said, changing the attack slightly.

"A hundred!" she said, drawing herself up in surprise and scorn. "Ah! now I understand—everything. So that's why you are here! To get your value!"

"No—no," he protested, confused.

"Now I see it all!" she continued, as if suddenly enlightened. "Of course, such presents are quite in order as mementoes when young ladies of the chorus are entertained by you. But you weren't sure of me? You wanted to know if I would take it! For, of course, that would simplify things, wouldn't it?"

"Do you regret giving it away?" he said, convinced, watching her with his connoisseur gaze.

She stopped.

"That is insulting!" she said, so simply that he never again recurred to the subject. "Now, Mr. Sassoon, I am going to play fair with you. I always do—at first. I am not like other girls. I do play fair. I give one warning—one only—and then, take the consequences!"

"And what is your warning, pretty child?" he said, with a faint echo of excitement in his voice.

"You will lose your time!" she said, dropping him a curtsy. "You wish to know what I am? I won't give you the slightest hint! I may be a desperate adventuress, or I may be a pretty child; but I tell you frankly, now—once only—you had better take your hat and go! You won't?"

He shook his head stubbornly.

"Very well! You will regret it! Only, be very careful what you say to me, and how you say it. Do you understand?"

"And you will lunch with me to-morrow?"

"Yes!"

"Why?"

"Two reasons—to tantalize you, and because I am the most curious little body in the world! There! That's quite frank!" She glanced at the clock, which had gone well past the hour. "Now I must be off—I shall be late, as it is!"

He glanced, in turn, at his watch.

"And I've been keeping a board of directors cursing me for half an hour—very important board," he said, grinning at the thought of their exasperation if they should be privileged to see the cause of his delay.

"Really?" she exclaimed, delightfully flattered. "Then you can keep them waiting some more! Your car's here? Very well; take me up to the Temple Theater, stage entrance."

It was not in his plan thus publicly to accompany her. Not that he cared about his ghost of a reputation! But to arrive thus at a stage entrance, dancing attendance on a little Salamander, savored too much of the débutant, the impressionable and gilded cub. To another woman he would have refused peremptorily, with short excuse, packing her off in the automobile, and going on foot to his destination. But with Miss Baxter he had a feeling that she would exact it, and a fear that somehow she was waiting an excuse to slip from him, a fear of losing her.

"I am waiting!" she said impatiently.

"What for?" he asked, coming abruptly out of his abstraction.

"For you to hand me in, Pasha!"

He gave her his hand hurriedly, capitulated and took his seat in turn. She guessed his reasons, and watched him mockingly, sunk in her corner. The melancholy and the weakness of yesterday were gone; she was again the gay little Salamander, audacious and reckless, sublimely confident in the reserves of her imagination to extricate her from any peril.

"The warning holds until to-morrow morning," she said, her eyes sparkling, the mood dramatized in every eager and malicious expression.

He did not answer, aroused and retreating by turns, uncomfortable, irritated and yet resolved. Had Doré known the fires she had kindled and the ends to which he was capable of going, perhaps she would not have felt so audaciously triumphant.

As they swung from Broadway into the crowded, narrow side street, quite a group was before the entrance—a knot of stage-hands loafing outside for a smoke, Blainey himself in conversation with an actress who was speaking to him from another automobile, and three or four of the personnel of the theater awaiting the arrival of the manager.

She forced Sassoon to descend and hand her down—Sassoon rebelling at being thus paraded and recognized. Then, with a fractional nod, she went through the group. All at once some one, making way for her, lifted his hat. She looked up and recognized the one man she did not wish to see her thus in Sassoon's company: Judge Massingale, smiling his impersonal, tolerantly amused smile.

CHAPTER VIII

When she had passed the familiar limping figure of the guardian of the stage door, and had caught the sound of the helter-skelter preparations behind the curtains—the ring of hammers, the hoarse shouts into the rafters, the green-and-gold filmy sheen of the scenery, the groups in costume, chattering in the wings, the busy black-hatted, coatless stage-hands tearing about—Doré felt that tingling of the nerves that comes to the crutched veteran when the regiment passes. She adored this life with a keen excited zest. Its unrealities were vitally real, its Lilliputian sultans and pashas great potentates. She adored it—but she was not yet decided. To have been certain of succeeding would have seemed to her the fullest of life; but she was not so blinded by the dazzling light of success as not to perceive clearly the barrenness of its mediocrity and the horror of its failure.

She passed into the theater, which seemed to swallow her up in its impenetrable embrace. She stood a moment, peering into the darkness, seeing only a great red eye above, ghostly draperies in the galleries, and in the mysterious catacombs below a vague flitting figure stumbling to a seat. Then, her eyes growing accustomed to the obscurity, she put out her hand and felt her way along the empty seats, with their damp musty shrouds.

The curtain was up on the set for the first act, which had been ended ten minutes before. They had been rehearsing since noon; the probabilities were they would continue long past midnight. On the stage, O'Reilly of the "props" was swearing hoarsely at the calcium light in the ceilings, throwing on reds and blues with a rapid succession that blinded the eyes. Baum was cursing the scene-shifters, clamoring for more verdure. Trimble, the stage-manager, was in the center of the stage, rearranging a scene with the soubrette and the heavy comic. In the house itself, back of the orchestra, in the dim lobby with its dungeon reflections from the street, the chorus girls and men were busily rehearsing a new step that had just been given them, humming as they balanced on their toes, took hands and twined about their partners, who, with a final twirl, sank on their knees to receive them. As the step was complicated, everywhere murmurs of expostulation and protest were heard:

"Stupid! Not that way!"

"One, two—one, two—one, two, three!"

"Catch me."

"No! I go first."

"Gee! what an ice-wagon!"

"To the left, I told ye!"

Dodo, dodging swaying bodies and arms extended in swimming gestures, found the center aisle, and her eyes acquiring more vision, began to explore the obscurities. Above the orchestra, Felix Brangstar, his head crowned with a slouch hat, stripped to shirt and crossed pink suspenders, angry, hot and on edge, was screaming to the flutes orders to transpose certain measures. O'Reilly continued to shout:

"Blind that! Throw on the whites. Damn you, will you throw on your whites? Hold that!"

Trimble, on the stage, was taking the part of the soubrette, skipping about the heavy comic, coquetting and dodging under his arm, while the air was charged with electric comments:

"Lower away! More—more!"

"Is Blainey here yet?"

"Where's Benton?"

"Switch that table over!"

"Throw on your borders!"

"B flat, then the chord of A."

"That's cut out. Yes—yes!"

"Try that curtain again."

"Bring it down slow. No! God! Carey, do you call that slow? Again!"

The piece was a truly fairy-like creation of a modern Offenbach, romantic in libretto, distinguished and delicate in music, a true operetta of the sort that ten years from now will take its just place as a work of art, no longer subject to the mutilations and humiliations that now attend such Americanizations into the loosely tied vaudeville numbers justly termed comic opera.

At this moment some one touched Doré on the arm, and looking up, she beheld Roderigo Sanderson. In the shadow she perceived nothing but the flash of a diamond stick-pin and the white sheen of his collar, while an odor of perfume distilled itself from the handkerchief he wore in his sleeve and the heavy curls on his forehead.

"You here?"

"T. B. wants to see me," he answered, giving Blainey, with the American passion for intimacy, the initials under which he was known from one end of the Rialto to the other. He took a seat back of her, leaning over her shoulder, speaking in a guarded tone in the mezzo-Anglican accent which he had almost acquired.

"It's uncommon good, you know. Saw it in Vienna. A gem! Trimble has really staged it jolly well. Sada Quichy—they've imported her, you know—really knows a bit about singing as well as dancing. If they'd put it on as it is now, it would go big—by jove, it would be a revolution! But they won't. The slaughter-house gets a chance at it to-day. You'll see what's left after T. B. gets his meat-ax into it!"

"Who's in the stage-box?" said Doré curiously.

"The silent partners," said Sanderson, with a laugh. "Look at the brutes! They're in a fog—in a panic! They already see their money flowing in a gutter. Never mind! they'll get a bit more cheery when T. B. begins his popularizing. It'll be quite amusing. I always get to these executions. It's a brutal appetite, but it sort of consoles one, you know!"

In the box, the silent partners, Guntz, Borgfeldt and Keppelman, suddenly enriched commission agents from the Central West, new to the dishabille of the theater, sat motionless, three black, ill-smelling cigars on parade, three enormous bodies, tortured by tight collars, tight vests, tight chairs, each derby set over one ear to shade the fat folds of the jowled head. Sanderson had made no mistake: the exquisite and melodious first act had left them absolutely petrified with horror.

Sanderson, au courant, continued his exposition after a preparatory glance around the stalls.

"They say they've made millions. How the deuce did L. and B." (the theatrical firm of Lipswitch and Berger) "ever entice them into it? They say they're back of the firm for a third in everything! I'd give a good deal, now, to see the contract those bandits drew up for mutual protection! Jove! that would be a curiosity!"

At that moment, when the stage was in a bedlam, with the cross-fire of the stage-manager coaxing on the soubrette, Brangstar furiously reprimanding the little polyglot tenor, who sang of "lof," and was insufferably pleased with his slender legs, Baum moving indifferently in the confusion, giving ideas for the readjustment of the ravine and the bridge, O'Reilly darkening the blue lights to try the effect of dawn, despite the complaints of the dressmaker, who was defending her costumes and endeavoring to save the hussar boots of the chorus girls by a bolder rearrangement of the draperies—in the midst of this inferno, Blainey came shouldering in, the reverberations of his deep bass stilling the uproar.

"First act, now. Get at it! Don't bring me in here, O'Reilly, for a rehearsal on lights. Ring down your curtain. Gus, want to hear that overture! Let's get at it, boys!"

"All on stage for first curtain!"

Instantly there was a scurrying of the chorus from the lobby down the stage aisle; the dressmaker went hurriedly over the footlights, via a box; the curtain slowly settled; Brangstar climbed to his chair; and the voice of O'Reilly floated out in a final curse at the calcium lights.

"Blind your blues and clear slow. Pete, bring it on slow this time! Do you get me? Do you get me?"

And from above, the voice of the labor union, unruffled, neither to be coaxed nor driven, came impudently down:

"Sure I get you!"

"Overture, now. Then go through the first act. No stops!" said Blainey, lumbering up the aisle.

Against the firefly lights of the orchestra his figure showed like a great barrel, short legs and short arms, with the sense of brute power in the blocked head sunk in the shoulders. He came to where they sat, shading his eyes. Sanderson stood up abruptly, at attention.

"Hello, kid!" he said, perceiving Doré.

"Hello, Blainey!"

"See you after first act," he said, leaning over the chairs until they groaned, to take her hand in his enveloping grasp. "Who's that with you—the judge? Oh, Sanderson! What are you—oh, yes, I remember. Judge, glad you came; I want your opinion!"

At this moment Massingale came down from the lobby and took a seat beside Doré, while Blainey, readjusting his soft black, broad-brimmed hat with a nervous revolving motion, sauntered on, impatient at the scraping of the violins and the preparatory pumping of the horns. Sanderson, at a nod from Blainey, had followed him into the lobby.

"Surprised to see me here?" said Massingale, taking his seat. "You know, I turn up everywhere. I'm one of those who circulate. I came with Sada Quichy—she's great fun!"

In fact, in New York three classes are privileged at every door—privileged because they have the power to make themselves feared: the politician in office; the representative of the press; and the judge who, at a word, can unloose the terrors of both the others.

"Don't forget what you told me yesterday," she said, turning to him directly, haunted by the malice in his eyes when he had seen her handed down from Sassoon's automobile.

"What did I tell you?"

"That you would not misunderstand me!"

"I don't!" he said, after an ineffectual attempt to see her face. "But—are you strong enough to play the game you are playing?"

"Sassoon?"

"Yes, Sassoon!"

She thought of him, ruffled and rebellious, forced to accompany her to the stage entrance. She held him in slight respect.

"Pooh! Sassoon!" She had a feeling that this man already had her confidence, that she could talk freely with him. "Harrigan Blood, yes; but not Sassoon!"

"You are wrong about Sassoon," he said quietly. "It is not the clever man that is difficult to manage; it is the relentless one! That's Sassoon!"

"Did you call yesterday—to warn me?" she said, turning to him.

"No; moralizing is not my forte," he said, shaking his head. "You are unusual. I should like to watch—your progress!"

"You like to be behind the scenes?"

"Adore it!"

"I wonder just what you think of me," she said pensively. "Have you decided what I am to become?"

"Yes."

She looked up, startled.

"What?"

"Oh, not now—later; some time when we can really talk."

She wished him to invite her, but he was one of those who had the rare instinct of making women believe they were pursuing him. She was silent, thinking, too, of Sada Quichy, doubly resolved to steal him from her.

"Very well," she said suddenly; "we'll dine together. They'll go on here till midnight. We can bring back some sandwiches and cold chicken for the prima donna." But, in her mind, she was resolved that, once they were at dinner, she would carry him off boldly, Sada Quichy or not.

"Splendid!" he said laconically, and prepared himself for the overture, that was being announced by a vigorous lashing of the conductor's stand.

Blainey had settled his body a short way in front of them, ears pricked for the commercially vital waltz motif.

But in the present overture this essential did not at once appear. The operetta, which had been given the name of The Red Prince, was a fantastic romance of Hungary, strangely endowed with an intelligible plot, and this fresh presentation of wild dancing melodies, passionate strains of melancholy and yearning, abandoned delight and fierce exultation, was summarized in the overture.

Massingale, who was an amateur of music, bent forward, breathing full, murmuring his approbation. Doré too felt strangely lifted from herself, leaping along perilous heights, striving with invisible windy shapes, that caught her and whirled her, with closed eyes and bated lips, in giddy whirlpools or sudden languorous calms. All the instincts that yesterday, in the change of the year, had vibrated to melancholy, now suddenly seemed to awake with the sufficiency of the instant. A fig for the future! She had a need of the present, of the day, of the hour, gloriously, deliciously stirred from blank realities. Her breath came quick, the little nostrils quivered, and glancing at Massingale's aristocratic forehead and jaw, she found him more than interesting—strong, virile, fascinating in the chained-up impulses which a sudden wild burst of the czardas brought glowing to his eyes.

The overture ceased amid a murmur of approbation; she moved a little way from the shoulder she had instinctively approached.

"Take up that waltz again," said Blainey instantly.

Brangstar, as if warned of what was coming, rebelliously gave the signal. The motif occurred in the middle of the overture, directly after the czardas. It was a tum-ti-tum but undeniably catchy affair.

"Stop there!" Blainey rose and moved into the aisle. "Cut out all that follows. No grand opera stuff—we don't want it! End with that waltz. Fake it. Play it once pianissimo, fiddles; second time louder—bring in your horns. Then let go with your brass. Cut loose. Soak it to 'em! Start it up, Gus!"

Brangstar, who had given three fretful weeks to this beloved production, musician at heart, loathing his servitude to Mammon, seeing in the present work of art his opportunity to emerge, to do the true, the big thing, raised his fists in horror. He had either to burst into tears or swear. Swear he did, damning Blainey, Lipswitch, the whole gang of Pharisees and infidels he served, calling them every name his rage flung to his lips, vowing he never would be a party to such an atrocity.

Blainey, composed, allowed him to vent his fury, rather admiring his manner. Brangstar was a valuable man, a blooded race-horse harnessed to a delivery-wagon.

"You know your music, Gus; I know my public!" he said finally. "What's going to make this opera is just one thing—what you can get under the skin of your audience! We'll soak that waltz at 'em until every mother's son of them goes out whistling it—till the whole town whistles it! That's success, and I know it, and you know it! Now, get at it!"

When the overture had been repeated as he had ordered, Guntz, Borgfeldt and Keppelman began to warm up and to slap one another with delight, while from the recesses of the theater the shrill whistle of the ushers was heard continuing the catchy:

"Tum-ti-tum-ti, Tum-ti-tum-ti, Tum-tum-tum!"

Blainey, not insensible to dramatic effects, indicated the box, where joy now reigned, pursed his lips and nodded knowingly to Massingale.

The execution continued in the first act. The waltz appeared only in the third. Blainey put it forward into the first, arranged for the comics to give a light twist to it in the second, and built it up again in the third, with all the resources of the chorus and repeated encores.

At each moment he stopped the progress of the act:

"Too pretty, pretty! Never go! Cut it!"

"Throw in some gags, there."

"Rush it—rush it!"

"Explode something, there."

"Trimble, got to get your chorus in here. Rush 'em in!"

"Oh, that's enough atmosphere!"

"The public wants dancing!"

"All right! Strike for the second act!"

The curtain rolled down and up, and the scene-shifters flung themselves on the ravine. Brangstar went out to a saloon, strewing curses; Guntz, Borgfeldt and Keppelman followed to celebrate; and Blainey, moving up to Massingale, said, with a shrewd twinkle:

"Well, Judge, how do you like the first act?"

"Tim, if I had you before me I'd send you up for ten years!"

"Not if you had your money behind it, you wouldn't," said Blainey good-humoredly. "Art be damned. I'm here to make money—yes, as every one else is, in this town! I know what the public wants, and I soak it to 'em. Why, this show wouldn't run six nights on a South Troy circuit!"

At this moment some one whispered to him that Sada Quichy was in hysterics.

"What's the matter with Sadie, anyhow?" said Blainey, shrugging his shoulders. "What's she kicking about? She gets twenty weeks, whether we smash or not. I say, Judge, go and jolly her up a bit. Tell her she's got a grand part! I want to talk business with this little girl."

And without concerning himself further, he led the way to his private office.

Doré followed quietly. During the last two hours she had been balancing on various emotions. The first glamour of the intoxicating overture had been shattered. She looked on with sober eyes at this spectacle of the theater reduced to its materialistic verities. She was too imaginative not to perceive the outrages committed in the name of the box-office, and too keen not to credit Blainey's logic. The fat idol-like figures of Guntz, Borgfeldt and Keppelman were realities, too; she would have to deal with that type, too—many of that type—if she chose to continue. And she had remained in long periods of absorption, scarcely hearing the remarks Massingale whispered to her, wondering, trying to see into the future, asking herself if this were to be the solution, and, if it were, how to play it. Musing thus, she continued to watch Blainey closely, wondering. Blainey and Harrigan Blood were of the same tribe; they could not be fed on sugar-plums!

The office was a comfortable, pleasantly lighted room, in the greatest disorder possible. Blainey swept aside a litter of papers, and sank into a huge upholstered chair, studying Doré, who vaulted to a seat on the desk.

Doré vaulted to a seat on the desk

Seen in the daylight, his head seemed to have been scraped and roughened by the long buffeting of adversity and the rough passage upward. The ears that leaped from the solid head, the sharp pointed nose with large nostrils, the wide mouth of a great fish, the shaggy brows and eyes of the fighter, the thin gray cockatoo rise of hair on the forehead as if grasped by an invisible hand—all had about them the signs of the battler, whose defiant motto might appropriately have been: "Don't bump me!"

Blainey glanced at half a dozen telegrams, news from productions scattered over the country, and raised his glance again.

"You're not mixed up with Roderigo Sanderson, are you?"

"Who?"

She had taken off her fur toque with a charming gesture of intimacy, and was arranging her hair in the opposite mirror, her feet swinging merrily.

"Sanderson."

"Did you see who brought me here?" she said impertinently. The answer saved the actor an engagement. With Blainey she assumed always the disdain of a woman of the world.

"Don't get mixed up with actors," he persisted, a note of jealousy in his voice. "Steer clear!"

"Managers are safer, you mean!" she said, laughing at him.

That was not his meaning, but he continued:

"I don't have to tell you much, do I, kid?"

"Not much, Blainey."

"That was Sassoon with you, eh?"

"Albert Edward himself, Blainey," she answered, with an accented note of pride. She knew the man she was dealing with. Brutal and contemptuous to innocence, but bowing down with a sneaking admiration to the woman who played the game and won out, not for a moment did he doubt that she was of the shrewdest and the most unprincipled. And this conviction stood like a shield before her in this room where other women had gone in with a shrug.

"Sassoon, eh?" he said admiringly, and he gave vent to a long whistle. "Well, trim 'em, kid, trim 'em!"

"That's what I'm doing, Blainey, and the finest!"

She took his accents, almost the contemptuous abruptness of his gestures, transforming herself into his world.

"When are you going to get tired of all that?" he said, his eyes narrowing covetously. "It's a short game. This is longer, safer."

"When? Pretty soon, Blainey."

"Why not now?"

She shook her head, laughing.

"Too soon—too soon!"

He reached over into a drawer and drew out a play.

"Do you see this? I'm keeping this for you!"

She opened her eyes.

"For me?"

"There's a fortune in it. There's a scene there"—he swore appreciatively—"it's all in a scene, a trick; but it's a winner. And I'm holding that for you, kid."

"Star me?" she said, laughing incredulously.

"In the third year—yes!"

"Come, now, Blainey, I'm no fool. I'm not that strong on acting!"

"Acting be damned. Personality!" he said, slapping the table. "You've got me—you can get them!"

"Have I got you, Blainey?" she said, looking at him boldly.

"You got me from the first with your impudent way," he said abruptly. "I'm interested in you, kid—particularly interested! You understand what I mean?"

"It's not hard to understand you, T. B."

"I'll put you on Broadway in two years," he said. Then, bubbling over with enthusiasm, he took up the rôle again. "God! there's a scene here that'll get 'em—won't be a dry handkerchief in the house!" He continued, his face lighting up with sentiment, for scenes of virtue triumphant, virtue resisting, virtue rewarded, genuinely moved him—on the stage: "End of second act, the girl learns she's an intruder—not Lady Marjorie, heiress to millions, but a waif, substituted, see? It's a lie, of course; all works out well in the last act; but you don't know that. She's got an exit there beats anything in Camill! Runs away, see? Leaves everything—jewels, clothes, money, nothing belongs to her.

"Proud—that's the idea; won't take a thing—nothing! Just as she's rushing out, sees a cat, a damned, bobtailed, battered old kitten she's picked off the streets, saved from a gang of ruffians in first act. That's hers; in that great gorgeous palace—think of it—all that is hers—all she's a right to. Runs back, grabs it, hugs it to her breast, and goes out! What a chance! There's millions in that cat! I saw it. The play was rotten, but the cat was there! That's the kind of stuff that gets over, chokes you up, blinds you! I know it—I'd risk a fortune on it!"

"Sounds good!" she said, nodding, amazed at this other side in him, not yet comprehending inconsistencies in human nature.

He was off in raptures again, insisting on reading the final pages. She listened without hearing, attracted and repulsed, turn about, by the man. When he had come to earth again, she said:

"Blainey, I'm going to send a girl around to you for that part you offered me."

"No, you're not! Work others," he said, with a snap. "Trim 'em, but don't work me! I don't go in for charity!"

"Who said anything about charity?" she answered, knowing the impracticability of such an appeal. "I'm sending you some one who can act—Winona Horning, and a beauty! She was going to take a part in one of Zeller's productions, and I told her to hold off until you saw her. She's a friend, and I don't want her to lose time with Zeller!"

"You won't take it yourself?"

"Not now! Besides, when I get ready, you're going to place me in a good stock company first. Look out, Blainey," she added, laughing; "if I turn serious, it'll be frightful!"

He began, delighted, to sketch for her the course she should take, seeking to convince her of her talents, unfolding to her the methods he would employ. She kept her eyes on his, but she did not hear a word. The feeling of the place possessed her; she could not shake it off. She felt already caught.

In reality, her reckless assumption of this part was simply a trying out of herself, an attempt to project herself into the future, to explore with the eye where the feet must tread. Not that a career was within her serious intentions. She retreated from coarseness, drawing her delicate skirts about her; yet it amused her thus to dramatize herself! So, while one Dodo was audaciously playing at acting, another Dodo was coldly placing questions before herself.

"Would it be possible? Could I ever? Would it be worth while? And Blainey—what would that mean?"

Then, as he turned in the glare from the window, she noticed his vest. It was a brown upholstered vest with purple sofa buttons. Her reverie centered on those buttons, counting them, running them up and down; and a curious idea came to her. If by any chance she should go on with a career, she certainly would have to make him change that vest!

The idea of a manager, a manager devoted to her, wearing a brown upholstered vest with purple sofa buttons, offended her horribly—more than other possibilities which did not stare her in the face. When she went off with Massingale, after the second act, for a hasty bite, he said to her:

"Why so solemn?"

She was still counting over that double line of purple sofa buttons.

CHAPTER IX

They took their supper in a near-by oyster house, invaded by a chattering throng, drummed over by an indefatigable orchestra. She had looked forward keenly to the tête-à-tête. She was terribly disillusioned. It was not at all exciting. Conversation was impossible, and what they said was meaningless. She became irritable and restless, for she had a feeling that she was being defrauded—that this man was not like the rest, that he was one worth knowing, drawing out, an adversary who would compel her to utilize all the light volatile artillery of her audacious imagination.

"Listen," she broke out suddenly, "this is a horrible failure. I really want to talk to you! Have you seen enough of the rehearsal?"

"Plenty!"

"Let's cut it, then!"

"Madame Quichy would never forgive me!"

She was silent a moment, rebuffed.

"I'm out of sorts. You can at least take me home!"

"Certainly!"

Arrived at the house, she said reluctantly:

"Well, come in for just a moment!"

And the parlor being occupied, they went to her room.

"Is Your Honor really going to spare me ten minutes from the fascinating Sada Quichy?" she said, pouting, once arrived.

"Ten hours, if you like!" he said, taking off his coat with a gesture of finality.

She was so delighted at this unhoped-for treason that she clapped her hands like a child, not perceiving how he had made her ask each time for what he really wanted.

"You're really going to stay?"

"Yes, indeed!"

"How exciting!"

She let her coat slip into his hands, and going to the mirror, raised her hat slowly from her rebellious golden curls with one of those indescribable, intimate, feminine gestures that have such allurement to the gaze of men. If, with Blainey, she had resorted to abrupt and dashing ways, with Massingale she felt herself wholly feminine, sure that each turn of her head, line of her body, or caressing movement of her arms would find appreciation.

She looked at him a moment over her shoulder, arching her eyebrows with eyes that seemed brimming with caprice.

"You know, I was quite determined you should come!" she said, laughing, and with a sudden swift passage of the room, she darted on the sofa, curling her legs under her, hugging her knees, and resting her little chin on them in elfish amusement. "Honor bright! Made up my mind there in the theater!"

"So did I!" he said frankly.

"Really? And Sada Quichy?"

"She is a known quantity! It's much more amusing gambling with possibilities!"

Since taking her coat he had remained standing, examining the room with a keen instinct for significant details.

"Two beds?"

"This is Snyder's," she said, patting it. "She's rehearsing. Won't be home till late."

Without asking her permission, he moved about curiously, smiling at the trunks which stood open, and the bureaus with their gaping drawers.

"Heavens! everything is in an awful mess!" she said, with a little ejaculation.

"Don't change it. I like it! It looks real!" he said, continuing.

She allowed him to pry into corners, watching him from the soft depths of the couch, a little languid from the varied emotions of the day, longing to be rid of the stiff pumps and the fatigue of her day dress. The different dramatizations she had indulged in with Peavey, Sassoon and Blainey had aroused her craving for sudden transpositions. If only this should not prove disappointing! She felt an exhilarated curiosity, more stirred than ever before. Did he really know her, divine her, as she believed? How would he act? Was he only mentally curious, or was that a clever mask for a more personal interest? She had a feeling that she had known him for years, that all they could say had been said again and again.

He was young at forty-five, and yet already gray. She liked that. Youth and gray hair, she thought, were distinguished in a judge. There was an air of authority about him that imposed on her. He did not ask permission for what he did, and yet it carried no offense. He was dressed perfectly, and that counted for much with her—so perfectly that she did not even notice what he wore, except that the tones were soft and gave her a sensation of pleasure, and that the cut was irreproachable.

All the accent lay about the eyes and the fine moldings of the forehead. The eyes were deep, hidden under the brows, Bismarckian in their set, and not so calm, after all, she thought. She found herself studying the lines of his mouth, strong and yet susceptible. And as she studied the characteristic mockery of his smile, that smile which gave him the appearance of one who projects above the crowd and sees beyond the serried heads, it did not seem so much the man himself as an attitude carefully assumed against the world. Was there a drama back of it all? At any rate, her curiosity awaking her zest, she began to wonder what he would be like in anger—that is, if anything could move him to anger, or to anything else! This last provocative thought aroused the danger-defying little devil within her. The languor vanished; she felt swiftly, aggressively alert.

"And this is where we say our prayers," he said, pointing to the white bed.

"Every night!" she answered promptly.

"Really?" he said, raising his eyebrows.

"Every night," she repeated, "I throw myself on my knees and cry, all in a breath:

"'O Lord! give me everything I want!' Then I dive into bed, and pull the covers over my head!"

"H'm!" he said, his chin in his hand, looking down at her as she rocked in laughter on the couch. "After all, that's what a prayer is, isn't it?"

"I think so. Oh!"

Suddenly on the floor, tipping from the edge of the couch, her pumps fell with a crash. She had slipped them off surreptitiously, concealing the operation with her skirts. She sprang on the rug in her green stocking feet, snatching up the indiscreet pumps, and retreating to the closet, but without confusion.

"What are you doing now?" she said, bobbing out suddenly.

He was standing by the chrysanthemums, reaching up.

"I was wondering if they were real."

"Imitation?"

"You don't know that trick," he said maliciously. "A great invention of one girl I knew. You ought to know it! She had three vases, chrysanthemums, roses, violets, all imitation. She said they were the only flowers she cared for; so, when orders came in, all the florist did was to telephone the amount he would credit to her account!"

"Was the florist Pouffé?" asked Doré, stopping short and laughing.

"One of them. But the real touch was when the admirer called. She would place the vase of roses, say, on the mantel,—out of reach, naturally,—blow a special perfume in the room, and say:

"'My! how wonderfully fragrant those roses are!'"

Doré felt divined; she laughed, conscious of a telltale color.

"Really, Your Honor, you know entirely too much!"

"I adore the little wretches—and their games!" he said frankly. "I'm always on their side!"

"You don't adore anything! You couldn't!"

She had stopped before him, looking up at him with her blue eyes, which were no longer cloudy but sparkling with provocation.

"You read character, too," he answered, smiling impersonally. "It's true—it's safer and more amusing! Let me behind the scenes. I like it—that's all I ask!"

"All?"

"Quite all!" he said dryly. Then: "What are you going to do with Sassoon and Harrigan Blood?"

He asked the question without preparation, to throw her off her guard, but she avoided it by asking another.

"Are you really just looking on?" she said, drawing her eyebrows together. "Only curious?"

"It's as I told you," he said. "You see how I am here. Can't you tell?"

She shook her head.

"I can't tell; I can't tell anything about you!"

"You were not very nice to me at the luncheon!" he said irrelevantly.

"I know it!"

"You would hardly speak to me!"

"No."

"Why?"

"Shall I tell you? Because—because you are too strong for me!" she said solemnly, her eyes growing curiously round and large.

He laughed.

"Now, Miss Mischief, that's too evident!"

"It's true! I felt it from the start," she said simply. "Sit down."

He credited her with being deeper than he had believed, whereas she had only obeyed an impulse.

"Is Blainey a possibility too?" he asked suddenly.

"What! he has guessed even Blainey?" she thought, startled; but, as she began an evasive answer, satisfied, he turned to a trunk, closed it and installed himself, folding his arms.

"I'll tell you what I am going to do with Sassoon and Blood," she said suddenly. She had camped on another trunk, swinging one little foot incased within a red slipper, ten feet of the faded rug between them. "I am going to make—oh, a lot of trouble!"

"You've started it already!"

"Tell me—was there really a terrible row?" she asked, clapping her hands eagerly. "All over little me?"

"H'm, yes—rather! We had some difficulty in stopping it!" He looked at her, amused, with the gaze of one who appreciates the irony of values. "Do you know, you pretty little atom, that you are setting in motion forces that may shake millions?"

"Oh, how lovely! Tell me!"

"Perhaps I'd better not!" he said grimly. "And suppose I told you that if you made Sassoon and Blood enemies over your charming little person, that Blood is capable of turning all the force of his newspapers against the Sassoon interests, making ugly revelations and bringing on a mild panic, would you persist?"

"Certainly I should!" she exclaimed enthusiastically.

"So is history made!" he thought to himself. "Now, answer me honestly."

"Well?"

"Don't you ever feel any temptation—"

"With Sassoon—money?"

He put out his arm in a gesture that swept the room.

"You are satisfied with this?"

"Do you know, that's just what he asked—the very words!"

"Yes; Sassoon would be pretty sure to ask that. And you are never tempted?"

"I thought you knew us!" she said proudly. "You don't—no, you don't understand at all!—or you wouldn't have asked that question!" But, not yet ready to talk, wishing to put a score of questions to him, she changed abruptly: "So, Your Honor, you are just curious about me?"

"I am—very curious!" he said, looking at her with a touch of his magisterial manner. "It's a queer game you are playing!"

"It's such fun!"

"Yes," he said, unbending; "it is fun; but what's going to come of it?"

She flung out her arms.

"Quien sabe!"

"I wonder what is the answer," he said, with a touch of solemnity. "There are so many possible answers!"

"Oh, now, Your Honor," she said, with a pouting look, a little restless, too, under his fixed gaze, "are we to be as serious as all that?"

"You girls are marvelous," he said in a lighter tone, "and you don't even appreciate the wonders you accomplish!"

"Go on! Cross-examine me! It's a new experience!" she said, dropping her hands into her lap resignedly, with mock submission. She felt as though she were playing a great rôle, and that before an audience which would not respond—which she was determined should respond; and yet, much as she wished to try his composure, she was still groping for the proper tactics.

"Some day will you tell me something?"

"I'm afraid, Your Honor, I'd tell you almost anything! What is it?"

"Where you come from—your home—why you left—"

"The story of my life—right away!"

"I should be interested!"

"My father was shot the week before I was born," she began, composing her features. "Mother was arrested on suspicion; I was born in jail...."

"Wait," he said, with an appreciative nod. "I don't want a romance!"

She laughed with some confusion.

"What a pity! It was such a good start."

"I want the truth—not one of a dozen stories you've made up!"

She eyed the tip of her red slipper, raising it slightly.

"Some day I'll tell you," she said finally. "Next question!"

"Where in the world did you pick up the name?"

"Pick up? What do you mean?"

"The 'Doré.' It wasn't your own!"

"Oh, I found it," she said, turning away hastily, as if afraid he might have guessed.

That was one thing she could never tell him, no matter where future confidences might lead her. It had, in truth, been the suggestion of a certain Josh Nebbins, press-agent for a local theater, who had once adored her fatuously—one of those forgotten minor incidents, lost in the impenetrable mists of an outlived beginning, an indiscretion that she wished to forget, an impossible admirer of the days when her taste had not been cultivated.

Luckily, in this moment of her confusion the telephone saved her.

"Shall I close my ears?" he said instantly.

"The idea! Do you think I haven't learned how to telephone?" she said indignantly. "See how much you can gather from it!"

He waited, availing himself of her permission to listen, seeking in vain to patch sense in the guarded replies that came to him:

"I know who it is. Go ahead.... No, not alone—but that makes no difference.... Well, I thought it was time! Engaged to-night!... You saw me?... To-day—this afternoon.... 'Deed I am!... Why not? Lovely!... I'm sorry!... When?... Yes!... Oh, terribly exciting!..."

He smiled, and admitting defeat, continued his examination of the room. Keen amateur of the thousandfold subterranean currents of the city, none interested him more than the adventurous life of the Salamanders, with their extraordinary contrasts of wealth and poverty. He had known them by the dozens, and yet each was a new problem. Was it possible that she could experience no temptation before the opportunities of sudden wealth, so boldly enticing, or did she not realize what such opportunities could mean? The interview interested him hugely. He felt himself master of the situation, enjoying the sudden turns of his intimate knowledge that kept her on the defensive—keen enough to know the advantage, with a woman, of establishing an instant superiority.

"Well?" she said, returning and looking at him with a teasing glance.

"I'll admit that you've learned to telephone," he said appreciatively. "What were you planning—how best to elope?"

"You didn't guess who it was?"

"Sassoon?"

"No; Mr. Harrigan Blood."

"H'm! I should like to have heard—"

The telephone interrupted again, but this time, responding in an assumed voice, she cut it off abruptly, swinging back to her perch on the trunk.

"Ready! Go on with the examination. Well! what are you thinking?"

"I am trying to see the whole scheme," he said, looking at her seriously. "Sassoon, Blood,—twenty others, I understand,—excitement and all that. How long have you been in it?"

"In what?"

"In this maelstrom of New York?"

"Two years, almost!"

"Ah, then there must be a man or two behind the rocks!"

"How funnily you express things," she said, half guessing his meaning. "Just what do you mean?"

He took out his cigarette-case, asked permission with a nod, and lighting a match, said:

"The man behind the rock? Oh, that's obvious! The man you have only to whistle for, the passably acceptable man, safe, eligible, marriageable. The man who will come forward at any time! Every woman understands that. Perhaps there are several rocks, way back in the background? No fibbing, now!"

She laughed, and thinking of Peavey, blushed under his quick gaze.

"Yes, of course."

"More than one?"

"Three or four; but I shall never whistle!"

"That's what makes the game so exhilarating, isn't it?"

"Naturally! There's always a retreat," she said, nodding.

His way of taking her, unexpected and positive, made her forget, at times, the combat intended, in the delight of self-analyzation.

"Your eyes are extraordinary," he said, meeting her glance critically. "They're not eyes; they're blue clouds entangled in your eyelashes."

But even in this there was no personal enthusiasm. He spoke enthusiastically, but as an observer, calculating and foreseeing developments. This compliment infuriated Doré. She was not accustomed to having men meet her full glance with nothing but criticism.

"Thank you!" she said icily. "You compliment like an oculist."

"No oculist would understand the value of such eyes," he answered calmly; "De Joncy was right when he said there was a million in each."

"So you overheard?"

"And you—did you understand?"

"Of course!"

She sprang to the floor, and went to the dressing-table on the pretext of seeking a comb.

"I don't like the way you talk to me," she said, with her back to him.

"Why?"

The real reason she could not avow—that she resented this immovable impersonality of his attitude. This man, who saw into her, who divined so much that she believed securely masked, and yet showed no trace of emotion even in his flattery, began to irritate her, as well as to arouse all the dangerous vanities. But, as she could not tell him this, she assumed an indignant manner and said:

"I believe you really think I shall turn into an adventuress!"

"No-o," he said slowly, as if reflecting. "You may come near it—very near it; but it will be a hazard of the imagination. You will end very differently!"

"Ah, yes," she said, suddenly remembering, her irritation yielding to her curiosity, "you were going to prophesy. Well, what's going to happen to me?"

"You will be angry if I tell you," he said, with a whimsical pursing of his lips.

"No! What?"

"You will burn up another year or so; you will come very, very near a good many things; and then you will marry, and turn into a devoted, loyal little Hausfrau—like a million other little Hausfraus who have thought they were in this world to do anything else but marry!"

"No, no! Don't you dare say that!" she said, covering her ears and stamping her foot. "That never!"

"Mark my prophecy," he said, with mock solemnity, delighted at the fury he had aroused.

"No, no! I won't be commonplace!" she cried. "I am in this world to do something unusual, extraordinary. I'm not like every other little woman. Marriage? Never! Three meals a day at the same hours—the same man—domesticity! Horrors!"

"Of course, of course," he said, with his provoking analytic exactness of phrase. "My dear girl, this is not a real life you are indulging in! Some day, perhaps, I'll discuss it more frankly with you. All this is a phase of mild hysteria. Do you know what you are doing? You're not living; you're rejecting life—yes, just that!—with every man you meet. The time comes when you will have to select. The forces of nature you are playing with are bigger than you; they'll conquer you in the end—decide for you! Now you play at fooling men so much that you fool yourself. When you marry, you will surprise yourself!"

"Stop!" she cried furiously. "Marriage! Yes, that's all you men believe we are capable of! But we are different now. We can be free—we can live our own lives! And I will not be commonplace. Nothing can make me that. I'd rather have a tragic love-affair than that! Oh, what's the use of living, if you have to do as every one else does!"

She went to the window at the side, covering the ground with the leap of a panther, working herself to a fury.

"Do you know what this wall is?" she cried, striking the curtain, which rolled up with the report of a pistol—"this ugly, hateful, brutal wall that I hate, loathe, despise? That's matrimony!—ugly, cold, horrid wall!"

She groped with her hand, caught the tassel, and pulled the shade without turning around.

"But, you see, you can't shut it out!" he said maliciously, pointing to the space that showed under the deficient shade.

"There'll be no wall in my life," she said, with a toss of her head. She felt herself in her most effective theatrical mood, and she flung the reins to it, caring nothing where it led her. Now, at all costs, she was resolved to thaw out this glacial reserve of his, rouse him, teach him that she could not be held so cheap. "No wall in my life! No man to tell me: Do this—do that—come here—go there! Sacrifices? I shall never make them! I tell you, all I want is to live—to really live! A short life, but a free one! You think Sassoon tempts me; you think I'd change this room for a palace or a home! You don't understand me! No; not with all you think you understand!"

"Tell me!" he said, transforming himself into an audience.

She changed suddenly from the passion of protest to almost a caressing delight, ready to turn into a hundred shapes to overwhelm him. For this perfect discipline of his rushed her on. She would find under the observer the spark of the savage! Perhaps it was because she had no fear that she played so boldly, recognizing in him the true gentleman, and womanlike, presuming on this knowledge. He continued like a statue. She was not quiet a moment, flitting to and fro near him, dangerously near him, with a hundred coquetries of movement, half-revealing poses, sudden flashes of the eyes, confiding smiles, all tantalizing, insinuating, caressing, tender, provoking, filled with the zest of a naughty child.

"Oh, Your Honor! you're a very, very wise man," she said, shaking her finger at him, "but you have not seized the real point. We want to be free! Yes, we could live where we wanted,—in the finest apartments,—but it is such fun to be in an old boarding-house at ten dollars a week, when you never know how you're going to raise the rent! Ah, the rent! that's a terrible bugbear, I can tell you! You know one trick for doing it. There are a hundred, things you would never guess; for, with all your prying eyes, you are just like the rest—less stupid, not more clever!"

"Tell me some," he said, his eyes half closed as if dazzled by this sudden outpouring of youth and excitement.

"No—no," she said, shaking her hair so merrily that a loosened curl came tumbling over her ear. She changed the mood, coming near to him, laying her hand appealingly on his sleeve. "Ah, don't get wrong ideas. Don't judge us too harshly! We're not mercenary at the bottom; it isn't the money we want—that's very little! It's the fun of playing the game!"

"Precipices?" he suggested, nodding.

"Ah, yes, precipices!" she said, in a sudden ecstasy; and as she said it her eyes drooped, her lips seemed to tremble apart as if giving up her body to a sigh half ecstasy, half languor.

"I can remember when I adored precipices, too," he said, drawing his arm away from her touch and folding it over the other, tightly across his chest.

"Remember!" she said mockingly, snapping her fingers under his nose. "You do now. Who doesn't?" She put a space between them with a sudden bound, as though he had made a move to retain her. Then, with a whirl, she poised herself gleefully on the arm of a chair. "I adore precipices! It's such fun to go dashing along their edges, leaning up against the wind that tries to throw you over, looking way, way down, thousands of miles, and hear the little stones go tumbling down, down—and then to crouch suddenly, spring aside and see a great, stupid, puffy man snatch at the air and go head over heels, kerplunk! You don't understand that feeling?" she said, stopping short.

"I understand that!" he said curtly.

She whirled suddenly on her feet, extending her arms against an imaginary gale, and bending over, her finger on her lips, pretended to gaze into unfathomable depths.

"But you never fall in," he said wisely.

Instantly she straightened up.

"Oh, dear, no! for then, you see, there would be only one precipice, endlessly, forever and ever! No more precipices, no more fun, no more Dodo—and that would be unbearable!"

"And are there many precipices, Dodo?" he said, assuming the privilege.

"Oh, dear, yes—many precipices," she said, watching him maliciously. "There are old precipices, but those aren't interesting! Then, there are new ones, too; oh, yes, several very interesting new ones!"

"Blainey," he said; but she shook her head.

"I'm afraid that's not a precipice," she said seriously. But at once, back in her roguish mood, she continued: "Sassoon's a moderately exciting precipice, only he will look so ridiculous as he goes spinning down, all arms and legs!"

She took a few steps toward the door, and put her hand to her ear.

"And I think there was the beginning of another precipice there to-night; only—oh!" She exaggerated the exclamation with a confidential nod to him. "That is a very risky one. I shall have to be very careful, and always have a long start!"

"Others?"

"Others? Of course there are others!" she said indignantly. "Everywhere—naturally—but I'm not going to tell you. You know entirely too much already. Only of one!"

"Aha!"

"A very curious one, but very exciting! A precipice that I can see right here in this room!"

"An old one?"

"Not at all! Quite new!" She made a pretense of simulating it on the rug, to pass mockingly under his eyes, daintily, with steps that trod on air. "Do you want to know where it is?"

"Where?"

"It runs from the tip of this mischievous, naughty red slipper, right straight across the carpet, to—let me see! where does it go? Over—over—over here!"

She came with her head down, peeping up from under her eyelashes, balancing with her hands on an imaginary line, straight by him, laughing to herself, and passed so close that he felt the flutter of her dress and the warm perfume from her hair.

"Little devil!" he said between his teeth, and flinging out his hand, caught her retreating shoulder.

She wrenched herself free, sprang away and turned, blazing with anger, forgetting all that she had done wilfully, maliciously, to tantalize him—illogical, unreasoning, wildly revolting at the acquiring touch of this male hand on her free body.

"How dare you!" she cried, advancing on him, gloriously enraged, fists clenched. "How dare you! You—you contemptible—you—oh, you brute, brute! You dare to touch me again—you dare!" She turned suddenly, striking him on the chest with her little fists, crude, futile, repeated blows, choking with shame, still in the dramatized mood. "You dared—you dared! And I trusted—oh!"

He did not retreat, opposing no resistance to the frantic drumming of her blows, watching her coldly, with something besides ice in the intensity of his mocking glance. Then, when from lack of breath her rage spent itself a moment, he said calmly, his glance in her glance, as a trainer's subduing a revolted animal, deliberate, slow, imperative:

"Now, stop acting!"

She caught herself up, tried to answer and found only another furious gesture.

"I said, stop acting!" he repeated bruskly, and stepping to her, caught her in his arms. She cried out in a muffled strangled voice, turning, twisting, flinging herself about fruitlessly in the iron of his embrace. He held her silently until she ceased to struggle; and then his eyes continued to hold her eyes, fixed, imperious, compelling her gaze. She remained quiet—very quiet, looking at him startled, in doubt, seeing in him something new, masterful. And as he continued steadily looking into her eyes, penetrating beyond, overcoming all resistance, a smile came to her, a smile of confession, gathering from the cloudy blue of her eyes, running down the curve of her cheek, playing about the thin upturned lips. He bent his head deliberately. She did not turn aside her lips.... Then on this embrace came another, a convulsive frantic clinging of the lips, a kiss which conquered them both, flinging a mist across their eyes, stopping their ears, stilling their reason. This kiss, which went through her like a flame, blinding out the world, hurling into her brain a new life and a new knowledge, caught him, too, in the moment when he felt the strongest, the most able to dare. Neither his eyes nor his brain had foreseen this—nor the touch of her arms twining about his neck. He had a moment of vertigo in which he suddenly ceased to think. He kissed her again, and she answered hungrily, whispering:

"I didn't know! Ah, you've come—"

All at once his mind cleared as if a hand of ice had touched his forehead. He tried to put her arms from him, aroused, suddenly frightened at where he had been whirled by the immense combustibility of nature. But still she clung to him, her eyes closed, her lips raised, repeating:

"At last—oh, at last!"

"What have I done?" he said to himself, conscious-stricken at her glorified face. He stiffened against the soft arms, that sought to draw him back, saying hoarsely:

"Dodo—listen, Dodo!"

But she shook her head, pervaded suddenly by an incomprehensible ecstasy of weakness, the oblivion of absolute surrender. She opened her eyes once, and let them close again heavily.

"Please," she said in a whisper, "don't—don't say anything. Don't talk.... It's all too wonderful!"

Then, abruptly, he tore her away from him, grasping his coat, placing a table between them.

"To-morrow!" he said, in a voice he did not recognize, knowing not what to believe, afraid of what he might say, amazed that all his will had gone.

She gave a cry, extending her hands to him.

"No! Oh, don't go!"

"I must, Dodo! I must!"

"How can you?" she cried. "How cruel!"

She covered her face suddenly, and her whole body began to tremble.

"Good night!" he said hurriedly, a prey to a wild tugging that bade him leap to her.

She did not answer, swaying in the center of her room, shaken from head to foot.

"Good night!" He took a long breath and repeated: "Good night, Dodo!"

Still she did not answer.

"To-morrow!"

No longer trusting himself, he flung through the door, out and down the stairs.

She went herself across the room, her knees sinking under her, groped for the door, weakly closed it and turned the key. And for the first time she was afraid!

How was it possible that she, who had known so much, who had feared so little, should suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, have been overwhelmed, caught and mastered? What did it mean? And this question brought with it a fierce delirious joy in her moment of panic. For she was in fear—of many things known, and things uncomprehended: fear of where she had passed; fear of where she was going; of him!

Had it been only a game, or had he, too, been caught as she had been caught? Fear there was of the flames that lay in his touch, fear of that blank moment when she had known nothing, cared nothing, with the sudden starting horror with which once she had come out of a swoon. But most of all she had a fear of the fire that had broken out within her, in that first awful, lawless moment, in which the knowledge of life had come to her in blinding realization.

"Do I—is it love? If not, what is it? Why am I so?"

But this time she did not dramatize her mood. She found no answer, slowly recovering mastery of herself. She remained with her back against the door, her arms extended, barring the return, bewildered, weak, revolted, happy, fearing, listening.

Suddenly the sound of a returning step—a tapping on the door, irresolute, and a voice calling to her.

It was Massingale.

So! He had not been able to go! In a flash she was again the free Salamander, emerging out of the fire of conflict, triumphant by the last dramatic hazard. And being her own mistress again, she made no mistake.

She drew herself up, arms barring the door in the sign of a cross.

"Not now!" she said breathlessly.

He did not answer. She heard his step on the stairs, descending. When, at last, her arms fell, there was a gleam of exultation in her eyes. Whatever this might mean, wherever it might lead, she knew now, by that momentary yielding weakness of his return, that she would be—in the last crisis—the stronger!

CHAPTER X

Doré went to bed at once—not to sleep, for she felt in her mind a cold clarity that seemed impervious to fatigue, but in order to avoid conversation with Snyder. She did not at once return over the surprising moments of the night. From her pillow the flushed clock-face of the Metropolitan Tower came bulging into the room. She watched it with a contented numbness of the senses, striving to follow the jerky advance of the minute-hand, conscious only of the fragrance and pleasure of the cool bed-linen, dreamily awake, prey to a delicious mental languor. She asked herself no questions ... she wished no answers. The emotional self which had so violently awakened within her, overturning all her mental qui vive, returned, but in a gentle warm dominion. She drew her arm under the pillow ... and her embrace was tightening about his neck again. She felt herself caught, rudely imprisoned, struggling—dominated, convulsively yielding. She moved restlessly, rearranging the pillows—returning impatiently into the illusion, feeling herself always in his arms.

"The great elemental forces of nature will decide for you," he had said....

She remembered the words confusedly. She had never quite believed in these forces ... though often in her lawless imagination she had sought to comprehend them, never convinced, always puzzled. She had permitted half stolen embraces, furtive clasps of the hand, wondering, always disillusioned. She had perceived, it is true, some inexplicable emotional madness in the men who sought her ... and sometimes roughly it had repelled her to great distances. This abrupt disorder which she could call forth with a tone of her voice, a quick lingering glance or a certain reclining languor, had excited her curiosity. There was a certain mental exhilaration in it, the cruel teasing of the feline, playing with its prey. It gave her an excited sense of power ... that was all. The slightest acquiring advance had roused in her a fury of resistance.... And now, at last, she knew! This was the force that had made playthings of men and women, that sent them where they did not wish to go, that could upset all coldly logical calculations, that gave the frailest little women irresistible weapons against the strongest men ... or made them throw all opportunities to the wind and follow incomprehensible husbands.

She heard the cautious entering of Snyder, and instantly closed her eyes, breathing deep—a light word would have seemed a sacrilege. She waited, irritated and nervous, until her room-mate, undressing in the pale reflections, had noiselessly curled herself on the couch.

What would she have done if he had remained? Now the languor that had stolen treacherously over her senses was gone, dissipated by the presence of another human being. Her mind threw itself feverishly on the problem, encircling it, trying it from a hundred points of view. What did it mean? Was her liberty, her freedom of action suddenly jeopardized? And the thought of this overpowering new force made her violently react ... striving to escape its verity ... just as her body had whipped around in his arms when they had suddenly closed about her. What was it frightened her?... the man, or something awakened within her?

She sat up in bed, her head in her palms, throbbingly awake. What would have happened if he had stayed?... But he had not stayed—and she had not allowed him to return. She said it to herself victoriously ... illogically evading an answer ... momentarily satisfied. And if he came again? Would there be a new danger?

She sank wearily on her pillow. No ... of that she was sure ... never again would she be so vulnerable.... It had been the unknown—the thing she had not believed in—which had taken her by surprise ... unprepared.

Then he had made the mistake of returning. Massingale, strong and unyielding, had had a fearfully attractive force over her will and her vanity, but the other ... the Massingale who had returned, was human, and therefore could be subjected. No!... she would never fear him again!

Did she love him?... She did not know ... at least she insisted that it could not be so—not all at once—perhaps, later. But she knew this—that she longed to see him again, to have the dragging night end, to awaken to the morning and to hear his coming,... to go hurriedly with him out of the discordant city, somewhere, where it was peaceful and solitary,... somewhere where they could turn and look in each other's eyes and know what had happened.

At other moments she said to herself with profound conviction that it must be love, that that was the way, the only way, that love could come, overpowering the reason, despite the reason, beating down all reason. Then if it were love? Would she submit, renounce all her defiantly proclaimed liberty? Characteristically, she did not answer. Instead, she projected herself into this submission, and her imagination, volatile as a dream, whisked her from one fancy to another. She imagined what it would be like to fill a feverish letter, each night after he had gone, with all the tender, passionate, jealous, or yearning fancies that he had left tumultuously stirring in her breast—a letter which she herself would carry hastily out into the night, running to the letter-box at the corner, that he might wake to a surprise. And each morning she, too, would awake to his call, his voice over the telephone. At other times, sentimentally urged, she visualized him as ill, sadly stricken, herself at his bedside.

"So, after all, I am going to marry—like all the rest!" she said, suddenly roused. This one word—"marriage"—pierced through all the fancied illusions. Marriage—one man; nothing but one man every day, year in and year out—was it possible? Could she resign herself? No more excitement, no more gambling with opportunity, no more dramatizing herself to each new situation, no more luring and evasion, no more sporting with dull brute strength or matching of wits—nothing but the expected, the routine—yes, the inevitable commonplace? Could she give this up—so soon? She rose fiercely against the sacrifice. Never! She preferred her youth.

All at once a sound broke across the hot flights of her conflicting fancies. She sat up instantly, bending forward, listening. She had heard a sob, muffled but unmistakable, from the adjoining room—then another. She slipped quickly to the floor. Snyder too had risen.

"Be quiet, Snyder. Let me go," she said to her in a whisper, forcing her back.

She felt her way to the door, and opening it quietly, passed into Winona's room.

"Who's that?" asked a frightened voice.

"Hush! It's I—Dodo. I heard you," she said, groping. "What's wrong, Winona?"

But the figure in the bed, without answer, buried itself face down in the covers, striving to choke back the sobs.

Doré put her arm about her, endeavoring to calm her, wondering and a little apprehensive.

"But this is frightful! Winona, you mustn't!" she said helplessly. "Winona, can't you tell me? Can't you speak?"

The girl grasped her hand, pressing it convulsively. Doré waited, seized by the mystery of the heavy night, the stillness and the little animal sound of sorrow. Between Salamanders real confidences are rare. What did she know of this life which only a wall divided from her? A suspicion flashed into her mind, knowing the perilous ways that sometimes had to be run. All at once she remembered.

"Winona!" she cried joyfully. "What a fool I am! I've good news! It's all settled—Blainey to-morrow!" And as the girl, buried in her pillow, continued to struggle against the sobs, she shook her by the shoulder, repeating: "Blainey wants to see you; he's giving you a chance. Do you hear?"

"Chance! Ah, I've had a thousand chances! What's the use!" exclaimed the girl, twisting in the bed. "It's always the same! Don't I know it—know it!"

"But you won't throw away this one?"

"Chance! Yes, that's all it is—chance!" she cried uncontrollably. "If I wasn't such a fool! What's the use of trying, anyhow? It don't make any difference. Nothing ever does! Ah, I'll give up. I'll go back!" She continued, repeating herself endlessly, beating the pillow with her fist; and as she abandoned herself to despair, old errors of speech, forgotten accents, mingled in her cries. "It ain't right! No, it ain't right—nothing ever comes of nothing! Nothing works out—nothing! Ah, no! I'll go back—I'll go back—I'll go back to it!"

"What do you mean? Back to what?"

Winona caught her throat, silenced suddenly.

"Can't you tell me?"

"I'm all right now," said Winona, shaking her head. She disengaged herself bruskly, sitting up, twisting her fingers in the physical effort at control. She turned, clutching Doré.

"Did Blainey—he—what did he say?"

Doré, inventing details, building up a favorable incident, exaggerated the importance, recounted the interview.

"I told him Zeller was after you. You know how he hates Zeller! He's crazy to steal you! You'll see! Everything will work like a charm—and the part just for you!"

She continued optimistically pouring out encouragement. Winona allowed herself to be convinced, grasping at straws. They remained talking deeply of difficulties and discouragements, always avoiding the questions that lay below. Once Doré had said tentatively:

"Winona, wouldn't it help you just to talk out everything—tell me everything? I'd understand. Do trust me!"

But the girl, resisting, answered hastily:

"No! no! Not now! Some day, perhaps."

Doré made no further effort. She drew her arm about her.

"Then let me quiet you," she said softly.

Winona, without resistance, allowed herself to go into her arms. They ceased speaking, clinging to each other there in the dark, and a strange sensation came to Doré at the touch of the body clinging to her, these unseen arms so tenaciously taut: it seemed to her almost that she heard another voice, mastering her physically and morally, making her suddenly flexible and without defense, a voice saying:

"Now, stop acting!"

"All right. Better now. I can sleep," said the girl in her arms. "Thanks."

Dodo rose and went gliding back. Snyder, open-eyed, made no sound. She was grateful to her for this, divining the reason. Back in her bed, huddling under the covers, she recalled Winona with a feeling of horror. To lose one's courage like that—how terrible! And if she herself were thus to be transformed, if all her indomitable audacity should suddenly go—

"There's some man back of it all," she said, thinking of Winona. "There always is a man."

Yet she had been on the point of rapturously hugging the first dream that had come to her in an uncomprehended moment, of submitting to a man—the very thought flung her back into intuitive revolt.

"But, if it isn't love, how could he have such power over me? Could there be such a vertigo without true love? Could such a thing be possible?" Time and time again she put these questions, finding different answers. At times she let herself go deliciously, stretching out her arms, conjuring up that first penetrating embrace. At others, fiercely aroused, she resisted him with every fiber of her body, rejecting submission, resolved to combat him, to subordinate him, to retain always her defiant supremacy, to revenge her momentary defeat by some future victory.

Neither in the yielding nor in the revolt was there any conviction—no peace and no calm. What there was, was all disorder, and the insistent drumming note of his voice, which drew her to him, had in it the confusion of a fever.

Though she had fallen asleep late, she awoke early, with a start. It was half past eight by the clock. She rose abruptly on her elbow at a sound that had startled her from her slumber—the slippery rustle of letters gliding under the crack of the door. There were two, white and mysterious against the faded blue of the carpet. She was about to spring to them when she perceived Snyder watching her. She contained herself with a violent effort, waiting, with eyes that were averted not to betray their eagerness, until they were brought to her. She was certain that he had written, and something within her began to tremble and grow cold with the suspense of awaiting his first letter. At her first glance she fell from the clouds. One was in Mr. Peavey's disciplined hand, the other in Joe Gilday's boyish scrawl, each announcing expected gifts. She had a sudden weak desire for tears.

"Gee! eggs and cream! Who is the fairy godmother?" said Snyder. "Say, you must have a wishing-cap!"

"It's Mr. Peavey, bless his heart!" said Doré. At that moment, in her first exaggerated pang of disappointment, she had an affectionate inclination to the elderly bachelor. He would not have treated her so, had the rôles been shifted.

"Going to be a habit?"

"Hope so."

"I'm strong for that boy; I like his style!"

Doré smiled; she comprehended the thought. She cast a hasty glance at Gilday's disordered pages. It was, as she had surmised, the humble tender of bouquets to come. She dissembled her disappointment as best she could, seeking excuses. He might have posted his letter after midnight, from his club. It would come in the late morning mail. Or perhaps he had preferred to telephone. It must be that! Of course, that was the explanation. He wished to hear her voice, as she longed for his, and then they would take rendezvous at once. Yes, he would telephone—now—at any moment. She glanced again at the clock. Ten long minutes had elapsed. The excuse so convinced her that she felt a sudden access of unreasoning happiness, as if already, by some sense, she had divined his coming.

She had promised over the telephone the night before to pay a morning visit to Harrigan Blood in the editorial rooms of the Free Press, and then there was the appointment for luncheon with Sassoon. These acceptances did not disturb her in the least. When anything was offered, her invariable tactics were to accept—provisionally. For her tactics were simple, but formed on the basic strategy of the Salamanders: acceptance that raises hopes, then an excuse that brings tantalizing disorder, but whets the appetite. To-day she had not the slightest intention of keeping either appointment. She was only glad that she had contracted them. It was a little bit of treachery which she would offer up to Massingale.

She chose her simplest costume—blue, the invariable Russian blouse, white collar open at the neck, and a bit of red in the slim belt. She wished to come to him girlish, without artifice. She felt so gaily elated that she turned tenderly toward the happiness of others. Winona would sleep until ten at least. She wheeled suddenly, and putting her arm around Snyder, embraced her. In the confusion, a locket became entangled in her lace.

"What's that? You've never shown me," she said, catching the chain.

Snyder silently touched the spring. Inside was the face of a child of four or five.

"Yours?"

"Yes."

"How pretty! What's her name?"

"Betty."

They stood close together, looking at the uncomprehending childish gaze.

"Where is she?"

"With my mother."

"Aren't you going to take her—ever?"

"Never!"

"Why not?" She dropped the locket, glancing at this half woman, half girl, who continually perplexed her. "She is so sweet—how can you do without her?"

"Want her to have a home," said Snyder abruptly. She turned, as if the conversation were distasteful. "Can't be dragging her all over the continent, can I?"

A great pity came to Doré, that any one should be unhappy in such a bright world. A fantastic thought followed. She knew only that Snyder was divorced—a child, a broken home. Yet persons often divorced for the absurdest reasons; perhaps it had only been a misunderstanding. If she could reconcile them, bring them together again! She approached the subject timidly.

"Do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Let me see Betty; bring her here!"

Snyder's agitation was such that she came near pushing over the coffee-pot.

"You really—you want me to—"

"Yes. Why not? I adore children!"

She continued to watch her, surprised at the emotion she had aroused.

"Yes, she is unhappy—frightfully unhappy!" she thought, and taking courage, she added: "Snyder, tell me something?"

Snyder shook her head, but, despite the objection, Doré continued:

"You have never told me of him—your husband. Are you sure it couldn't be patched up? Are you sure you don't care?"

"I don't want to talk about it—it's ended!" said Snyder, so abruptly that Doré drew back.

"I only asked—"

"Don't want help—don't want to talk!" Snyder broke in, in the same embittered tone.

"Not to me?" said Doré gently.

Snyder drew a long breath, and turned to her swiftly, with an appealing look, in which, however, there was no weakness.

Then she laid her finger across her lips.

"Here—breakfast is ready; sit down!"

"Snyder, I don't understand you; you hurt me!" said Doré, opening her eyes.

The woman stood a moment, locking and unlocking her hands, swinging from foot to foot.

"Can't help it. You can't make me over. I've got my rut!" She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm damned unsociable—perhaps I'd better dig out."

"Snyder!" exclaimed Doré, bounding to her side. She took her in her arms, crying: "Why, it was only to help you!"

"Well, you can't!" said the other, with a forcible shake of her head, her body stiff against the embrace. And there the conversation ended.

It was after nine, and still no sound at the telephone. Doré began to feel an uneasy impatience. At any minute, now, certainly he must summon her. Snyder made an excuse and went out. But she ceased to think of her. Her thoughts were no longer keen to another's suffering, but sensitive to her own.

She grew tired of pacing restlessly, and flung herself down on the couch, her head turned toward the clock, watching it wearily. Why didn't he telephone—or, at least, come? This sensation of suspense and waiting, which she had so often dealt out to others, was new to her. It disarranged her whole self, aroused fierce resentful thoughts in her. He wished to tantalize her, to draw her on, as he had the night before—to be cruel, to make her suffer! Well, she too could be cruel. She would do something to hurt him, too.

"Very well! Now I will go to see Harrigan Blood," she said all at once, choking with something that was not entirely anger.

And hastily slipping into her coat, she went hurriedly to Ida Summers' room, awoke her and took her with her.

CHAPTER XI

Mr. Peavey's automobile was waiting. Doré had telephoned for it while Ida Summers, protesting, had made a quick toilet. She had at first thought of availing herself for the day of the car so insistently pressed upon her; but she was not yet quite sure of Brennon, the chauffeur. If by any chance she should decide to keep her appointment with Sassoon, it would not be wise to accept such escort. So she supplemented the day's preparations by a message to Stacey, who was given a later rendezvous.

"Down-town! The Free Press building. Hope I didn't get you up too early, Brennon?"

He grinned at her ideas of morning values.

"He looks as if he were a good sort," Doré thought, meditating on the possibilities long after she and Ida had tucked themselves in.

"I say, Do, what's the game? Give us the cue!" said Ida Summers, making heroic efforts to get her eyes open.

"Your cue is to be real sisterly," said Doré. "Stick close, unless I give you the wink."

"Oh, I'll cling! Arm in arm, eh?" said Ida, beginning to laugh. "Conversation high-toned. I say, Do, I'm quite excited. Harrigan Blood! You do move in the swellest circles!"

Doré allowed her to chat away without paying attention, a fact that did not disturb her companion in the least.

"Well, he'll be furious!" she was thinking, delighted at paying Massingale back in coin. Nevertheless, she had mitigated the retaliation by taking a companion. Then, too, the effect on Harrigan Blood would not be at all bad—Blood, who expected a tête-à-tête, and who could thus be taught the value of such favors.

But now that she was finally embarked on her impulse, she began to consider more calmly, even with a willingness to see Massingale's side. All at once the perfectly obvious explanation occurred to her. How could he be expected to telephone, when she had not given him the number? Why had she never thought of this before? Probably he had been frantically seeking it! Of course he could not telephone—and of course he could not come personally; he would have to be in court all the morning. Perhaps at this very moment a letter was waiting for her, by the post, or by a messenger! She must indeed be in love, to be such a fool!

"Thank heaven," she thought, "I had the sense to bring Ida! I'll confess to him—or, no! He mustn't know what it has meant!"

The sudden joyful release, the calm of content that came to her from this explanation, surprised her. For a moment she felt like renouncing the visit; but a new turn strengthened her resolve. She could hardly believe in what had happened. Perhaps it was only another case of self-deception. She would try to revolt, to be interested in another man, to see if the old game could still attract.

"Lordy! I'd forgotten there was so much New York!" said Ida Summers, who lived, like her thousand sisters, between the Flatiron and the park.

They entered lower Broadway, random flowers on the foul truck-strewn flood, advancing by inches, surrounded by polyglot sounds, traversing revolted Europe in a block, closing their ears against the shrieking cries of imprisoned industries, the sordid struggle in the streets, the conflict in the air, where stone flights strove for supremacy.

All at once she remembered—this roaring entrance. She remembered the evening, not two years before, when she herded from the ferry, satchel in hand, oppressed by the jargon of a thousand tongues, she had arrived, hustled and jostled, barely making head against the outflowing tide of humanity which flushed the street in its roaring homeward scramble.

That first breathless impression of New York! How she had feared it, that first dusky evening, when, shrinking in a doorway before the onrush of driven multitudes, she had felt the very air dragged from her nostrils, obliterating her individuality, routing her courage, stunning her senses. She had stood a long time, clinging to her meager sheltering, disheartened at the fury at her feet, awed by the flaming ladders to the impending stars—no inanimate stones, but living rocks, endlessly climbing, which must end by toppling over on her in an obliterating crash. New York! How different from what she had imagined in the tugging, liberty-seeking aspirations of her soul!

She had never lacked courage before, in all her adventurous progress toward the Mecca of her dreams; but that night she had been defeated, overwhelmed before the issue, even. She had come, sublimely confident in a fanciful project she had conceived, a series of impressions—A Western Girl in New York—a western girl arriving undaunted, satchel in hand, ten dollars in her purse, to seek fortune in the great city of Mammon—surely a daring story to fill a woman's column. And she had gone to the same Free Press, standing in the outer office, talking to a tired sub-editor, vainly striving to interest him, to revive in herself a necessary spark of enthusiasm and audacity which had expired in that first brutal confrontation of the world in terms of thousands. Yes, she had lost even before she had opened her plea, convinced of the futility of making an impression on those frantic halls, where her voice was pitched not alone against the tired indifference of a routine mind, but against the invading storm of outer sounds, the clang of brazen bells, the honk of automobiles, the shaking rush of invisible iron forces tearing through the air, the grinding roll of traffic over the complaining cobblestones, the mammoth roar of the populace endlessly washing reverberating shores.

She had talked and talked, without interruption, clenching her fist, growing weaker and weaker, stumbling in her phrases, until at last, convinced, without waiting for an objection, she had stopped short, saying: "It's no use, is it?"

Then he had gone to a file of papers, and returning, spread before her a gaily colored page, placing his finger on another face in silhouette, gay, jaunty. Another had had the same idea! How many others? She was no longer an individual—only one of a thousand who came, with the same ideas, to face the same struggle.

That first leaden closing of the doors of hope, as if no other doors remained! And now she was to enter that same Free Press, no longer daunted, clinging to a satchel, but rolling luxuriously, triumphant: no longer a suppliant, but amused, at the insistent invitation of the chief, the genius of the machine, whom once she had clamored so fruitlessly to see. Then and now.... Harrigan Blood—society itself, on which she was to take a delicious revenge. She forgot Massingale, remembering only a hopeless little figure, ready for tears, standing, a tiny black dot against the electric windows of the press, gazing into the wilderness of the strident crowded unknown.

A quick descent, a sudden volcanic propulsion upward, and they were transferred a hundred feet above strife, into a noisy anteroom, gazing down at the gray-and-white tapestry of the spread city.

"Hello! What are you doing here?"

They turned. Estelle Monks, of the second floor front at Miss Pim's, owner of the white fox stole and the circulating garments, was standing beside them, jauntily alert.

"Goodness' sakes, it's Estelle!" exclaimed Ida. "Well, what are you doing—?"

"Oh, I contribute," said Estelle evasively.

She was in a short tailored suit, Eton collar, Alpine hat and feather. With her hands in her side pockets, she was very direct, at ease, mannish, but not disagreeably so—rather attractive with her dark eyes, which, as Ida expressed it, had the "real come-hither" in their mocking depths.

A boy came shuffling out, saying nasally:

"Mr. Blood will see you naow."

They left Estelle Monks indulging in a long whistle of surprise, traversed a long chorus of clicking machines, and discovered a room of comparative quiet, spacious, with embattled desks. Harrigan Blood was waiting, a smile on his face as he fingered the two cards.

"Very nice of you to bring Miss Summers," he said jerkily, making his own introduction. "Added pleasure, I'm sure!"

Doré, who had expected some show of irritation, wondered in an amused way how he would manage to procure the tête-à-tête which she had just rendered impossible. In ten minutes Blood, without seeming to have considered the question, had resolved the knot by calling in Tony Rex, one of the younger cartoonists, a boyish person who eyed them with malicious curiosity, and having consigned Ida to him for a tour of inspection, had availed himself of the first interval to say:

"Come, you can see all this any time. You are not going to get out of a talk with me by any such tricks."

She consented, laughing, to be led back.

"Why did you do this?"

"Why did you do this?" he said, irritated.

"Do what?"

"Bring a governess?"

"Because I'm a very proper person."

"It annoys me. I hate women who annoy me!" he said abruptly.

She smiled in provoking silence, while, with a quick excusing gesture, he lighted a cigar.

"You seem more natural here," she said, glancing at his ruffled hair and careless tie. "I'd like to see you at work."

He rose to get a copy of the editorial sheet for the day, and handed it to her.

"You inspired that."

She took the editorial, which was entitled "Waste," and ran down its heavily leaded phrases, smiling to herself at these moralizations of the devil turned friar. He saw her amusement, and took the editorial abruptly.

"You won't understand—that's what I believe!"

He drew a chair opposite and flung into it; then, with an erect stiffening of his body, clasped his hands eagerly between his knees, releasing them in sudden flights, returning them always to their tenacious grip. There was something in the combustibility of the gesture that was significant of the whole man.

"By George!" he said suddenly, without relevancy, "why haven't I the right to stretch out my hand and take you?"

Doré burst out laughing, immensely flattered.

"What a nuisance you are!" he continued savagely. "What good do you do in the world? All you women do is to interfere! And to think that this sentimental civilization—idiotic civilization—is going to experiment for a few hundred years with pretending that women are made to share the progress of the world with men!"

"So you're not a woman's—"

"I'm absolutely against the whole feminine twaddle!" he broke in. "Man's the only thing that counts! We're suffocated with feminism already—over-sentimentalized; can't think but in the terms of an individual." He stopped, and glaring at her, said, with a furious gesture: "And now, here you are, an impudent little girl who doesn't do the world a bit of good, sitting back there and laughing contentedly because you've suddenly popped up to raise Cain with me!"

The originality of his attack delighted her. It pleased her immensely to feel her attraction for such a man, for it seemed to her a promise that with another she would not lack charm and fascination.

"What a strange method of courting," she said demurely. "If that's the way you're going on, I think I prefer to be shown the—"

"The machines, of course," he cut in. "That's the trouble with you. That's all they ever understand— the things they see. But, my dear girl, I am the paper; all the rest is only wheels, chains, links; every man here is only part of the machine. I only am the indispensable force."

He had found an idea, and was off on its exposition, starting up, pacing and gesturing.

"Yes, all the rest is only a machine. I can change every bolt in twenty-four hours and it will go on just the same. I pay a cartoonist twenty thousand dollars a year, and he thinks he's indispensable; but I can take another and make him famous in a month. I give him the ideas! Yes, they are lieutenants here—editors of Sunday supplements, special writers, women's columns, sporting experts. I can change 'em all, take a handful of boys, and whip them into shape in six weeks! That's not journalism. What is? I'll tell you. Others have copied me; I found it out—emotions and ideas! You don't get it? Listen! They're two heads: the news column and the editorial page."

He paused at the table, and taking up a paper, struck it disdainfully.

"Trash! I know it! News? No! That's not what the public wants—not my public! It wants fiction, it wants emotions! You don't know what the multitude is; I do! A great sunken city, a million stifling, starved existences, hurried through, railroaded through life. News? Bah! They want a taste of dreams! I make their dreams live in my paper. It's everything to them, melodrama, society, romance; it's a peep-hole into the worlds they can't touch. I show 'em millionaires moving behind their house-walls, rolling in wealth, fighting one another, battling for one another's wives, flinging a billion against a billion, ruining thousands for a whim. 'Monte Cristo'? It's tame to what I serve 'em. 'Mr. X Gives a Hundred Thousand Dollar Lunch'—'Secret Drama of Oil Trust's Home'—'Deserts Millionaire Husband for Chauffeur'—'Ten Millions in Five Years'! That's life—that's emotion! That's what makes 'em go on! Look here, did you ever stop to think what does make the five million slaves go on, day in and day out, driven, groaning? Hope! the belief that in some miraculous way life is going to change."

He stopped, and with a drop to cold analysis, laying his hand on the editorial sheet, said:

"This is what does count. This is real—ideas! The other is just tom-tom-beating to get the crowd around—yes, just that: the band outside the circus. But this is different; this is true. America, the future—the glorious future when I've stirred up their imagination and taught them to think! There! Now do you understand what kind of man I am?"

She had understood one thing clearly, in this stupendous flurry of egotism—that, as Sassoon had sought to tempt her with the lure of his wealth, Harrigan Blood was seeking to overwhelm her with the brilliancy of his mind. She did not oppose him, seeking flattery, needing fresh proofs of her power, thinking: "If he wants me, Massingale—Massingale, who is so clever and strong—will want me too."

"You lunch with me," he said confidently.

She shook her head. "Previous engagement."

"Where?"

"Tenafly's at one."

"Sassoon?" he said, sitting up with a jerk.

"Yes," she answered, with malice aforethought.

"What—you're going to be caught by that whited sepulcher?"

"And you, Mr. Blood?" she said softly.

"I? I'm loyal!"

"But not monogamous."

"Sassoon only wants to be stung out of a lethargy. Women—I need them to help me. I have the right! That's why I want you!"

"I'm not the kind you want," she said, drawing back, for his precipitation gave her the feeling of being crowded into a corner.

"You would if I could make you love me!"

"Indeed! Are you considering—matrimony?"

"Never!" he said angrily. "Marriage is a reciprocal tyranny. I don't want to own a woman, or have her own me! What, you can have a career, and you want to marry?"

She defended herself, laughing, assuring him that was not the case.

"You have your career; I have mine. I'll educate you! Ten thousand men will give you money—I'll give you brains! My little girl, I wonder if you know what opportunity is dangling on your little finger-tips. Break your engagement!"

"I can't!"

"Interested?"

"Um! Very curious. Certain sides are amusing!" Then she turned, assuming an air of dignity, repeating her defensive formula: "Mr. Blood, I am not like other girls. I play fair. I give one warning—and one only. Then take the consequences."

"What's your warning?" he said abruptly, with a bullish stare.

"You will lose your time," she said calmly. "You think you know me. You may, and you may not. I won't give you the slightest hint, but I tell you frankly now, and only once, you will lose your time!"

"But," he said contemptuously, "you don't know what a real man is! There's nothing real in your life. I'm going to give you realities!"

"How charming!" she said, shrugging her shoulders. "And in the same breath you let me know it won't last. Thanks; I don't enjoy being an episode!"

"That depends on you."

"Frank!"

"Don't you know," he said suddenly, coming toward her, "what is true about a man like myself?—yes, about all men? They say we're naturally polygamous. Rats! nothing of the sort! We want to be true to one woman only. Look here. The real tragedy in life is that a man can't find in one woman all he wants,—all the time!"

At this moment, much to Doré's relief, Ida Summers and her companion returned. As they went out to the elevator, Blood made another opportunity for a final word:

"I haven't said half that I wanted to. When can I get a chance really to talk with you?"

A malicious suggestion, prompted by some devil of intrigue within her, suddenly rose in her imagination.

"Come and get me after luncheon."

"I thought you said you were lunching with Sassoon," he said suspiciously.

"I am. What of it?—or don't you dare?"

He looked at her fixedly, divining her reason.

"I warned you to beware of me," she said demurely. "I love scenes—dramatic temperament, you know. Think how furious Sassoon will be! Well?"

"What time?" he said, with a snap of his jaws.

"Oh, half past two."

"I'll come!"

CHAPTER XII

Tony Rex descended to place them in their automobile. He was a short youth in loose pepper-and-salt clothes, with a pointed nose and a quantity of tow hair tumbling over a freckled forehead. Doré hardly noticed him. Not so Ida, who, in true Salamander fashion, had already established a permanent intimacy.

"Why did you desert me?" said Doré, with hypocritical severity, when they had left their escort, hat in hand, on the curb.

"My dear, I couldn't help it!" said Ida volubly. "I was having such a wonderful party with Mr. Rex. My dear, I'm crazy about him! Did you ever see those funny little cartoons of his? Screams! Just think of it, he comes from almost the same place I do! We've made a date for to-morrow. Lord! I do like some one who talks English you can understand!"

Doré, impatient to be home, fed her with rapture-inciting questions and retired into her own speculations. Chance had played her a trick. She had had no intention of keeping her appointment with Sassoon; but now the dramatic possibilities of a clash between her host and Harrigan Blood, which had risen out of a light answer, had so whetted her curiosity that she found herself in sudden perplexity. Her encounter with Blood had awakened in her all the mischievous, danger-seeking enthusiasms. They had scarcely passed half an hour, and yet he had left her breathless at his breakneck pace, the abrupt charge of his attack, his unconventionality, his stripping away of artifices. He had interested her more than she had foreseen.

Yesterday how her eyes would have sparkled with delight at having inveigled such a thrashing fish into her cunning nets! And even now it was hard to forego the excitement of such a game. Her dramatic self, once aroused by the tête-à-tête, was not easily subdued. After all, too easy a compliance with Massingale's ideas, too patient a waiting for his summons, was dangerous. Better to teach him how sought after was the prize. Besides, if she kept him waiting until the evening, she could tell by the first glance of his eyes how much he had suffered, how much he cared. She did not doubt in the least that, when she reached Miss Pim's, there on the mahogany hall table she would find his note; and blowing hot and cold, she ended up by saying to herself that if in that letter were things that could make her close her eyes with delight, she might possibly, on a mad impulse, go flying off to him. Only, it would depend; there would have to be things in that letter—

When, at last, she went tumultuously into the boarding-house, she ran through the heap of letters twice fruitlessly.

"It came by messenger; Josephus must have taken it up-stairs," she thought.

She ran up breathlessly, anxious and yet afraid, flinging open the door, gazing blankly at the floor, then ransacking rapidly the table, the bureau-tops, the mantelpiece. Nothing had come—he had not written! She sat down furiously. She could not comprehend! On the table a great bouquet of orchids, with "Pouffé" in golden letters on the purple ribbon, was waiting. She saw it heedlessly.

He had not written! Why? She could not understand—could find no explanation. How could any one be so thoughtless, so cruel?

"I will telephone him myself!" she thought angrily, springing up.

She went to the door precipitately, before she could control herself. Then she stopped, wringing her hands, shaking her head. Perhaps he had come in person. She rang for Josephus. Had any one called? Had there been a message? None. Perhaps he had telephoned, and Winona had made a note of it. She went hastily to the pad where such notes were jotted down. But the page, to her dismay, was blank. She sat down quietly, folding her arms across her breast, gazing out of the window. All at once she bounded up, went rapidly down the hall, and entered Ida Summers' room.

"Come on. You're lunching with me. No excuses!"

"Where? With whom?"

"Doesn't matter—come! I'll tell you later!"

"Good heavens! what's the matter, Do?"

"Nothing! I'm a fool—I don't know. Only let's get out!"

Yes, she was a fool! The explanation was obvious! While she had been soaring with her dreams, he had gone quietly about his day. What had set her in a whirl had meant nothing to him—nothing at all! And for the moment, forgetting what had happened, forgetting how he had at the last returned, seeking admittance, she said to herself bitterly that she must have gone mad to imagine for an instant that there had been anything more than a moment's amusement between Judge Massingale and a crazy little fool living in the third floor front of a cheap boarding-house.

"Now to do as I please," she said recklessly. "We'll see if I'm of so little consequence. Sassoon and Blood shall pay for this!"

Ida Summers, overwhelmed at the prospect of meeting Alfred Edward Sassoon, was excitedly clamoring:

"But, Do, heavens! Give me a pointer; I'll never be able to say a word to a swell like that! What do you talk about?"

"Anything!" said Doré savagely. "What does he care what you talk about! Or any of them! Look him in the eyes, smile, flirt! Did you ever flirt with a butcher's boy?"

"Heavens! Dodo!"

"Well, I did! They're all the same!"

"What's happened?"

Doré shrugged her shoulders. But by the time they had drawn up in front of Tenafly's she had regained her calm in a dangerous coldness bent on mischief.

Sassoon came up softly, looking questions at this unexpected presentation of a third.

"I thought you would be more comfortable in public this way, instead of tête-à-tête," said Doré briefly, making the introduction. "You see how considerate I am!"

"Delighted, of course," said Sassoon, in his low unvarying tones. "Don't you think we'd be better up-stairs?"

"I said in the restaurant," answered Doré peremptorily.

Sassoon bowed, signaled a waiter, and led the way. She had gone hardly twenty steps into the chattering curious room, which stared at this public spectacle of Sassoon, when her eye fell on the figure of Judge Massingale. Their eyes met. She felt a sudden burning shame there before every one, wavered, and went hurriedly to her seat.

He had seen her! What would he think? Would he misunderstand her at seeing her thus publicly flaunted by Sassoon? What awful conclusions might not come into his mind at this persistent dogging of her steps? And after what had happened last night, with the memory of her blind clinging to him, the soft confession of her voice, what would he think now? Let him think what he wished, so long as he should suffer a little! If he were here, he could have come to her! If he were so mechanical, she would teach him jealousy.

What would he think?

But these thoughts, timorous, elated, determined, expectant, were not clearly defined to her. She had a sensation of fleeting emotions, utterly uncontrolled. She began to chat rapidly without saying anything at all, seeking in the arrangement of the mirrors a favorable angle. At last she saw his table, and the direct confrontation of his stare. He was with a large party, mixed, a dozen at the least, and he was still looking in her direction.

"I don't care if he is furious," she thought defiantly. "If he is furious, he cares! I shall see him—talk to him. He'll make an excuse!"

She did not cease talking, but she did not hear a word she said or notice what Sassoon replied. She thought Ida was making grammatical errors in her excessive efforts to give the conversation dignity, and from the bored nervous way in which Sassoon was listening, she divined his fury at being thus circumvented. This pleased her. She wanted to be sure that Massingale could be jealous, but, in some confused way, she wanted Sassoon to be punished.

All at once in the mirror she saw Massingale rise to take his leave. In another moment, surely, he would turn as he came toward them. She would see him, talk to him, look into his eyes. She began hurriedly, frantically, laughing at nothing, to run from topic to topic, gesturing to attract her own eyes to the table, so that he might not perceive her agitation or know the sinking of her heart as she felt him nearer and nearer.

He was there, almost at her back, coming to her. In a moment she would hear his voice, that deep controlled tone, speaking her name. She was sure now that she was blushing, that her sparkling eyes betrayed her, that Sassoon, Ida surely, had guessed her agitation. But she did not care! She felt only an exquisite happiness, a bodily glow. And all at once she saw that he had passed without even an attempt to catch her eye. He was in the doorway, and he was gone!

Why? Was it anger that she should be there with Sassoon? If it were only true! She tried to seize upon this idea, but all her courage had evaporated. She felt all at once without enthusiasm. If that were so, then she was wrong; perhaps he would never believe her.

"That was Judge Massingale, wasn't it?" she said aimlessly.

Sassoon jerked his head in assent, adding viciously:

"Family affair. Gets out as soon as he can. Mrs. Massingale entertaining some imported geniuses, probably."

"Who?"

"Mrs. Massingale."

CHAPTER XIII

Mrs. Massingale! Doré heard the name a second time without quite realizing what it meant, as if the sound were suspended in the air before her, waiting for recognition before taking flight. She did not comprehend—she could not comprehend! The thing was too incredible!

"Ah, Mrs. Massingale," she repeated mechanically.

All at once a sharp pain penetrated to her heart. The riot of fork and knife, the busy live sounds of conversation, were lost in a confused drumming in her ears. Everything became blurred to her eyes, except the mounting W of Sassoon's mustache and the round eyes of Ida, which seemed to grow rounder and bigger before her. She felt suddenly stricken, and yet unable to cry out—suffocated. She let her head fall slowly, staring at the plate before her, a yellow and red plate with a curious scroll design in the center. No! She could not understand. It was not possible that such a thing could befall her. Married! Massingale married! Blackness—a wall—a wall that had no opening, that could not be scaled or turned.

A waiter was offering something at her side. She nodded, taking up a fork, all quite mechanically.

Inside she felt a hand closing over her heart, contracting it painfully. Then all at once she experienced a burning feeling of shame and anger across her shoulders, on her cheeks, and on her lips where his kisses had touched her. How she had been entrapped, blindly, foolishly entrapped, caught and humiliated at the last, despite all her cleverness! Now she understood, in a flash of understanding, why he had not come, why he had not written, why he had not telephoned! He had gone further than he had meant. It was his conscience he was fleeing from—that conscience he had forgot when he had returned to her door!

"I understand! I shall see him no more!" a voice said within her. "It's all over. It never was anything!"

She felt within her the beginnings of many fierce emotions—despair, blinding anger, a fierce unreasoning desire for revenge, a revolt against the forces that had tricked her. But these slumbering points of fire did not leap up instantly. The shock that suddenly had arrested her very being, seemed to have arrested the operation of her sensibilities: they did not respond—they were numbed. The realization was staggering. She could not meet it; she rejected it, striving to send it from her. She felt hurt, horribly, weakly hurt; but she did not wish to acknowledge what had happened. She only knew, in a groping way, that something horrible had suddenly fallen on her out of a clear sky—something that meant the end of all things, the lurking tragedy in her life: something that she would, perhaps, never, never live down!

All at once she began to talk, looking at Sassoon with a dangerous provoking light in her eyes, her cheeks unnaturally flushed, reckless and defiant.

"Poor Mr. Sassoon! Ida, look at him. Did you ever see a man so miserable? He's furious at me. He was counting on such a confidential, intimate little luncheon! It really is a shame to play him such a trick! But I warned him—I always play fair. I told him he was no match for us!" She laughed at his puzzled expression, rushing on: "Really, though, you should conceal your feelings better. You should learn from women. We never show what we feel!"

Did she show what was tearing at her heart? She wondered. She did not care! There was nothing but injustice in the world. What had she done to deserve such a blow? If she had to suffer, others should suffer too! Sassoon's eyes were lighting up, tantalized by this frantic savagery in the woman. She saw the look, and laughed at it, knowing the bitterness she had reserved for him. Now she was scarcely polite to him, mocking him to his face, eagerly awaking within him the demons of covetousness and revenge.

"What has happened to her?" thought Ida, watching her anxiously.

"Pretty little devil, she'll pay for this!" thought Sassoon, blinking at her, his arms before him, rubbing the back of his soft hands with his quiet, combustibly patient gesture.

"Ah, there's Mr. Blood at last!" Dodo cried, all at once. "Now it will be more amusing!"

She waited tremulously the meeting of the two men—these two who should pay so dear to her what she had received in injustice.

Sassoon did not rise. He shot a searching angry glance at Doré, closed one hand tightly over the other and raised his eyebrows in interrogation at the newcomer.

"Quarter of three," said Blood, standing, and barely nodding to Sassoon. "I've been waiting fifteen minutes—that's quite enough. Miss Baxter, you belong to me now!"

"Oh, is it as late as that?"

"Is Mr. Blood here on your invitation, Miss Baxter?" said Sassoon deliberately.

"Yes. We had an engagement for a ride up the river. I'm afraid I've kept him waiting."

"Turn about is fair play," said Harrigan Blood aggressively.

The looks the two men exchanged said what their meaningless phrases concealed.

Ida Summers, not in the secret, yet scenting complications, remained watching, puzzled and a little apprehensive.

"My turn later then," said Sassoon, with perfect politeness. He smiled a little, but it was a malicious smile.

"He detests me now," thought Doré, with a first curious unease at this controlled oriental passion, stubborn, willing to wait endlessly.

She was right. The humiliation which he accepted calmly, with an inward raging, had roused the brute within him, but not the brute that gives up the hunt. To run her down at the last, to have the woman whom he curiously hated and desired, who hated and resisted him, but could not resist beyond the temptations he would spread—that was a passion worth any amount of money; that alone could make money precious to him.

"I may at least be permitted to accompany you to the door," he said, showing his white, sharp little teeth in a well-constructed smile, surprising them by his self-possession. "I am glad to know Mr. Harrigan Blood is a rival; it simplifies matters, doesn't it?"

"Yes, bandit," said Blood, making the sign of drawing a knife.

Sassoon having helped Doré into her coat, stood holding her hand.

"What consoles me is that I am sure Mr. Harrigan Blood is no more a match for you than I am!" Then he added imperturbably, looking her boldly in the eyes: "You are very beautiful. You have a right to be as tantalizing as you like! I shan't object in the least! Give me credit, pretty little tigress, for being quite submissive!"

"Lordy, I think you're an angel, Mr. Sassoon," said Ida Summers, who was sentimental, and who had the advantage of completely missing the situation.

"Your sympathy is very consoling, Miss Summers," said Sassoon curtly, turning on his heel.

He went evenly to the telephone booth and called up his confidential broker:

"Humphreys, I want you to get me a little information very quietly."

"Yes, Mr. Sassoon?"

"Find out what is the extent of Mr. Harrigan Blood's holdings in the stock market. I want complete information, especially as to what he is holding on margins. Treat the matter as absolutely confidential!"

CHAPTER XIV

Ida Summers insisted on departing on her own ways, laughingly proclaiming that if she couldn't be provided with an adorer she wasn't going to sit by for a second time and spoil the fun. Doré let her go without protest. She did not care now. Her head ached. She could not collect her thoughts—could not place before her what had happened. That everything had suddenly ceased, that in the cataclysm her youth, her dreams, her joy in being, were swallowed up, she knew. Something had happened, and yet she could not distinctly perceive it.

They went rushing up the crowded driveway, and on along the open Hudson, hour after hour. The man at her side, leaning forward eagerly, facing her, talked incessantly—talked to her as a man does only when he seeks to unfold all that he has to impress a woman. She answered correctly; she even heard phrases and repeated them mechanically, seeking to comprehend them.

"You are more than life—you are youth itself. I don't know why—every reason—you attract me, but I know I'm groping for you!

"Yes, it's youth, youth, a man like myself needs—the feeling of youth again, the daring of youth, impetuous, magnificent. That's what you can give me!

"I'll give everything—not by half measures; I want you to know all I'm holding back. You'll know the greatest joy in the world, of sharing everything!"

Once he took her hand. Then she turned, and without withdrawing the fingers, which felt no sensation, said:

"Don't do that!"

And he obeyed.

She listened, seeking only the sadness in the sky, the melancholy of isolated and distant things. She knew her heart was broken, that nothing could ever exist for her again. No, never could she feel a palpitating joy; it would all be gray and brown—brown and gray as the worn hills about her, nature, which had forgot its May! And at the same time she listened, smiling and provocative, to this other man who passionately courted her, laying open his inner-most soul for her inspection—a man who proclaimed again and again that she drew him to her by the glow of her youth and the joy of life.

That afternoon was like a phantasmagoria. Even he, at the end, noticed her mental numbness.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked.

She looked at him, smiling negation.

"You seem crushed, as if I could stick a pin in you! What's wrong? Has that beast Sassoon insulted—?"

She shook her head. Even this incongruity did not penetrate.

"Listen!" he went on, retaining her hand as she started to descend. "I'm not a fool! I won't throw myself away on any woman! I'll play fair, too, and open. I don't want backing and pulling—I want things to be big, direct, honest! You know what I feel; you know what I'm capable of feeling! Don't you?"

She smiled and nodded, without comprehending in the least. She was thinking, with a desperate longing, of the shelter of her room, still so far away.

"Very well. I'm going to see you once more," he said abruptly. "Then it's for you to decide. If you want me to come,"—he hesitated to give full emphasis,—"it's for you to send for me!"

She remembered the ultimatum afterward. Now she murmured something commonplace.

He caught her hand.

"Can't you tell me now?"

"What?" she said, striving to recall his meaning.

"Do you want me to come? Is it your wish?"

"Why—yes, why not?" she answered mechanically—nor did she see what leaped into his eyes.

She went hurriedly up the stoop and in. Suddenly she had the feeling that she used to have when she had left the tense concentrated glare of the footlights and passed into the relief of the shadowy wings. The smiles fled from her lips, the nervous provocative mask dropped away. She felt a mortal heaviness of accomplishment. She had lasted through the afternoon; she had not betrayed herself. Half-way up the second flight, she sat down abruptly, exhausted; then, straining every nerve in her body, she reached the haven of her room, as a spent swimmer battling for the shore.

Then a new trial. From behind her door came the sound of voices. Again she took up her mask. The next moment Winona had sprung to her, embracing her feverishly, crying:

"I've got it! I've got it, you darling!"

"Ah—Blainey," she said, suffering her embrace.

But Winona, not to be prevented, continued hugging her frantically, babbling everything, all in a breath, frantic with joy and relief—Winona, whom the night before she had held sobbing in her arms, who to-day was the deliriously happy one!

Then she saw Snyder standing apart, and at her skirts a little girl, half child, half baby, clinging, shyly revolted. As soon as Doré saw her, she went forward impulsively, kneeling and holding out her arms. The child, with the divining instinct of childhood toward suffering, to the amazement of the others, ran swiftly into her embrace. Doré carried her to a chair, holding her head from her, looking into the starry eyes.

"What's your name?"

"Betty."

From that moment she forgot the others. The room seemed narrowed to their embrace, each clinging to the other. These arms, so warm against her neck, this soft weight against her breast, filled her with immeasurable awakening sadness, but a sadness that deadened the consciousness of self, as if this innocence were the only affection that could understand, the only one that could minister to her pain! This helplessness pressing against her breast recalled her poignant childhood, unmothered yet often in passionate grief groping for maternal arms. If only now she could go in weakness, somewhere to confide her crushed body weakly as a wounded child! If only the others would go and leave her thus—

How long she remained thus she did not know. Winona went, returned and departed. All at once Snyder was standing above them, saying:

"Sorry—time's up! Young one must be getting home to roost!"

She took her convulsively to her breast. She did not know whether it soothed or hurt her more; only that it started within her a passionate hunger for this innocence that responded, this incomprehension that understood! She rose abruptly.

"Bring her often—often!" she said, turning away her face.

A knock at the door, and the black hand of Josephus extending a letter.

She knew at once whose letter it was; no need to look! She clutched it, hiding it against her dress. Betty, clinging to her skirts, indignant at her change of mood, clamored for recognition. She bent over, kissed her swiftly, laughed. Then she was alone.

She looked at the letter, but she did not open it. Instead, she placed it on a table, locked the doors, and clutching her hands until the nails cut in, began to pace the floor.

If he had dared—to seek another meeting!

She felt a hot indignant anger wrapping her whole body. She would show him her scorn! At one moment she was on the point of tearing up the letter unread, at the next of sending it back contemptuously. At the end she opened it and read:

"Dear Miss Baxter:

"I was out of my head.... I should have known my limitations.... I didn't. I am very sorry, and I only am to blame. Some later day I want to be your good friend.... Do you understand?

"With great respect,
"L. M."

When she had read this unexpected renunciation, she forgot all her anger, all her resistance.

"He will never see me again!" she said, with a sob, pressing the letter convulsively against her tears.

She needed no second reading to understand that. She put the crumpled sheet into her waist, striking her temples with her little fists as she had once struck him, repeating:

"Never!"

In this moment she no longer had any doubts. She loved him madly, with an intensity that obliterated everything else. And now all this must be strangled; for, in her strange self-formed morality, such a love was unthinkable. The only man who had known how to take her, to see through her acting, to reach out roughly, brutally, like a master—this man belonged to another woman;—was barred to her forever!

"What have I done? Why—why should I be punished this way?"

Suddenly she seized a chair, and dragging it to the side window, sat down, her chin in her hands, staring through the glass at the sheer blankness of brick only a few feet away. It was beginning to be dusk. She felt herself caught; she yielded everything. The thought of pain was so abhorrent to her nature, she had always rushed so fearfully from the contact of suffering, that, now when she was caught without escape, everything crumbled. In this abject moment, as her body yielded to the pervading process of the dusk, she turned back over the entangled progress of her life, convinced that she was paying fearfully in retribution for selfishness and wickedness.

Life, which rises out of the past in its naked proportions only when we dumbly seek a reason for the calamity that overwhelms us, came thus to her as a conviction. What had happened must be her punishment.

She saw her progress as though she were looking down at great revolving spirals, complete in themselves, yet merging in an upward progress. How many men—not by tens, but by scores—she had deliberately used in her upward striving!

"Yes; this is my punishment!" she said breathlessly. She had a feeling that they—the others—were now to be revenged.

She had only a faint impression of her home in a little village town of Ohio. Home it had never been. Her father, brilliant, erratic, emigrant from New England, half politician, half journalist, had suddenly disappeared from her life when she was not yet in her teens. They had told her many things at the time. Afterward she had divined what must have happened—unhappiness, flight with another woman, divorce. Her mother, perhaps the most to blame, had remarried immediately. She had known nothing of her step-father, only that he was some one in power in Cincinnati politics, and well-off. She had been left to the care of an aunt, and very soon she had realized that her duty in life was to make her own way.

And this way she had achieved, or rather had made others achieve for her. She had been precocious, feeling herself a little mongrel who must captivate by its tricks. How simple it had all been—this curious spiral mounting from the pillared house at the corner of the village green, through various strata, to this—to New York, and to the heart of New York at the last! She could never remember the time when she had not had the devotion of the opposite sex. No one had ever needed to teach her the art of pleasing, yet she had known how to exercise it everywhere. She remembered curious odd figures, girlhood admirers, whom she blushed now to have cared even to attract. How her ideas had changed! How she had been educated! And how many different types of men she had known! At first it had been the grocery clerk, a ruddy Saxon, who had cut prices and swollen measures, fatuously, for her sake; then a young engineer on the railroad who had appealed to her imagination; little storekeepers, a local reporter, the captain of the village nine—a giant in those days: not singly, but a dozen at once at her feet.

Next she had gone to high school in Toledo, where for the first time she had judged her local admirers by the standards of the city, a metropolis to her. There it had been another upward circle—students in the university, young lawyers, scrub doctors, embryo merchants, demigods by comparison. This first taste of the life of the city had decided her. She returned to her home but once—to leave it forever. She had sought a little capital and had obtained a few hundred dollars. There she had learned that her mother had been divorced, married again, and that it was quite hopeless to apply to her. She had had an enormous success on that return, with her city clothes and her imposing manners. The grocer's clerk had given up in despair at first sight; the others had hung back awed, realizing that she was not stuff for them. And here she had taken her first confidence, her first belief in her star—in her star, which was not stationary, but which should travel.

She had given, as excuse against the frantic objections of her aunt, that she must prepare herself to earn her living by stenography. She started zealously to equip herself, going to Cleveland and taking a modest hall bedroom at four dollars a week, board included. She continued firm in this resolve for exactly two weeks. But application was against her volatile nature. Besides, her masculine acquaintance had assumed such proportions that she could find no time for work. And suddenly she had met Josh Nebbins, press-agent for a local theater.

She had been attracted to him immediately by his shoes—patent leather with chamois tops, that looked like spats and distinguished him from the common herd. He wore a colored handkerchief in his breast-pocket, English style, red or green shirts, and coats with curious pointed cuffs, which she felt only a New York tailor could have imagined. He had had the greatest influence on her life. He had shown her the easy way to things people coveted, analyzing the philosophy of her sex with his shrewd philosophy of life, contemptuous, successful and witty.

"Play the game, kid—play the game," he would say to her. "The world's full of soft suckers ready to fall for a pretty pair of lamps, and yours are A1 flashers. Make 'em give you what you want! Follow my tips and I'll show you how. And say, don't for one moment think you have to give up anything for what you get. No, sir, not Anno Domini, U. S. Ameriky!"

She had taken his tips, followed his leads. She had soon learned how to acquire whatever she needed. If it was a dress, there was always an admirer in a wholesale store who frantically insisted on the privilege of making a present. Another placed a carriage at her disposal, grateful for the privilege of her company when it pleased her. Other presents were easily convertible.

Nebbins had even changed her name. She had been called Flossie, a contraction from Florence. He had disapproved and invented Doré, and she had accepted enthusiastically. She had a strange intuition that what he did would result for her good, and obeyed implicitly—yes, with even an uneducated admiration. They had become engaged. She would have married him, but he was too much in love not to be proud. He wanted three thousand in the bank, and so they had waited.

Through his offices, she had begun as a super in the local stock company, advancing to an occasional speaking part. She had been at home at once on the stage; she felt born for this. The next season she had entered another stock company playing a circuit, as a regular member. She had wept desperately on leaving Nebbins, completely under his ascendency. She had even offered at the last moment to throw up everything and marry him. He had refused honestly. She had not seen him since.

This memory tortured her. She had soon progressed to where she had seen him in true perspective, or rather in his ridiculous lights. She quickly grew ashamed of the romance. It was something she would have blotted from her life, the more so because at the bottom she felt an obligation, and it revolted her to think that what she was become had, at a critical moment, depended on a Yankee press-agent named Josh Nebbins, who wore ridiculous patent leather shoes with chamois tops!

She was ashamed, and at the same time she was afraid—afraid lest at some time this persistent man, to whom her word had once indiscreetly been given, should surge up out of the past and claim her! He had been the only man from whom she had ever directly accepted money. It had not been much,—a hundred dollars given as a reserve; they were engaged to be married; he had silenced her objections,—but still the fact remained. She had a thousand times resolved to pay it back—to rid herself of this fetter of the past. She had never done so. This was her greatest reproach.

From Nebbins on, the way had not been difficult. She had never saved much money, nor continued long in one opportunity; but she had learned confidence, and how easy opportunities rise for a pretty girl with audacity and wit. But always, in her progress from city to capital, from capital to metropolis, she felt a shadowy crowd of men, reproachful and embittered. She had never been affected by the pangs she had awakened, nor paused to think that there could be any wrong in using whatever presented itself to her—never before. But to-night, alone, facing her first defeat, revolted and stricken, she felt guilty—horribly guilty; and as her faith was simple, and God had always appeared to her as a good friend, she sought His reasons in her past, and said to herself:

"Yes; that is why it has come—that is why I am punished! Oh, I must be very wicked!"

In this conviction, her offending seemed to her enormous, unending. From the day of her arrival in New York until now, she felt that she had never been anything but selfish, cruel, mercenary and calculating. No! Certainly she had not scrupled to use men ... and what men she had known, had availed herself of, climbed above, and discarded. Now the smoke wreaths of her progress swirled more rapidly, thickly revolving, mounting more slowly. She had found her dinners in humble restaurants, paid for in half-dollars by young men already pinched in the struggle of salaries, young men in whom that spark of hope of which Harrigan Blood had spoken burned heedlessly—dreaming a miraculous future and the winning of another Helen. Next it was the coarse world of the theater and the restaurants—heavy sated types of men, demanding their brutal pay, men who disgusted her, with whom she could not share the same air, dangerous antagonists. Another swirl, another chance opportunity, and she was out of the contagion, unscotched, meeting at last men of good manners, gentlemen in name and often in heart. What an incredible progress it had been! She saw few faces distinctly, but in the covetous, brutal, chivalrous, or adoring crowd she remembered here and there a look, a word, something that had struck her by its ridicule, by its cruelty, or inclined her to a sudden gentleness.

She, too—how she had changed through all this! How ridiculous had been her early admirations, how childish her ambitions! What a change had come within—an education of all her tastes, a desire for the beautiful, a longing for refinement, a need of distinction to respond to her abiding sense of delicacy.

Yes; to acquire all this she had done much harm, inflicted useless pain on many. But now retribution had come, inexorable. That she had never thought of —that she too could suffer. And she did suffer, abjectly, hopelessly, sitting there pressed against the window-frame, staring at the unseen wall across which the figures of the past went swirling down in long revolving spirals, like the slow undulating swirls of smoke. There was no way out. She would never see him again—he would never seek her. She was accursed, punished for all past wickedness, singled out for tragedy by fate.

What now could become of her. What could she fall back on? Who could help her? She was horribly alone—and afraid.

That night she dreamed a terrible dream. She was dining at Tenafly's in the midst of a great company. Massingale was there. By some strange turn, Mrs. Massingale did not exist; instead, it seemed to her that he was bending over her saying:

"It's all a mistake. I'm not married; I've never been married. That was my brother's wife. You are to be Mrs. Massingale. Do you understand? That's why every one is here!"

She had looked around and seen so many faces: Sassoon, with his mounting mustache; Mrs. Sassoon, judging her through a lorgnette; Lindaberry, De Joncy, Mr. Peavey, who was wiping his eyes with a handkerchief, Busby, Stacey even.

All at once some one was standing at her side,—some one who wore patent leathers with chamois tops,—and Josh Nebbins, in a purple shirt and green and black check suit, derby on one side, was grinning at her, saying:

"Hello, kid! Here I am. Made my wad. Come to get you!"

Next she was on the edge of a precipice. Some one had his arms about her, holding her back, and some one else was trying to pull her over.

She was crying:

"Don't let him throw me over. Don't, please! I'll love you, only you, Your Honor!"

But, to her surprise, it was not Massingale who was trying to save her; it was Lindaberry.

And the man who had her by the arm, pulling her over, she could not see; only she could see far down, hundreds of miles, to a little thread of a stream. Stones were slipping under her feet; she was going over; and all at once she looked up. A pair of patent leathers with chamois tops! It was Josh Nebbins.

She awoke with a scream.

CHAPTER XV

The next morning she resolved to go at once to Blainey, to fling herself heart and soul into her profession, to get an engagement in some stock company. She hesitated, and ended by putting it off till the next day. She said to herself that she must seek relief in flight, a new life, new friends for a month at least, until she should be stronger. She said it to herself each day, and each day she tarried. Perhaps she hoped for some sign of weakness on Massingale's part, an overture that would give her the confidence of a scornful rejection. But each day passed without word or sign from him. This firmness, this regained control, this one man who could steadfastly avoid her, obsessed her. She sought not to think of him—and his image intruded itself every day, at every moment. When the telephone rang its always mysterious call, she went to it with a tense arrestation of her nerves expectant of his voice, fearing—hoping. At the theater or the opera, in her first sweeping glance over the audience, it was always his face she sought. She sought it in the chances of the crowded streets, and with a restless glance searched among the carriages as she passed alone, or in gay company, up the avenue. She knew where he held court, following the calendar in the newspaper, and often she was tempted to steal in at the back of the dim, crowded court room, unobserved—just why, with what undefined hope, she did not know. This impulse she resisted but never confidently conquered. Each day she repeated that she must go; each day she tarried.

For two weeks she led a dulled and purposeless existence. She succeeded in crowding the day, in shutting out opportunity for thought, in consuming the night so as to return with enough fatigue to fall into heavy troubled slumber. The bright moments were those when she went with Snyder's little girl on brief excursions into the country, for a moment's forgetfulness among the woods, an hour of willing slavery to childish whims, throwing herself into foolish romping games that brought a comforting sense of the world's unrealities. The sensation that childish clinging brought her at times surprised her by its intensity. She had never thought of having children, and yet this child awoke strange yearnings. Troubled, she told herself that it was the weakness of her suffering intensified by loneliness, and satisfied herself with this reply.

Her days were curiously divided. She saw Harrigan Blood and Sassoon, but to their assiduous pursuit she flung only crumbs. She saw them in the tantalizing publicity of the down-stairs parlor—rarely, for an hour perhaps; but she steadfastly refused further concessions. Busby, clearly inspired, sought to entice her to many alluring entertainments, some conventional, others not quite so. She refused all. She avoided all parties where she might encounter the one man, avoiding too that entourage of his which she had so eagerly sought with a sense of right on the occasion of the luncheon to De Joncy.

Instead, she sought desperately to return to the light bantering existence she had formerly known. The glimpses she had had into the upper world frightened her. It laid before her crude vanities which she would have preferred to ignore; it started temptations where she had been conscious of none. In her present depression, an instinct bade her flee all that dazzled her; a voice whispered to her that, in the mad impulses of a groping despair, she might not always resist, or care to resist—that it were better not to know that luxury and power lay so easily at hand, ready on the feminine fingers of Sassoon or the imperious clutch of Harrigan Blood.

Nor was the temptation a fancied one, for the hunger that had awakened was an inner one. In her short glimpse of luxury she had become aware of new longings, material cravings, vanities of the flesh. Occasionally in the mornings, to escape from her moods, she went out for long walks past tempting shop-windows—those shop-windows of New York, more devastating than all the flesh hunters, on whose balances lie how many feminine souls! She would stop breathlessly, hypnotized, hanging on visions of gorgeous silks, imperial furs, opera-cloaks that might transform a peasant into a queen, jewels that danced before her eyes, fascinating them strangely with their serpentine coldness.

She could not prevent her lawless imagination from wandering, visualizing another Doré Baxter, who swept gorgeously among the costly women of the opera and the restaurants, compelling a startled attention, luxuriant, radiant, triumphant with the sinister blinking eyes of Sassoon always over her glowing shoulder. What constantly started this torturing image before her was that she had now no doubt as to what she could do with him. At first, incredulously, she could not believe that his interest would survive a week—that he would not depart furiously, once the scales had fallen from his hungry glance and he had realized that in her mocking society nothing was reserved for him but humiliation and deception. But, to her amazement, she found it was not so; that something had penetrated profoundly into that chilled soul, and that the passion which had been kindled was one that sweeps men on to irretrievable follies, unthinkable sacrifices, at the hands of a calm woman. Sassoon—no. But Sassoon and the lure of a thousand shop-windows spreading before her their soft enwrapping mysteries of splendor.... Occasionally, gazing entranced before some bewildering evening gown, a peignoir all lace and cloud, a rope of milky pearls, she felt this sensation so compellingly that she would retreat breathlessly, trembling from head to foot.

What made the temptation doubly insidious was her own awakened point of view. She saw now the immense difference in scale between the upper world and the semi-Bohemian state of the Salamanders. Their desperate struggle to make both ends meet, their prodigies of imaginative planning, their campaigns of economy, all to procure a few insignificant dollars— this struggle of wits which had once exhilarated her now depressed her fearfully. She had a sort of second sight; she saw now the approach of failure, the inexorable famine that lay beyond the short dominion of youth. She had always dimly perceived this danger, saying to herself that she could cast the die before another cast it for her. But now, thinking of her twenty-third year still six months away, she had a feeling as if she were being hurried toward her choice, frantically driven; and yet, she could not see where all this whirlwind force was carrying her.

At this moment her mentality began. She felt a new birth of her reason—that unquiet searching of the self so often child of grief. She began to question—to analyze and to strive to penetrate the future. She saw herself in others, the past and the possible future: Ida Summers, arriving like a skipping child, all heedless laughter, inconscient, holding out avid arms for flowers, and Winona, a figure with half averted face, hand upon the latch, ready to depart. No, she would not be like Winona; that was impossible, she said, with a shudder; Winona was but a figure standing as a warning!

Winona herself, occupied with rehearsals, went out of her day, momentarily. Doré took her to the opera on the Monday nights that Mr. Peavey had placed at her disposal. She never made the mistake of seeking a male escort. She felt always that Peavey's timid eyes were on her, hidden somewhere in that vast concourse, spying on her actions, waiting suspiciously to see if her companion were a man, a young and ardent man of her own generation. Nor was this entirely surmise. The second Monday, he had loomed at her side out of nowhere, happiness in his eyes, radiant to find her so discreetly accompanied. He had taken them to supper afterward. It seemed to her that Winona had put herself out to attract him—excessively so, considering her proprietorship; for the etiquette of Salamanders is imperious on such points. But then, Winona was in a curious mood, brooding, gay by starts and as suddenly silent. Doré sometimes wondered if things were working out well at the theater. In her determination to resist this life—Massingale's world, into which she had blundered so unluckily—she turned hungrily to the company of the other Salamanders, with a new need of woman's sympathy and understanding. Besides Winona and Ida, there were on the floor below Estelle Monks, whom she knew well and Clarice Stuart and Anita Morgan, roommates, whom she knew slightly, despite their repeated advances. They were trained nurses, lately arrived from the far West, older than the rest, but Salamanders by their craving for excitement and their fidelity to the rule of never allowing business to interfere with pleasure. Doré had always had that curiosity which each Salamander feels for another. How did they play their games? Had they methods which she had not divined? Above all, what was to be the end of the comedy? Readily welcomed, she drifted into their society for a week or so. They engaged themselves only for the day, and yet, despite the exacting strain they underwent (and, to her surprise, she soon discovered that they were passionately devoted to their profession), each night by half past seven they came tripping down the steps to where Doré, with the escorts, was waiting in an automobile to whirl them to the theater, to a long drive into the country, dinner and an impromptu dance, and then home by the midnight stars, ready to rise with the dawn and begin the day's toil. They seemed made of iron.

They had their stories to tell, their analyses of men and life. Doctors, it seemed, were sometimes human, especially old ones. Often they had in the party men whose names were famous in the profession, abrupt incisive tyrants, neither abrupt nor tyrannical with them, submitting to their banter, prodigal of compliments, just as difficult to be kept in place as other men. Doré listened in astonishment to their conversations, amazed at the impertinence of the girls, and the ready laughing acceptance of those who, in the day, commanded them.

"Why?" said Clarice Stuart, when she had once voiced this amazement. "Putting a different coat on them isn't going to change them, is it? Lud bless you, girl, I thought the way you did, once. I got over it quickly! Do you want to know my first experience here, when I got to New York? An eye-opener, let me tell you! I was substitute on a surgical case,—private house, patient sleeping under opiates,—when Doctor Outerwaite, the same we were with the other night up at the Arena, came in for examination. 'Course, in that case, the family always go out of the room until the examination is over. Outerwaite! Lord, we'd heard nothing but Outerwaite all through the West! I was frightened stiff! They say he's a devil in the operating-room, swearing like a trooper if everything doesn't go like clockwork! Imagine me! First case in little New York! Well, I shooed the family out, closed the doors and stood at the patient's side—he quite out of his head, delirium and opiates; me watching the Doc, and ready to jump at a sneeze. And what do you think he did? Go to the patient? Nixie! He came straight up to little me, slipped his arm around, and said:

"'Why, you beautiful creature! where did you come from?'"

She laughed in a superior worldly way, adding:

"They're not all that way; but there are some gay boys! Lord! I could tell you some story! I say, Dodo, if you ever get appendicitis, let me know. I'll fix it for you so it won't cost you a cent!"

So even distinguished surgeons, men of international reputation, had their little excursions behind the scenes, vulnerable as the rest before an impertinent, defiant Salamander! Curious, she asked questions, seeking to know how such wardrobes grew from modest salaries. Clarice was nothing if not direct.

"Graft!" she said, with a shrug of her shoulders. "Of course, the wages are good, but they don't set up a wardrobe of Paris models, do they? Well, it's a question of presents, see?" She laughed, shrugging her shoulders. "A patient you've pulled through pneumonia, or a case of trepanning, has a right to periodic fits of gratitude, hasn't he? And, of course, when you leave there's always a present—money, if you're supporting the family at home." She emphasized this with a wink. "When you get a club man, a good sport who's been in a blue funk at dying, it shapes up pretty well! Of course, when you strike a woman, it's a scarf or a kimono. But we've been rather lucky!"

Then, become suddenly serious, she continued thoughtfully:

"I say, Dodo, it's real curious, the effect you get over a man when he's pulling out of a smashing illness! You know, if I'd wanted to I could have married—" She stopped, lost in a reverie. "A nice boy, too. Sometimes I think I was a fool!"

"Will you marry?" said Dodo curiously.

"Anita says she will. Don't know about little me. I'm engaged, you know." She held up two fingers and laughed: "But, lord! there's no hurry. It's such fun as it is!"

As she grew more confidential (and secrecy was not her failing), Doré herself was surprised at the daring of the nurse's life. She spoke lightly of things that Doré did not approve of—now. She had met men in unconventional ways, without introduction, according to a fancy—the expression is "picked up." When Doré demurred, she said, with western frankness:

"Say, how would I meet them, then? Oh, I manage them all right—after! That's where their little surprise comes in!"

And she began to tell of the time when she had flirted with two well-known club men at the Horse Show, men who were dying to speak to her, but were afraid on account of the presence of curious others. But, in passing near them, they had slipped their cards into her pocket. Of course, she had not written them—she had met them by chance afterward at a restaurant; but she had not been offended by their advance. They were of her steady acquaintance now.

But Doré's incursion into this curious society brought her small amusement. She grew tired quickly of these too easily read admirers. Then after what she had known, they were all second-chop. The company of Estelle Monks interested her more. Since the morning she had surprised her in the office of the Free Press, her curiosity had been stirred to further investigation. Estelle Monks herself forestalled her. She came into her rooms suddenly one morning, and plumping down, abruptly inquired:

"Do me a favor, Dodo?"

"Any!"

"Don't mention to Mr. Harrigan Blood that I inhabit these quarters!"

Doré, puzzled, a little embarrassed too, moved away, saying:

"What do you mean? Why not?"

"No offense to you, bless you!" said Estelle Monks, with a curious smile. "You see, I'm on the paper. He—well, he wouldn't quite relish the idea of tripping over me when he turns up with a bunch of flowers."

"You exaggerate," said Doré nervously. "Harrigan Blood's not really interested."

"H. B.'s a damned fascinating man," said Estelle Monks directly, "but he doesn't like reporters about, whether he's serious or not—particularly his own reporters."

"He's not serious!" said Doré.

Estelle Monks smiled.

"That is, he only thinks he is."

"I guess you understand him, don't you?" said Estelle Monks, still smiling.

"Yes!" She looked at her friend, interested. "What are you doing on the paper? You never told any one."

"Raise your hand and cross your heart!" said Estelle solemnly. "I'm Ferdie Amsterdam."

"You?" said Doré in amazement. For under that pseudonym was conducted the famous society column of the Free Press.

"Expert on the Four Hundred—social dictionary."

"Honest?"

"Since two months!"

"But how do you manage?"

She told her story. She had come from San Francisco, where she had done some clever work on the papers. She had a few letters of introduction, and she knew a few men of the journalist emigration. She had gone to the Free Press office with an article in hand, Impressions of a Western Girl.

"What, it was you?" said Doré, suddenly enlightened.

"Don't wonder you didn't recognize the photo. Belonged to some one on the coast. Wrote my article in Chicago—fake, of course, but highly seasoned. I handed it over as if I owned a Middle West chain of papers; told them I'd go out and work up the names. But the feeling was all right, so it was! The stuff went big; I was fixed!"

Doré was on the point of divulging her own experience, and how she had been outstripped; but she held her tongue with a new caution, asking:

"But the society game, Estelle—how do you know about that?"

"I don't!" she answered frankly. "It started as a joke; it made good! The real Ferdie Amsterdam—that's to say, the last of the line, an old maid called Benticker—got a pain somewhere and was carted off to the hospital. I was put on the column and told to fill it up somehow. I sent in a hurry call to a couple of my friends, Ben Brown and Will Cutter—you know them, big magazine specialists—and we sat down with a couple of weeklies, and doped out a cracker-jack story. It amused them. They used to laugh themselves sick over being Ferdie Amsterdam. Since then we lunch at Lazare's every day and dope it out. And say, the boss is so tickled, he's raised my rates! What do you think of that? 'Course, now I'm getting the jargon, going out and meeting people—"

"Going out?" said Doré, opening her eyes.

"Some! Ferdie Amsterdam gets a bid to any big affair that's pulled off. Say, the way these leaders of society currycomb your back would paralyze you! Trouble to get information? Why, they're dying to crowd into print!"

"And so that's the way you worked it," said Doré musingly.

"Sure. Drop in to lunch with me and see the board in session!"

Doré liked Estelle Monks. There was something self-reliant and businesslike about her that inspired confidence. She had a big point of view, one who had unbounded charity and understanding. She invited Doré to go with her as her guest to several affairs, musicales, large balls and tableaux, but the invitation was always declined. As she knew her, though, Doré was surprised to find how naturally this confident little worker, with the slow and alluring smile, gathered about her men from the most fashionable sets, men whom she converted into friends, firm in their respect. She admired this gift, knowing how much more difficult it is to establish a friendship than to begin a flirtation.

She went once or twice to luncheon with her, amused at the facile clever way Estelle Monks enlisted the services of two such celebrities as Ben Brown and Will Cutter, and that in friendship solely. It must be a gift—a gift that was not in Doré's power. Even on the few occasions she met them, Will Cutter looked at her with awakened fixity, very different from the way he beamed jovially on Estelle Monks. A smile, and Doré felt he would enlist under her banner. But she steadfastly resisted this disloyalty; for among Salamanders etiquette is strict, and possession is all points of the law.

For three weeks, then, she sought to immerse herself in this old life—sharing the surface confidences of the Salamanders, playing her part in little financial intrigues, running into pawn-shops with Winona, or making profitable arrangements at Pouffe's for the crediting on flowers withheld for Ida Summers, who was new; working up the birthday game for Clarice and Anita, when consulted by admirers as to what would please these difficult ladies; raising her own capital by the reselling of the bi-weekly basket of champagne from Peavey, the flowers that Stacey, Gilday and Sassoon assiduously offered, receiving her share of convertible presents from chance admirers, hooked for a week or two—at the bottom without zest, sick at heart, tired of it all. Then, all at once, one morning after she had gone to the door of the court-house where Massingale was holding court, in a sudden revulsion she fled to Blainey's office, wildly resolved on escape.

Two days later she found herself in Buffalo, inscribed on the list of a stock company, resolved to stay for months until her mental balance had been regained and the deep wound in her heart had become but a faint scar. She stayed just two weeks. The quiet, the relaxed air, life in so many ruts of the little big town, awoke in her a fear of the past, of being sucked back into the oblivion of early days, as if what she feared night and day had already begun—retrogression. Was that the true reason of her return, or was there some impelling magnet too compelling to be resisted, or even to be acknowledged?

She came directly into Blainey's office, profiting by her entrée which carried her triumphantly past the crowded anteroom, where old and young, the hopeful and the resigned, the restlessly impatient and the soddenly passive, waited wearily, watching her with hostile eyes.

"Well, Blainey, I'm back!" she said abruptly, and nodding at the dapper secretary, she added: "Send him out! I want to talk to you."

"Well, kid?" he said, studying her shrewdly when they were alone.

"Well, I'm going to be square with you!" she said, crossing her arms defiantly. "I'm miserable, Blainey!"

"Trouble here?" he said, laying a fat forefinger on his heart.

"Yes."

"Em—bad!" he said solemnly. He flung away the half smoked cigar, chose another and nervously turned it in his fingers. "So I'd sized it up—well, we all get it. Why? Lord love me, of all I've watched and stirred up, that's what gets me—why a damned clever girl like you, or a cold-headed old son-of-a-gun like me should ever fall—I'm sorry, kid! Are you going to make a fool of yourself?"

"I don't know, Blainey," she said, shrugging her shoulders. She had a feeling, all at once, of confidence in his rough common sense.

"That's queer. I thought you were too keen!" He was thinking of Sassoon, wondering if she would throw away such an opportunity for a short romance. "Some youngster, eh?—without a cent—talking big!"

He lighted the cigar and puffed it reflectively.

"Kid, we Americans are a bunch of damned fools. Sentiment's our middle name! Why should I hand you a line of talk? Haven't I fallen for it a dozen times? Yes, and ready to begin all over again! We've got to love some one, or we get to wabbling!"

He looked at her, and again he thought of Sassoon, and what the situation might yield. He wanted to be honest with her, to give her good advice according to his lights.

"So that's why you shot off to Buffalo, eh?" he said, with a long whistle. "Bad theory! Stay by it; see the fellow ten times a day—that sometimes cures. Say, I'm going to hand you the truth like a Dutch uncle! You've got things going your way; you've got the whole game before you, cinched." He hesitated. "Sassoon, ready to back you to the limit, opportunity, money backing; you know the place."... He waved contemptuously at the warring world of the Rialto below—"And you know the game. Sassoon's good for thousands—in your hands. And then, there's the advertisement! Don't lose your head over a couple of square shoulders!"

She did not set him right. For her purposes she preferred that he should entirely misconceive her. She allowed him to go on, volunteering his worldly, well meant advice.

"All you say is true," she said finally, with an indefinable smile. "Blainey, I've always said I would make up my mind at twenty-three. Be patient. It may be sooner!"

"Wish I could take twenty-five years off my back," he said slowly, without rising. "Take your time—take your time; and if you get weepy, come in and use my shoulder. Understand?"

He rang the bell, waved his hand cheerily and watched her until she disappeared. She went, strongly impressed by his kindness, half inclined impulsively to return and begin in earnest.

She had gone directly to him from the station. Now she returned to Miss Pim's. When she was back once more in her own room, the sensation of homecoming was so acute that she could have sat down in the middle of the floor and cried for joy. But in another moment Ida Summers rushed in.

"Dodo! The Lord be praised! You saved my life! Dinner, theater and a gorgeous cabaret affair afterwards. Vaughan Chandler's coming for me at seven—I promised to get another girl. Every one you know is going. Every one's been asking for you. Swear you'll come?"

"Come? You bet I will!" she cried with a great burst of relief, flinging herself frantically in Ida's arms.

At eleven o'clock, after dinner and the theater they started in a party of six, hilariously, for Healey's, where a dozen crowds were to congregate for an impromptu cabaret dance. She felt elated, gloriously happy. It seemed to her as if she had regained the mastery of herself again, that the old zest had returned with the incipient flirtation which she had already begun with two irreproachable youths who sought discreetly to touch her hand in the confusion of the bumping ride, or to gaze deep, with ardent soulful messages, into her mocking eyes of cloudy blue. After all, the voluntary exile had served its purpose. It had showed her the stupidity of moping. Life was too short to be taken seriously. Admiration of ten men was better, more exhilarating, more exciting, than ridiculous fancied passions au serieux. She was so happy, so brilliantly gay, liberated in spirit, avid for excitement and admiration, that even Vaughan Chandler, Ida's cavalier by rights, watched her with amazed disloyal eyes.

Others were before them in the great Jungle Room which had been reserved. From below they heard the barbaric swinging music of stringed instruments, and divined the laughing, swaying, gliding confusion of dancers. Doré, with brilliant eyes and impatient tripping feet, hurried them on, eager to lose herself in the swirling throbbing measures, and the first two persons she saw on entering, were—Lindaberry and Judge Massingale!

CHAPTER XVI

Massingale did not perceive her entrance. A moment later she was in the arms of one of her escorts, lost in the confusion of the dance. Whirling figures obscured her view. She caught flashes of his erect square-shouldered figure, glimpses of the high forehead and stern gaze, and the next moment she was flinging back a laughing salutation to a suddenly appearing acquaintance flying past her. Whatever happened, she would never look in his direction; he should never know that he existed for her! And still, in the kaleidoscopic hazards of the frantic measure, his face was the only fixed point which a dozen futile shapes strove in vain to obscure. He had his hand on Lindaberry's shoulder, bending over him in animated exhortation; other men, three or four, laughingly provocative or dissuading, were in the group. Then, all at once, an abrupt end, laughter, applause, a quick clearing of the floor, and Massingale, looking across the room, saw her.

She had no experience of the discipline of society; she understood only crude impulses of nature; she never believed that he would dare approach her. He came directly to her, offered his hand with perfect courtesy, gave a formal greeting, bowed and left her immediately. She was so taken by surprise by the ease with which he had surmounted a difficult moment that she suffered him to take her hand and to depart without the slightest resistance. But immediately afterward her anger flamed up. What! not a word of excuse, not a regret, nothing but a trivial evasion! And forgetting all her own resolves, she flung herself recklessly into the excitement of the evening, recklessly resolved to make herself a thousand times more desirable, to outdo even the most daring of the dancers, to draw on herself every regard, that he might see to what he had driven her. He continued to watch her, transformed into a spectator, arms folded, seeing no one else; and with a keen cutting joy she saw the furrow of pain and doubt which gathered across his brow, as she abandoned herself, head thrown back, laughing up at her partner, as she had seen Georgie Gwynne once in the embrace of Lindaberry. The men, already over-excited, crowded about her, contending for each dance.

Now she no longer avoided Massingale's troubled gaze. Each time she passed near him, she sent him a scornful veiled glance, a smile of derision and recklessness, which said: "There—you see! This is what you have done to me; this is where I am going!" A fury impelled her on; she wished to drive him, at all costs, from the room. But still he remained rooted by the piano, never averting his eyes. She saw that he suffered, and by every coqueting provoking glance, by every seductive movement of her body, by the very vertigo of her languorous, half closed eyes and parted eager lips, she sought to bury deeper the sting.

A Fury impelled her

Lindaberry sought her, among others, and she danced with him once, twice, a third time, granting him that personal distinction which would double the pain she was inflicting. This evening Lindaberry was different. She felt in him an agitation equal to her own. He danced extraordinarily well, with an impulsive sense of the alternately controlled or passionately rebellious movements of the dance. And the impulses within him which subdued her movements to his, fiercely checking them or suddenly enveloping her in a mad, surging, frantic rush which left her breathless, was something not of the room, or the mechanics of the step, but an inner fierce revolt that sought its liberating expression in this physical madness. Even in her obsession of resentment, she felt a curiosity to know why this was so. Other men enlightened her, whispering caution:

"For God's sake, Miss Baxter, don't let him drink any more!"

"He's been on a spree for a week!"

"They say he lost forty thousand last night at Canfield's."

She could not believe it. His face was so hilariously young, lighted up with such boyish laughter. To-night she had no fear of him; if he was reckless, so was she!

"This is nothing!" he had said to her once, when he had driven her about the room at such a pace that she had halted, laughing, protesting that it was glorious, waiting for breath. "How would you like to go spinning along at eighty miles an hour? That's sensation!"

She had not understood his meaning, but, the idea once in her head, she returned to it. It seemed to her all at once that in her hand lay the final stroke that would wound Massingale as nothing else would wound, which would show him how little she cared for anything now—reputation, danger, or what might come after.

"You like the feeling of eighty miles an hour?" she said to Lindaberry, the next time he came.

"Adore it!"

"Is your machine here?"

"Yes."

"Show me what it is like—eighty miles an hour!"

"Do you mean it?"

"Of course!"

"You've got the nerve?"

She laughed; it was not a question of courage.

"Come on, then!"

She nodded, and glanced about the room. Ida Summers was at the piano, clamoring for a certain dance, not five feet from Massingale. She went quickly, saying, in a voice that would carry where she intended:

"Ida, I'm off for a lark. Don't be worried if I disappear!"

"Heavens, Dodo, what are you going to do now?" said Ida, looking up startled.

"Great fun! Mr. Lindaberry's going to show me what it feels like to go a mile a minute in the dark."

To her surprise, she was instantly surrounded by those who had heard her remark—a group in violent protest.

"You're mad!"

"Lindaberry'll wreck the car!"

"Don't you know his condition?"

"Miss Baxter, it's suicide!"

Massingale alone did not offer a word.

She put them laughingly away with double-edged words:

"Danger? So much the better! What do I care?"

But she had considerable difficulty in freeing herself. When finally she escaped, laughing, and had made for the entrance, Lindaberry, too, was facing a storm of protest from those who had learned of his proposed escapade.

"I say, Miss Baxter, I'm looked on as a slaughter-house champion here," he said, laughing. "No one particularly cares about my neck, but a good many do about yours! What do you say? Shall we give them the slip?"

"I'm ready!"

"Can't we put up a little bet on this?" he continued triumphantly. "It's now ten minutes before one. Yonkers and back, despite cops, punctures and accidents, in forty minutes! Who'll take me for a hundred, even at that?"

A chorus of murmurs alone answered him:

"Don't be a fool, Garry!"

"Not I!"

"You ought to be manacled!"

"I'll make it two to one—five to one!" He stopped expectantly, shrugged his shoulders, and turned to Doré. "Miss Baxter, I give you my word of honor there's not the slightest risk. Still, it's up to you. Well?"

"I'm crazy about it!" she said, with a reckless laugh, slipping her hand through his proffered arm.

Below, she drew back suddenly. Judge Massingale was on the sidewalk, standing by the car. He turned at once to Lindaberry, looking steadily past her.

"Garry, this is sheer madness! You have no right to do what you're doing! Miss Baxter does not know what she is getting into!"

Lindaberry's only answer was a boyish laugh, and a hand to Doré, who sprang to her seat.

"Risk your own life. If you'll go alone, I'll take up your bet!"

"Listen to him, Miss Baxter!" said Lindaberry, with an airy wave of his hand. "Why, upon my honor, I'm the safest driver in New York!"

Massingale gave a groan of despair.

"Besides, if you're arrested and brought into court, Garry, Miss Baxter's name will be dragged—"

"I won't be nabbed. And, if I am, Judge, I'll telephone for you! Besides, there isn't a cop in the place that doesn't love me like a brother. Ask Mulligan, here!"

The patrolman on the beat, who had lazily sauntered up at his colloquy, grinned and shook his head.

"Why, every time I get in a scrap with one of them," continued Lindaberry joyously, "I send the kids to college! They'd break my head open the first chance they got, but beyond that they wouldn't harm a hair. Eh, Mulligan?"

"Sure! That's right!"

Lindaberry, ready to take the wheel, bent over.

"I say, Mulligan, is De Lima on deck to-night?"

Mulligan gazed anxiously in the direction of Judge Massingale, who was standing helplessly by.

"Oh, the judge is a good sport!" said Lindaberry. "Well, where's De Lima?"

"Above Ninety-sixth, I believe, sorr!"

"Good! I'll keep an eye out. De Lima's expensive! Well, Judge, too bad you can't join us. Little bet? Now, don't worry! I'll promise nothing faster than a mile a minute until we strike the country!"

They were drawn up in the electric flare of the side entrance. Quite a group of staring white-aproned waiters, impudent newsboys, appearing like bats out of the hidden night, chauffeurs and curious creatures of the underworld hung around open-mouthed, very black and very white in the artificial region of light and shadow. Massingale turned suddenly to her, forced to his last appeal.

"Miss Baxter," he said, looking up directly, "I wouldn't insist if I didn't know the chances you are running with this madman! Believe me, it is a reckless thing to do! Miss Baxter, please don't go!"

"Please?" she repeated, looking into his eyes with a glance as cold as his own was excited.

"Yes! I ask you—I beg you not to go! You don't know—you don't understand. Mr. Lindaberry is not a safe person—now, under present conditions!"

She leaned a little toward him, modulating her voice for his ear alone.

"I'm sure, Judge Massingale," she said coldly "that I will be much safer with Mr. Lindaberry, wherever he wishes to take me, than with some other man, even in my own house, alone!"

He understood: she saw it by the hurt look in his eyes. He withdrew without further proffer.

The next instant the car shot out, with the trailing scream of a rocket, shaved a wheel by an inch, swung the corner with hardly a break, the rear wheels sliding over the asphalt, and went streaming up the avenue, the naked trees of the park running at their side.

She sank back into the shaggy coat, adjusting the glasses which the wind cut sharply into her face, appalled at the speed, yet strangely, contemptuously unafraid.

"Fast enough?" he cried, and the words seemed to whistle by her.

"Love it!" she shouted, bending toward him.

She watched him, shrunk against the seat, her curiosity awakening at his mood, so married to her own. Massingale, the dancers, the stirring pain-giving world of pleasure, were miles away. She remembered all at once that she was with him—a stranger, wild as herself, heedlessly, recklessly engaged in a mad thing. All at once she laughed aloud, a curious sound that made him jerk his head hastily back. If he knew how little she cared if the wheel swerved that necessary fraction of an inch!

"Crazy! We're crazy, both of us!" she thought to herself joyfully. At this moment of wild cynicism she felt that she had flung over everything, done forever with scruples; that, now that she had compromised herself so publicly, nothing more mattered. She would be cruel, selfish, mercenary, but she would make this city of Mammon that went roaring past her serve her by its own false gods of money and success. In the gathering roar of the hollow air, high roof and low roof, sudden sparkling streets, file on file of blinking lights, fatally brilliant as the lure of shop windows, black instantaneous masses on the avenue, streamed behind her in a giddy torrent. Yes, it was her last scruples she thus flung to the winds, and foolishly confident of divining inscrutable fates, she repeated fiercely, defiantly, drunk with the speed madness:

"What do I care! This is the end!"

CHAPTER XVII

"Hold tight!"

She caught his shoulder at a sudden grinding stop, a breakneck turn into a side street, and the released forward leap.

"Look out! Don't touch my arm!" he cried warningly.

The next moment they had leaped an intersecting avenue, skirting the impending rush of a trolley car by inches. He laughed uproariously.

"Afraid?"

"No!"

Another turn, and they were on Riverside, the broad Hudson with its firefly lights below, the Palisades rising darkly, like gathering thunder-clouds. There was no moon, but above their heads were the swarming stars, brilliant as a myriad sword-points. Once a policeman rushed with a peremptory club in their path, springing aside with an oath as Lindaberry set the machine at him—an oath that was lost like a whirling leaf. She no longer sought to distinguish the giddy passage at her sides, straining her eyes on the white consuming path of the lanterns, feeling all at once the hungry soul of the monster waking in the machine, strident, throbbing, crying out at the unshaken hand of man which dominated it. Then the Viaduct slipped underneath them, and below, in a swirling dip, the sunken city, hungry as a torrent, awaiting a single mishap.

She had a sudden remembrance of her dream—of Nebbins pulling her over a brink, and the thread of a river grave miles below. Only now she remembered coldly, as if the speed at which they were flying gave her no time to associate two ideas. Suddenly, by an instinct not of fear but of disdainful certainty, her eyes closed before the impossibility of surviving a looming obstacle. When she opened them again they were among trees and fields, while the goaded machine hurled itself forward in tugging leaps. Now, as they seemed to fling themselves irrevocably on the destruction of wall or upstarting tree, she no longer winced or closed her eyes, but breathlessly waited the sudden liberating touch of the hand, which snatched them miraculously aside in the last fraction of time. She felt something that she had never felt before—an appetite and an intoxication in thus defrauding destruction; even her flesh responded with a tingling electric glow. All at once she perceived that he was trying her purposely—steering from right to left, seemingly bent on a plunging end, trying to draw a cry of fear. She laughed again disdainfully, and all at once the runaway came back into control, gliding into a smooth easy flight, slower and slower, until it came to a stop.

"By George! you have nerve!" he said, turning toward her.

"Go on! Go on!" she said feverishly.

He extended to her his hand, which was trembling.

"God! that's excitement that's worth while!" he said. "A fight every minute. Ugly old brute! Wouldn't it like to throw me just once?" He put on the brakes, drawing his sleeve across his forehead, which was wet with perspiration, taking a long breath. "Each century has its vice. By George, this is ours—speed! And it's got everything in it—gamble, danger, intoxication, all! Like it?"

"Yes!"

He remained silent a moment, as if struggling to clear his heavy head of befogging weights. Then he said slowly, a little thickly, curiosity growing:

"Why the devil did you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Risk your neck with a fool like me?"

"Oh, don't let's talk!" she said nervously. "Go on! Fast!"

"All right!"

They were off again, a wild liberating rush, and then a calmer motion, a gliding ease. She felt in him a different mood, a mood that sought an opportunity to put questions and weigh answers, and as she felt a desire to escape personalities, she said complainingly:

"But it's so slow—so tame! Let's go on running away!"

"This is different," he said, with a wave of his hand overhead at the myriad-eyed night. "You can't run away from this! The rest—houses, people, rotten brutality, useless things, yes; that's what I like to go plunging from—to get to this. I like the feeling—solitude. George! if you could only go steering your way out of all the old into something new!" He repeated the phrase moodily, as if to himself: "If one only could—if it were only possible!" Then he broke off abruptly, laughing to himself: "You're too young. You can't understand. Everything is new to you. By George, marry me and start for Australia, or Timbuctoo, to-morrow! What do you say?"

"Look out! I might accept!" she said, laughing, and yet understanding.

"Every one thinks I'm a wild ass," he said grimly. "Wish I could do something really wild—make over the world! Look here; are you going to answer my question?"

"What question?"

"Why in the name of the impossible are we here to-night?"

"I wonder?" she said, half to herself.

The reply seemed to satisfy him; he continued a moment, absorbed in their smooth progress. Insensibly she felt her mood yielding to his, no longer impatient, vaguely content, lulled into reverie, giving herself over to a new strange companionable inclination toward the man who had revealed himself, half boy, half savage, in his first unconscious longings.

To escape from the old? No, she did not yet understand that; but she did comprehend the all-pervading serenity of the night, warm still with the touch of Indian summer. The grating strident sounds of the day were gone; the whisper on the wind was soft as a lullaby—sharp angles and brutally straight lines lost in the feathery suffusion that lay on the fields. Ahead, the brave steadfast rays of their lamps pierced through sudden pools of darkness, that closed gently above them, and gave way again to clear visions of stars. Once or twice she saw across the enchanted blackness a distant trolley, unheard, rolling its ball of fire like the track of a shooting star. Again, the far-off leathery bark of a watch-dog complaining. But of man no sound. Only the mysterious shadows held a spirit of life; only a giant tree, silhouetted against the faint sky, seemed to move as they moved, racing with them past the vanishing road bushes. A rabbit, started from its security, horribly hypnotized by this chugging, fiery-eyed monster, scurried foolishly before them. Once a swerving bat zigzagged before her eyes like the cut of a black whirling blade. Even these were intruders, out of place in the old world, older than the pyramids, older than the first stirring of life—this waiting dominion of time, which reclaimed each night the futile centuries of men, secure of the hour when all must return in loyalty to its first silence. She looked at the stars, and the world beneath dwindled into nothingness, to the span of a hand before these twinking immensities. Which was real? This night, where only the infinite and the inevitable reigned, or the day, with its clamoring intrusion of confusing and needless voices?

She put her hand on his arm.

"It's so strange. It's so long since I remembered. I had forgot!"

She had forgot, indeed, that world which lay beyond men's world; but she remembered it now—the strange night, which formerly in the quiet of a child's room came gently, like a friendly stream, across her white counterpane, awaking troubled questionings, impossible, terrifying confrontations of the beyond and the hereafter. She had feared these strange whys and wherefores then; and now they laid upon her only a great peace—perhaps because she sought no answer.

She wanted to talk to him as one could talk in the hidden night, away from foolish conventions. What did it matter what they said or did here in this engulfing quiet? Why should human beings be constantly at war with one another, stopped by vanities? She had forgot her anguish, in an impulse toward the weakness in the man.

He stopped the car and turned toward her.

"What's wrong? What's the trouble?"

"Mine's nothing!" she said. "Let me talk about you."

But they did not at once begin—a little at a loss.

"How old are you?" she said at last.

"Twenty-eight ages!"

"Is it true, what they tell me?"

"That I'm riding hellbent to the devil? Correct!"

He did not say it with braggadocio, and yet it seemed incongruous, after the glimpse she had had of the man.

"Why?" she said, laying her two hands impulsively on his arm and with every instinct of her feminine nature sending him a message of sympathy.

"It's such a long story!" he said slowly. Then, with a last return of the Saxon's fear of sentimentality: "If I were sober I wouldn't tell you!"

"You're not—"

"Drunk? Yes! For ten days," he said—"in my way! There's nothing to fear; never gets the best of me! When it does—crack! It'll be over in a second!"

"But why?" she asked helplessly.

"Why not?" he said fiercely. "All I care about is a good fight, and, by George, it is a fight, a real sensation. You can't understand, but it's so! To have your temples beating like trip-hammers, to fight the mists out of your eyes—a great brute like this whipping back and forth, shaking you off. One slip, a hundredth of a second, and then to beat it all, to master it. God! it's gorgeous!"

Suddenly, with an attempt at evasion, he drew back.

"You know, I had a mind once. I reason things out now—I see straight! Do you know how I figure it out? This way! What earthly use am I in the world? What earthly use is a cuss who is given forty thousand a year, without earning it, and told to amuse himself? None! By George! Sometimes I believe dissipation is nature's way of getting rid of us! And she's right, too; the sooner it's over, the more chance for some one real to come along!"

"Are you serious?"

He drew his hand across his forehead, pinching his temples.

"Curiously enough, I am! I'm quite hopeless, and I don't care in the least! So don't let's waste time!"

He started to crank the machine; but she stopped him.

"There was a woman?" she said.

"Yes, but not in the first place." He turned to her, puzzled. "Why do you want to make me talk?"

"I don't know; I do!"

"What's your name?"

She hesitated.

"Dodo."

"I like that!" he said reflectively. "So you are really interested? And you don't know our story? Lord! That's funny! I thought every one knew the story of the Lindaberry boys! We certainly raised enough Cain! Do you know, I really was a damned nice sort of kid—men adored me!" He drew in his breath reflectively, conjuring up, with a tolerant smile, a picture out of forgotten days. "Yes, a real decent cuss who'd have done something if he'd had half a chance! There's only one thing I love in this world—a fight; and they took it all away from me!

"Do you know, the finest days, the ripping ones, were those back in the old school, when I used to be carried off the field on the shoulders of a mob. That was something real! I loved it! We used to sing about shedding our blood, and all that funny rot, for the glory of the red and black—and I believed it, too. Lord bless that queer cuss. Good days! I used to play the game like a raging little devil, ready to fling my life away! The Lindaberry boys—they haven't forgot us yet! It was so at college, only not quite the same. But at school, four hundred fellows, and to be king! Ambition? I was chock-full of it then. But they took it away from me! That's what knocked me out! And who did it? The one who loved us best—the governor!

"Out of college, forty thousand a year, and told to have a good time! Put that down for my epitaph! The dad, poor old fellow, didn't know any better! He'd worked like a pirate; said he'd never been young; wanted us to live! Forty thousand a year each, and let her go! I remember the day we started, with a whoop! Wonder is, we lasted a year! Tom, the young one, didn't!"

"Dead?"

"To the world, yes; asylum. Killed the governor. He tried to stop us, but it was too late! Now the race is between Jock and me. My lord, if they'd only packed us off—started us in a construction gang, anywhere, temperature a hundred in the shade—might have owned a state to-day! Remember what I said about the feeling you get out here alone—the awaking into something new? If Jock would go, I'd cut to-morrow—ship before the mast, and God take the rudder! He won't. But, by jove, to get into a new life, a new chance! You'll understand—or, no. I hope you never will!"

She could see but a faint blurred mass at her side. Under the goblin shadows of autumn trees, a brook sunk in the field told its hidden story to piping crickets and rovers of the night. She felt in her a great need of compassion, a yearning emptiness in her arms, a desire to lay her comforting touch across his eyes, as once she had put into slumberland the tear-stained cheeks of Snyder's little child. No other sentiment came to mingle with this pure stream of maternal longing; but all about her and all within her so impelled her to follow the instinct of the ages that she drew back with a sigh.

"Here! Don't do that for me!" he said, straightening up ashamed.

She could not tell him what in her had called forth that sigh, so she said hurriedly:

"No, no. Then, of course, there was a woman?"

"Yes, of course!" he assented. He opened his match-case, lighted a cigarette and then flung it away nervously. "Lord, but I was a child in those days. I believed implicitly! Women? A religion to me. I was ready to fall down and worship! We were engaged—secret until I had got hold of myself. Easy? It was child's play! I could have won out in three months. Then, quite by accident, I found she was playing the same game with my best friend—how many others, God knows! Great God! talk about smashing idols for poor old heathen Chinese! Whew—there was nothing left! I didn't even see her. Went off, crazy as a loon. A wild letter, and good-by for a year. Bang around the world to get the poison out of my system. Little good it did, too!" He stopped, considered a moment, and added: "Now that I look back, I think she did care for me—as much as she could in her polygamous little soul—else she wouldn't have done what she did! When I got back—fool that I was—I found her Mrs. Jock Lindaberry, and the devil in the saddle!"

"What! your own brother?" she said incredulously. "How did she dare?"

"You don't know the lady!" he said, with a laugh. "There's nothing in this world she's afraid of. And—God, how she can hate! Fine revenge, eh?"

"But you didn't tell—"

"Jock? No! What's the use? We never talk much—and he knows! Then, there's a child, a boy—a Lindaberry; and that holds him. She was clever enough for that!"

"You see her?"

"Never have entered the house!"

"You were very much in love?" she asked.

"At twenty-three? Mad, crazy in love! Ready to take any man by the throat who dared insinuate a word!"

"Aren't you over it yet?"

"I? Yes and no. It was Kismet! If I'd been lucky enough, even then, to have found a woman who cared, whom I could worship—who knows? Well! the other thing happened! Kismet!"

"But there are lots of women—"

"Yes, of course! But I—I've never trusted since."

"You are really a great coward, Mr. Lindaberry!"

She said it impulsively—yet, once said, resolved to stand by her guns, feeling now threefold the anger and irritation he had awakened in her at their first meeting.

He shifted in his seat, amazed.

"You give up at your first defeat—let a woman who isn't worth a candle wreck your life!"

"By Jove!"

"Pride? You talk of pride and courage! You haven't a drop of either," she continued hotly. "So you'll give her just what she wants, the satisfaction of seeing how you cared! Yes, what a delicious revenge you give her! I'm a woman—I know! She hates you, and she sits back smiling, waiting for the end, saying to herself: 'I did it!' No; I have no patience with such weakness! You are nothing but a great coward!"

She stopped, surprised at a sob that arose, unbidden, in her throat. He gazed ahead, without answering, a long while, his fingers playing on the wheel.

"That's rather rough!" he said at last.

"You deserve every bit of it!"

"To call me a coward?" he said, with an uneasy laugh.

"A great coward! Oh, courage! Easy enough, when you know you've physical strength, to go smashing into a weaker man—or a dozen! That's so obvious, so easy. But when something difficult comes up—"

He swore impatiently to himself.

"Yes, something difficult. When the odds are all against you, you give up—do just what a cold-blooded little vixen wants of you. Why? Because you have no pride!" she cried heatedly. "Don't talk to me of courage! I have a thousand times more than you, to come to-night!"

"By jove! You're right!" he said, folding his arms. "Hold up, now; that's enough. You've reached me. Don't say any more!"

She began to feel sorry for the way she had attacked him, feeling his utter loneliness. Finally he ceased humming to himself, and turned.

"You're an honest, brave little thing—a child!" he said slowly. "I don't know you at all. Who are you? What are you? I've only met you at a couple of rowdy parties, and yet you talk this way! Are you straight?"

"Mr. Lindaberry!"

"I mean no offense—I wouldn't care. You're genuine, that's the thing! I'm your friend, proud to be! Tell me about yourself!"

She saw that social judgments meant nothing to him; in fact, she was rather touched by the thought that, even if she had not been what he called "straight," he would have given her a loyal respect.

"Me?" she said dreamily. "I don't know what to tell you! I come from nothing—a little town way out in Ohio. Never had a home—sort of turned over to an aunt and uncle. I've shifted for myself, but I've never lost my nerve. I was bound to get into a bigger life, to do something—if only to be free, to live! I've done a lot of foolish things, I suppose, because I'm a little crazy myself—can't resist excitement!"

"You shouldn't have gone to that party at Sassoon's," he said. "You are too innocent to understand what it meant!"

"I'm not living in a sheltered house!" she protested. "I'm hurting no one. I face the world by myself, stand on my own feet, and I can take care of myself. I'm not ignorant!"

"Yes, you are. You can't know. You think you can, but you can't know! No girl can, until—until she's caught!" He looked at her steadily. "You know, at bottom you are a child. That's the danger! What the devil sent you out here to-night?"

"A good angel, perhaps," she said evasively.

He laughed obstinately, but with less resistance.

"No, that isn't it!" she said impulsively. "I am in a reckless mood myself. I am hurt—oh, so hurt! Disappointed in a man. You see, we are comrades, in a way!"

"Good God! Who could have hurt you!" he said roughly.

"It was all a mistake; it wasn't meant, perhaps, but that doesn't help much!"

He reached out his hand and laid it comfortingly over her shoulder, surprising her with the tenderness in his touch and in his voice.

"Sorry! I know. Queer, isn't it? We are sort of in the same boat! Queer world! Who'd have thought we'd ended up this way? Funny! You start up some of the old thoughts in me. I could have done something once, if I'd only had to! But I belong to a cursed second generation. We Americans weren't meant to be loafers!"

"Why are you, then?" she said impulsively. "Listen! I was hard on you when I went for you a moment ago! Mr. Lindaberry, we are in the same boat. Let me help you—see what I can do! No, wait! I'm speaking what I feel! I've been cruel myself, very cruel—"

"Don't believe it!"

"Yes, yes, I have; I've made others suffer!"

"Then it was their fault!" he said obstinately.

"It would mean, just now, a lot to me to count for something," she rushed on. "I can't tell you all the reasons—I don't know all—but I believe what I feel here to-night is the best in me. There is something in all this; I know there's some reason, back of it all, why we have been sent here. Oh, Mr. Lindaberry, do let me help!"

"Save me?" he asked, with an ugly laugh.

"Yes, save you!"

A long silence, in which she watched him breathlessly, hoping for an answer.

"Fight it out!" she insisted.

He turned suddenly, wondering if she knew how felicitous had been her appeal.

"Why, Dodo, I'm pretty far gone!" he said sadly.

"Coward!"

"No, by God!" he said fiercely.

"Let me see you fight, then!"

"What for?"

"For your own self-respect! See here, Mr. Lindaberry, fight it out for the love of a good fight, and let me be in it. Let me help!"

"You mean it?" he said slowly; then he nodded toward all that surrounded them. "This, you know, gets us—sentimental!"

"No; I want it!"

He laughed in his characteristic way as he did when he sought more reflection.

"The bets at the club are two to one against my lasting the year, Dodo!"

"Then take up the bet!"

"Why, that's an idea!" he said, with a chuckle.

He considered more profoundly, his arm still on her shoulder; but there was in it no acquiring touch, only a clinging—the clinging of a weak hand groping for companionship.

"I suppose I'm a lonely cuss at bottom," he said slowly, nor did she follow his thought.

"Anything I can do I'll do," she urged. "It'll be my fight too! Come to me, call me night or day, when you need me—when things are getting too much for you! I'll come any time!"

"You can't!"

"I can!" she cried defiantly. "What do I care what is said, if I know and you know that all is right! Thank God, I'm alone! I have no one to whom it matters what the world says. I'm only a waif, a drifter!"

"Drifters both!" he said solemnly.

She stopped a moment, struck by the idea, feeling their mutual clinging, and the incomprehensible, unseen winds of the night sweeping about them and carrying them—whither?

"Listen!" she added hurriedly. "This is my promise. Fight it out, and I will help you by everything that's in me! No matter whom I'm with or where I'm going, I'll turn over everything, when you need me, and come!"

"Even nights like this?" he said. "For that's when it'll be the hardest!"

"Especially nights like this!" she cried, opening her arms with a feeling of glorification.

"Tell me something," he said slowly; "and be honest with me!"

"I swear I always will," she said impulsively from her heart, devoutly believing it.

"Are you in love now?"

"Yes!"

"Are you sure?"

His arm, as if suddenly aware of her body, removed itself. He bent toward her, striving to see her face.

An instant before, she had sworn to herself, swiftly, in the exultation of a new-born spiritual self, that to this man, at least, she would never lie; and all at once, by the divining charity of her woman's soul, bent on saving him, she began her first deception!

"No; I am not—sure!"

She had a quick fear that he would spoil everything by an overt movement, and shrank from him, conscious of the male and of her sex. But at the end he rose quietly, saying:

"All right, Dodo. The fight's begun!"

If there were a double meaning in his words, he gave no sign of it. He went to the front and cranked the car, then drew the rug about her with solicitous deference, that had in it a new attitude. He did not even offer his hand to seal the compact, and for that, too, she was profoundly thankful, watching him with slanted approving glances.

"Whatever he does he will do magnificently!" she thought.

"Comfy?" he asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Yes!"

They shot out into the white road. He did not ask her wish, but, as if sure of her acquiescence, went flying into the country, at times with magnificent ease, at others with wild bursts of speed, break-a-neck, the monster obeying the fierce exultant moods of the master. She lay back in the seat, her eyes on the jagged tree-line, where broken shadows spun past her, and the stars swam overhead. She felt his mood in every glide, in every resentful bound, knowing what was in his spirit, uplifted into a new manifestation, resolved, whatever happened, that to this one, at least, she would give the divine that was in her.

It was three o'clock by the paling of the dawn in the east, and the slinking scavengers in the streets, when they returned.

She fell almost instantly to sleep, for the first time in long weeks. And as she tucked her hand under her cheek contentedly, in perfect peace, she had a satisfied feeling that God, her inscrutable friend, had not been so angry with her as she had believed; that in the moment of her failing He had shown her this way out. She did not question her feelings toward this new man. Pity? Yes, a great compassion, a tenderness and a sure belief in his protection, all were confusedly in her mind; but above all a great fatigue, and a wonder how the night would remain in the beating clarity of the day.

CHAPTER XVIII

Her first waking thought was not of Lindaberry, but of Massingale. It seemed as if he were beside her, his restraining touch on her arm, trouble in his eyes, as on the night before when he had pleaded with her under the hissing arc-lights and the background of curious creatures of the dark. Instead, it was Ida Summers, curled on the bed, who was tickling her arm with a feather, crying:

"Wake up, lazy-bones!"

Doré comprehended, even in her foggy state, that if such a reproach could come from Ida Summers, it must be very late indeed! She shot a hasty glance at the tower clock; it was nearing twelve.

"Any broken bones? What happened? You're a nice one! Why didn't you come back? Don't lecture me any more!" continued Ida, in rapid fire, and emphasizing her remarks by pinching the toes under the covers. "Poor Harry Benson! pining away, one eye on the door and one on the clock! Which reminds me—he's coming for lunch."

Harry Benson had been the youngest and most susceptible of Doré's abandoned escorts.

"Oh, is that his name?"

"Heartless creature!" continued Ida, rolling her eyes. "Three automobiles, shover, father a patent-medicine king. I might have married him, Do, if you hadn't popped up! However, this is my business day; I forgot. How'm I going to get hold of Zip?"

"So that's the game?" said Doré, laughing for reasons that will appear. "Be careful how you do it, though; Mr. Benson strikes me as a very rapid advancer!"

"Yes, Miss Pussy," exclaimed Ida, laughing; "you give very good advice—in the morning. However, I just must have a fur muff I saw yesterday, and that's all there is to it! Also, my room's too small for visitors, so get up and dress, as I'm going to receive him here. What's Zip's telephone?"

"You'll find it on the pad," said Doré, rising precipitately.

"Good, the bait's planted," said Ida, presently reappearing. "I told Zip to be most oxpensive; Benson's a fierce spender!"

"How do you know?"

"A girl friend of mine," said Ida evasively.

"What's become of that little fellow you annexed at the Free Press?"

"Tony Rex? Bothers the life out of me. Got it bad! Sighs and poetry. Jealous as a Turk! Doesn't want me to pose—wants to shut me up in a convent. Lord! I don't know how to shake him!"

"I thought him rather insignificant," said Doré, at the dressing-table.

"Nothing of the sort!" said Ida vigorously. "Every one says he's a coming man—ideas, humor, massive brain, you know, and all that sort of thing. Only—only, he gets in the way all the time—trip over him. Well, are you going to give an account of yourself last night? Say, what a shame it is some squillionaire doesn't endow us! It's such a nuisance getting your clothes!" As she forgot a question as soon as she asked it, she was off on a digression. "I say, Dodo, it's a marvel how some girls do manage! You remember Adèle Vickers, who's in light opera?"

"Chorus," corrected Doré.

"Same thing for the Johnnies—only more so! Say, you'll die when you hear this! I was up in her hotel, calling, a couple of nights ago, just before dinner, when one of them married T-Willys blows in, with a how-can-you-resist-me-little-girl look. You know him—Penniston Schwartz, money-bags in something, death on manicures. Are you listening?"

"Go on...."

"Del had no dinner in sight, so she winked at me to stick close, and waited for a bid, one eye on the clock. The old beau—he oils his mustache and looks at you with buttery eyes—kept telling us we were breaking up his happy home with our resplendent beauty, and a lot of fluff that was quite beyond the point, for Del was fidgeting, getting ready to assist, when the hope of the evening says:

"'Awful sorry I can't take you little rosebuds out to dinner,—family, the dear family, you know,—but call up a waiter and let me order.'

"Order? You should have seen what Del concocted! There wasn't a dollar-mark got by her! It must have footed twenty plunks, at the least! 'Course she thought he'd pay at the desk—naturally! That was the awful slip! No sooner had the waiter disappeared than he takes a fifty-dollar bill from his purse, flips it on the table, and says, with a wink:

"'The change's for the waiter—of course!'

"I thought I'd die choking, watching Adèle, staring from the bill to the clock, aching for him to go, but quiet as a mouse—oh, perfect manner, crocheting away at a dinky tie until I thought the needles would fly in pieces! When the family man got up to go, say! you should see her bounce him out of the door and leap to the telephone, crying:

"'Make that a veal chop and mashed!'"

"Too late?" said Doré, laughing.

"Well, we lost as far as the first entrée; but, as Del said, the next time such a thing occurs, there'll be a wise waiter on the other end of the line! Where's Snyder?"

"They opened in Atlantic City last week; expect to return Monday."

"They say she's got a big hit! Glad of it!"

"So what's-his-name—your cartoonist—doesn't approve?" said Doré, smiling.

"He's a perfect pest. Furious at Vaughan Chandler and that crowd. Lectures me from morning to night—heavens!"

"What's wrong?"

"He's coming around for me at one. He'll be wild if he sees Benson! Lord! Dodo, what shall I do?"

"Leave word you're out with Josephus!"

"That won't stop him!" said Ida scornfully. "He's liable to go to sleep on the door-step!"

"Leave him to me, then," said Dodo, with the facility of long practise. "I'll receive him while you two vamose."

"I say, Do," said Ida, with sudden gratitude, "I owe you a pointer." She went on tiptoe to the door of Winona's room, listened a moment, and returning stealthily, held up crossed fingers. "Don't trust her!"

"What do you mean?"

"Trespassing—examine your fences—all I can say!" exclaimed Ida, who fled laughing, not to be cross-questioned.

Half an hour later there was being played one of those little scenes so familiar in Salamanderland, the secret of which may bring enlightenment to several fatuous self-made young men of the world. Mr. Harry Benson, a young gentleman of great future intelligence, now extremely avid of all the mysteries of a puzzling strata of the feminine world, was strutting contentedly in the presence of Miss Ida Summers and Miss Doré Baxter, the actress, friend of such howling swells as Judge Massingale and Garret Lindaberry. The two girls, with a perfect sense of values, were listening with accented indifference to his flow of self-exposition, which consisted in a narration of how many bottles he had consumed two nights before, how much money he had won at bridge, what he had paid for his socks, his cravats and the silk shirts which bore his initials, when there came a slight deferential scraping at the door, and at a quick summons, the figure of a diminutive Jewish pedler appeared, doubled under a pack, bowing convulsively, wreathed in smiles. He had been christened "Zip," a contraction of some unpronounceable name, and his motto was: "Zip buys or sells anythings!" He was a general intermediary for the Salamanders, disposing of every conceivable article when money had to be raised; and as he enjoyed this confidential intimacy with lively and pretty girls, he contented himself, good-humoredly, with no more than two hundred per cent. profit.

"Oh, dear me, Zip," cried Ida instantly. "It's no use—come around some other day!"

"Brought der shtockings," said Zip, in an untranslatable accent.

"No money—I'm broke to-day! Next week."

"I trust you!" said the pedler, advancing benignly, perfect comedian that he was, by a hundred such performances.

"No, no!" said Ida firmly. "That's not my way! No bills; cash only!"

Mr. Harry Benson, who had been on the point of indiscreetly offering a loan, bit his tongue, thoroughly convinced by her manner.

"Oh, now, Mees Sumpers, beezness is beezness—ain't it right? I trust you!" said Zip, turning to one and the other with a look of the greatest dejection.

"Next week—next week."

Zip, during this preliminary canter, had slipped his pack to the ground and was uncovering the tarpaulin.

"Bretty laties must have bretty tings; vot? All silk! Barkain! De most vonderful lincherie—feren frend shmuggles it through de coostom house. Sh'h dot's a secret! Look at dot hein?"

"No, no; don't want to see a thing. Don't tempt me!"

"Mees Baxter?"

"Impossible," said Doré, laughing. "Bad month! I'm saving up for Christmas presents!"

"Vell, it don't cost nottings to look, eh?" said Zip, suddenly bringing to light a mass of pink and white feminine lingerie. "Eef it don't embarrass de shentlemans?"

"Come on! Let's have a look at them!" said Harry Benson, gorgeously excited at the idea of this devilish pastime.

The two girls continued to protest, averting their eyes, while the prop, alternately eager and hesitating, afraid that too abrupt an offer would offend their sensibilities, continued to run through the bewildering array of secret silks and laces. Perhaps he was decided finally by an encouraging wink from Zip, who thus telegraphed to him that, being his friend, he advised him to dare. Anyhow, very red and confused, he blurted out:

"Look here, girls, don't be furious at me! Give me this pleasure, won't you? I've won an awful lot at bridge lately. Let me make a little present! By jove, Ida, your birthday's next week. Let me beat all the crowd to it. Vaughan'll be furious! What a lark! And you, Miss Baxter, do have a birthday too, won't you?"

She laughed.

"Mine's just passed."

"Passed? Then I come in late. Bully for you! It's a go, isn't it? You're the right sort! I can't tell you how I appreciate it!"

"I don't think I ought to," said Ida, looking doubtfully at Doré.

"It is unusual, but I think Mr. Benson won't make any mistakes," said Doré, beaming on him with a smile of confidence.

Benson shook her hand gratefully.

Zip rubbed his hands together in delight, wagging his bearded head.

"Goot, goot! Make de bretty kirls habby, eh? Vat apout it, hein? Trow in de shtockinks, eh?"

The two girls exclaimed furiously. Benson, laughing and roguish, defended the pedler from their wrath, protesting he was loaded with money, crazy to get rid of it, carrying his point in the end. Zip, recipient of a hundred-dollar bill, departed, grinning and wagging; nor did Mr. Benson, in the joyous delight of this newly permitted intimacy, for a moment suspect that the silks and laces which now lay so provokingly on the table would presently return to the pack of the histrionic Zip, at forty per cent. off for commission.

For the accuracy of historic customs, another detail must be added. When silk stockings were purchased, the color chosen was invariably pink, one pair of that color being in the cooperative possession, always at hand, to be borrowed hastily and worn for a convincing effect on the last purchaser.

Ten minutes later Josephus produced a card which Ida, on receiving, said:

"How stupid, Josephus! That's for Miss Baxter. Come on, Harry. Dodo's most particular and secretive—we won't embarrass her, will we?" She opened the door of Winona's room, lingering a moment behind the laughing prop to whisper: "Tell Tony to telephone this evening. Say I've called up from a studio—had to finish rush job—awful sorry! Be particular!"

She disappeared, locking the door for security's sake.

The next moment Mr. Tony Rex entered, in evident agitation and surprise—Ida and Harry Benson slipping down-stairs by the second stairway as Doré was saying glibly:

"Oh, Mr. Rex, Miss Summers has just telephoned! She wants me to tell you—"

But she proceeded no further. Mr. Tony Rex was watching her with a sarcastic smile.

"Come off! Don't hand me any useless fibs, Miss Baxter! Ida's here; I took the precaution to find out! What's her little game to-day?" Suddenly, as if struck by an idea, he moved to the window. Below, Ida Summers was just springing to her seat in the big yellow automobile.

Doré had no time to prevent him; in fact, she had momentarily lost her wits. One thing had startled her on his arrival—his shoes: patent leather with yellow tops—not chamois, but close enough to recall the dreadful wraith of Josh Nebbins.

"So she's chucked me for a stuffed image like Benson?" he said grimly. "Oh, I know the owner; I asked the chauffeur!"

"What a terrible man!" she thought. Even in that he recalled that other persistent suitor! Aloud she said hastily, as he took up his hat:

"What are you going to do?"

He affected to misunderstand the question.

"Look here, Miss Baxter," he said abruptly, "I'm dead serious in this! I'm going to marry that little kid, and it's going to happen soon! Likewise, I'm a wise one, and I know just the game she's playing—and the dangers! Some of you can keep your heads—maybe you can and maybe you can't! She's nothing but a babe—she doesn't know! That's why I'm going to stop this fooling, P. D. Q.!"

"Look out! You can't drive a girl into things!" said Doré.

"Oh, yes, I can! Watch me!" he said confidently. "Now, I'm going to find where they're lunching, buy up the table next, and see how jolly a little party Miss Ida'll have out of it, with me for an audience! Lesson number one!"

He was off in a rush before she could recover from her laughter. Left at last alone, she sought to return into herself, to adjust the Dodo of the day to the surprising self of the night before. It even struck her as incongruous that, after the depths she had sounded in the silence and loneliness of the world, she should now be forced to return to the superficiality of banter and petty intrigue. Lindaberry—she thought of him as of a great wounded animal lifting up to her a thorn-stricken paw. He would come for her in a few minutes, according to agreement, and she half feared the encounter. Would it be disillusionment? Would all that had so enveloped her with the mystery and charity of human relations now dissipate thinly in the commonplace day? Had they been swayed simply by a passing sentimentality, as he himself had feared? She did not know quite what she hoped. She did not feel the slightest sentimental inclination. She did not even attempt to dramatize herself as the good angel. She had only an immense curiosity as to herself, wondering if she had really discovered something new, if in fact it were possible for the same Doré, who selfishly, in will-o'-the-wisp fashion, enticed men on to mock their discomfiture, could open up a flood of womanly strength to one who came to her in weakness.

To return into the exaltation of the night was impossible. After all, the day was perhaps more real than the moods of dreams. She looked on the experience in a comfortable, satisfied way, always incredulous of her deeper moods, inclined to shun them with a defensive instinct that life was safer when lived on the surface.

But the night which had awakened so many dormant yearnings had brought back to her again the famine in her own soul. Lindaberry was yet confused, Massingale clear and insistent. She had arrived, at last, in her tortuous feminine logic, to the point where, in her longing, she was willing to ask herself if there were any excuse for what he had done. Once she sought to excuse him, she found small difficulty. He had been very much of a gentleman. She had led him on, tried him beyond what was right; and, even after the explosion, he had recovered himself, tried to leave in order to protect her. There had been a moment of weakness; but she had wished for that—yes, even compelled it. And then, he cared! Yes, that was the great thought that emerged from the confusion of the night: he cared! She knew it by the wound she had drawn across his eyes, by the tone of his voice when he had pleaded with her at the last. He cared, and he suffered as she suffered, fought as she fought, to remain away! But he was married—he belonged to another woman!

Marriage was to her an uncomprehended world, an impasse: a man disappeared into it as into a monastery. When she had thought of marriage, it was always as the end of life, irrevocable, and she admitted it only when some one came so strong and bewildering that nothing else mattered. She never had thought of it as an experiment, nor as something that could be rejected if found lacking. That man and woman, if unsuited, could still be yoked together before the world, living each a separate life in private, was yet outside of her analysis of human experience. There was the world of pleasure, and that world of duty—marriage.

Curiously enough, Lindaberry's story of his own deception, and the marriage of his brother—the glimpse he had given her behind the scenes of Mrs. Jock—had started new questionings. Who could blame such a husband for what he did? From which thought she proceeded to Massingale. He did not love his wife—of that she was sure. What was the arrangement, then? Perhaps he too concealed his cares, suffering in silence. Even the figures of the two men disappeared before this new obsession. She sought to create before herself the image of a wife—of his wife; for at Tenafly's she had not, in her agitation, even turned to look. Sometimes, with a feeling of guilt, she perceived a weak creature, gentle and shrinking, all tears, before whom, at the thought of inflicting pain, she retreated instinctively. At others, she saw a woman in the imagined guise of Mrs. Jock, vulture-like, scornful, icy, narrowed by worldly cravings, a pretty brute. Then she had a feeling as if she were flinging herself between the two, husband and wife, shielding the man from the woman.

"I must see her!" she said to herself passionately. She thought of Estelle Monks. She would find some way where, unknown, she would be able to look upon the face of Mrs. Massingale. And, not realizing all the wilderness that was yawning before her, she repeated: "Oh, yes! I must see her. I shan't have a moment's peace until I do!"

As if any peace were in store for her—no matter what she found!

When Lindaberry came to take her for lunch at a quiet country inn somewhere up the Hudson, she went to him without reserve, surprised at the strength of the impulses of tenderness, solicitude and protection that awoke within her. She had not yet named to herself the danger of the first overt step back to Massingale; perhaps, though, she intuitively felt the set of the tide about her, and turned to this better side of her nature. If what she might soon do lay beyond the permitted, at least this man, this saving of a soul, should be to her credit. Her religion was, indeed, of the simplest. If God would not approve of her yielding to the yearning to see Massingale again,—or what followed,—at least he would notice all the good she would pour into the life of Lindaberry. It was a sort of bargain which she secretly planned to offer: Lindaberry should buy her forgiveness! She felt glorified by this thought, finding in herself depths of gentle strength and maternal comforting which amazed her.

"Are we still dreaming, Dodo?" he said to her suddenly, when they were free of the city's clamor.

She smiled appreciatively.

"It's not a dream; it's real!" she said energetically.

"You've taken up a pretty big contract, young lady!"

"And you?"

He thought a moment.

"And I. Five years ago it would have been like a kitten toying with a ball. Now it's a question of the will—and the body! That's what we've got to find out. The body's a curious thing, Dodo, and it has curious ways of going back on you all at once, without as much as saying 'by your leave.' There was a chap in at Doctor Lampson's this morning—chap I knew in college, strong as a Hercules, a body just glowing with strength. He'll be dead within the year—galloping consumption!"

"You went to a doctor?"

"The finest. Wanted to get down to facts, Dodo; find out what's going on inside."

"What did he say?" she asked breathlessly.

"He said it could be done!" said Lindaberry in a matter-of-fact way. "We talked over ways. But first, I thought I'd give you another chance."

"What do you mean?"

"Last night, out there—stars and all that—wasn't a fair start! How do you feel now with a practical old sun winking down at you?" he asked, with a quizzical smile that did not conceal the intensity of his suspended waiting.

"Oh, Mr. Lindaberry!" she said impulsively. "Do it for your own self! Be strong!"

"No," he said quietly; "I won't do it for myself. I'll make the fight for you—to please you, Dodo! You've got hold of me as no one ever has. And then you're not afraid, bless your childish eyes! Well, am I to do it for you?"

She was quiet a moment, thrown out of all her mental calculations by the swift electric appeal to her emotional self that came with his blunt declaration. Men had loved her sooner or later, mildly or with infatuation; but she had never before felt so deeply what she and a divine hazard could mean in one life. Her eyes filled with sudden tears.

"Do it for me!" she said gently, and the next moment her heart smote her as if she had been guilty of a second lie.

"Now is a good date—rather close to Thanksgiving," he said, in his chuckling Anglo-Saxon way. Then he laid one hand on her arm and said solemnly: "Wrecks oughtn't to get sentimental. I won't! But remember this, Dodo: you're the first breath of real life that's come to me. You've got hold of me—strong! I'm going to win out for you—and I'm going—" He halted as abruptly as he had begun. "Now, that's all till I get straightened out. If I don't, forget it!"

"But you will!" she exclaimed, forgetting all her resolves to enlighten him on the subject of her affections.

"There'll be some bad bumps," he said grimly. "I've got into this night habit pretty deep—insomnia, and then anything to eat up the night. Lampson's got some new system to try out on me. Later, perhaps, I'll beat it for the woods; but just at present, a few weeks, I guess you can do me more good than anything else!"

"Can I?" she said gratefully.

"Yes. Time for lunch now. Are you starved?" he said evasively. "I'll talk over things and ways later."

As they came back, he went into detail about the fight ahead. Much that he said was technical, and she did not comprehend all. Only that his body had been fed too long on the consuming alcohol to be too suddenly deprived.

"Which means," he added, with a smile, "that you mustn't get discouraged if I break over the traces once or twice."

"Send for me!"

"Perhaps," he said doubtfully. "If I do, you need never be afraid, Dodo, no matter how much others are. I would always do what you ask!"

"I could never be afraid of you!" she answered truthfully.

The impulse that brought her closer to him was so strong that, though she said to herself that there was nothing of the sentimental in it, it seemed to her that it might be something nobler, more unselfish, more satisfying than that which she had conceived of as love between woman and man. She even went so far as to wish to herself that it might have been different, that she could have given him all without a lie, that she could have gone bravely, casting the die, into life with Lindaberry. If only she had not known Massingale! To give, to be loved, was one thing, if she had not known the blinding intoxication of being taken, of loving!

Three days later, after a half confidence to Estelle Monks, she went with her to a society bazaar where Mrs. Massingale was in charge of a booth. It was in one of the ballrooms of a new hotel, more overlaid with gilt and ornaments than the rest, specially and artfully advertised as quite the most expensive in the city. As a consequence, the rooms were packed with a struggling gazing crowd, swirling about the counters where the social patronesses looked on with the disdain of lap-dogs of high degree.

"This one—lady in baby pink, sharp face," said Estelle Monks.

In that brief terrifying instant, before she was able to raise her eyes, Dodo was shaken from head to foot. Never before had so much penetrating despair crowded upon her in such a fraction of time!

She was at a counter of fragrant hand-bags, staring up into the face of a bored, hostile, sharp-eyed woman, struggling for youth and attention—a brown little wanderer from nowhere confronting a great lady.

"What can I sell you?" said Mrs. Massingale with an instantaneous social smile.

She found herself answering, breathlessly:

"No—nothing!"

The smile faded. The lady turned indifferently. It was close, she had been on her feet almost two hours, she was pardonably annoyed at this staring girl—and she showed it.

Suddenly, her face lit up, the surface smile on duty again. A group of men advanced effusively, taking her hand delicately, like a fragile ornament. She turned, and perceiving Dodo leaning vacantly, said:

"Excuse me!"

Without too much insistence she extended her fingers and moved her from the path of possible purchasers.

Dodo went, hurt, crushed and revolting. There had been nothing which the other had not had a right to do, yet in those seconds she had experienced the deepest humiliation a woman can receive from another, the disdain of caste.

She had come penitent and full of compassion. She went in a dangerous mood; this woman, perfectly correct, perfectly emotionless, perfectly cold and brilliant, might be Mrs. Massingale; she could never be his wife!

"No, that is not a marriage!" she said indignantly to herself.

The thing she dreaded, and hoped for, had come to pass. She forgave him, and she understood!

Yet she hesitated day after day, until ten had passed in a whirl, alternately resolved, alternately recoiling. She had no defined morality. She was one of a thousand young girls of to-day, adrift, neither good nor bad, quite unmoral—the good and the bad equally responsive and the ultimate victory waiting on the first great influence from without, which would master her. She had no home; she was alone, a social mongrel. She could only hurt herself. What her parents had left her was only a heritage of lawlessness. Yet she hesitated, frightened by some fear conjured up from an unconscious self, like thin remembered notes of village bells, across the tumult of worldly clamors. At last, when she could see before her no other face, when the sound of his voice was mingled with every sound that came to her ear, when nothing else diverted her a moment from the insistent drumming ache of the present, she yielded. She went in the afternoon, just before four, to the court in Jefferson Market where she knew he was, pushing her way through the miserable, the venal, the vermin of all nations, clustered and ill smelling.

He saw her instantly as she came into the aisle.

CHAPTER XIX

Doré had not been mistaken in her swift perception on entering the court room, heavy with weakness and discouragement. Judge Massingale saw her with a feeling of profound relief. Whatever came now, the responsibility lay on her head, not on his. Just how completely one memory had filled his days he did not realize until he experienced a sudden excited calm at the thought that she was there by his side, and that the long weeks of struggle had been in vain.

For, he, too, had struggled against every instinct in him, warned by his clear and analytical brain that his hands were on the curtains of a perilous and forbidden adventure. At first he had been immensely surprised that in his forty-second year it should suddenly flash across him, from the depths of eyes of cloudy blue, that he was as human as his brother. The memory of the soft white arms against his cheek, the ecstasy of the girl who, in a twinkling, had surrendered to his domination, withholding nothing, eager and unafraid, enveloped in the blinding halo of complete renunciation and faith, her look when her eyes sought his, her lips, the sound of her voice, the naturalness of it all, the human directness, all returned again and again to demolish and scatter the careful intellectual theory of conduct which he had raised for his defense in life.

At the time when Judge Massingale, by a trick of fate, had blundered upon the acquaintance of Doré Baxter, he had arrived at that satisfactory station in life when he could look upon himself as a perfectly disciplined being. He had passed through a period of embittered emotional revolt which had threatened to carry him publicly into the divorce courts, and through a deeper period of moral revolt which came near sacrificing him on the altar of the social reformer. Now he had come to an attitude of tolerant and amused contemplation of things as they are, without fretting his spirit as to things as they should be.

His marriage had been a purely conventional one, contracted in the weak and vulnerable period of the early twenties at the instigation of his mother, who had become suddenly alarmed at a college infatuation for the daughter of one of his professors. Within a year the thoroughly unsuited couple had come to an amicable understanding of the duties involved in their covenant before the church.

Mrs. Massingale was incapable of an original mental operation, but she was clever enough to combine the opinions of those who seemed to know. She thoroughly disapproved of her husband's soiling political ventures, as beneath the dignity of a gentleman. Each week she devoted one afternoon and one evening to the encouragement of the arts; the rest was given over to the punctilious performance of the proper social duties to those whom she disliked and who disliked her. Absolutely cold and absolutely prudish, she had not hesitated, in that hazardous period of maidenhood, to effect the successful capture of such a matrimonial prize by subtle appeals to his senses; but as though bitterly resenting the means to which an unjust society reduces a modest woman to secure her future, she revenged herself on her amazed husband by a sort of vindictive antagonism.

He had fiercely combated this marriage, vowing he would marry the love of his college days, if he had to carry her off in the good old way. But his mother, being quite determined and unprincipled, paid the girl a visit, and contrived to make the interview so completely insulting that the rupture resulted immediately.

In the third year of his marriage Massingale had again become infatuated, this time with the young wife of an elderly friend. As the married relations on either side were identical, and each was chafing against the irritating and galling yoke, longing for life and liberty, the infatuation soon assumed tragic proportions. She wished to break through everything, ready to go openly with him until, their respective divorces secured, they could be married. He passed eight days feverishly inclined, debating the issue. But in the end, for the stigma that would lay across his shoulders, for the reputation of the family, the customs of a man of the world, and what not, he resisted.

He had thought then that he had sacrificed the world and the heavens for a hollow recompense; but, as the years sent the drifting sands of their oblivion over the memory, he had come to look upon this emotional adventure as a great peril avoided. He had believed then in the union of man and woman as something like a divine rage, all-absorbing, obliterating everything else—this in the bitter revolt against the deception which had come in his marriage. Ten years later he had arrived at the point of looking back with tolerant humor, and confessing to himself that for his purposes he was perhaps fortunate in a union which brought no compulsion into his life, obtruded itself in no way, and gave him complete liberty to pursue his intellectual curiosity in unrestricted intercourse with men of varied stations.

From law school he had gone as an assistant into the district attorney's office, and the three years spent in those catacombs of humanity had removed the veneer of generations of inherited snobbery. The first view of the vermin-populated halls of justice had appalled him, and aroused in him a religious fury. The spectacle of the strong riding the weak, judges gravely listening to lying hypocrisies, criminals in gold buttons and uniform, the insolence of power, the cynicism of brains, and, below all, raw humanity gasping under staggering burdens, mocked, farmed out, betrayed—all this sank so profoundly into his young enthusiasm that he swore to himself that the day would come when he would lift up his voice against iniquity, no matter how intrenched it might rest.

If at this time he had had the courage to break with social prejudices and seek reality and inspiration in the love of a woman ready to sacrifice everything for him, it is probable that he would have one day stirred the sophisticated forces of the city to furious invective, and accomplished little or great good, according to the sport of chance. But the impossibility of assuming responsibility before social conventions had its effect on the thinker, too. He gradually reconciled himself, lulled into tolerance by the good fellowship of those whom he would have to attack. He still disapproved, but he added to the first fierce protestation, "Things must be changed," the saving clause, "but I can not change them!"

Later, when, in a sudden burst of reform, a mayor, revolting against the machine, appointed him a municipal magistrate, he had progressed further, even to the point of saying that things had always been the same, here as elsewhere, that what was needed was to be practical, to accomplish quietly as much good as possible, instead of shrieking into unbelieving ears. His religious fury had subsided into a great compassion. He sought to save rather than to punish. He became known as a judge who could not be approached. He had had one or two conflicts with the machine of the shadows, and had come out victorious and respected. He was known as a very courageous man.

Life lay agreeably ahead. As the emotional and spiritual cravings departed, his curiosity increased. Life on the surface, life as a spectator, life as the confidant of others, watching developments, explosions, consequences, was very satisfying, without danger. He knew from experience the sting of great emotions, and he said to himself that that man was securest in his happiness who depended on no indispensable friendship, who cherished in his imagination no ambition linked with the stars, who took the laughter and the smiles of women, and avoided the heat, the pain and the soul-bruising of a great passion. Such love was to him yoked with tragedy, conflict, disillusionment, subjection, or crowned with final emptiness.

He had indeed become the judicial observer, watching with unsated amusement, through his thousand points of vantage, the complex panorama of human beings groping, struggling, crawling, running, bacchanalian with sudden hysteric joys, or crying against little tragedies. His intimate acquaintance with men of every calling, open or suspect, was immense. His knowledge of the city, its big and little secrets, its whys and wherefores, its entangled virtue and vice, its secret ways from respectability to shame, its strange bedfellows, the standards of honor among the corrupt and the mental sophistries of the strong, was profound. For him the baffling brownstone mask of New York did not exist. People instinctively trusted him. Criminals told him true stories in restaurants where few could venture; women of all sorts and conditions, passing before him for grave or minor offenses, often returned for advice or relief from blackmailing conditions. The police swore by him, politicians admitted his fairness. He played the game according to their standards of honor strictly on the evidence presented, never taking advantage of what was told him privately.

He was not insensible to the attraction of women. He sought their confidence, but returned none; amused at their comedies, as it amused him intellectually to reduce a lying officer to terrified confession. Twice bruised, he never attempted more than a light and agreeable comradeship. He had that curious but rather high standard of morality which one often encounters among men of his opportunity in life. He prided himself that no woman had suffered harm by him, which, translated, meant that he had never been responsible. In fact, he shrank from the thought of incurring responsibility. This was the horror that had sent him from Doré, for he was honest in his intellectual perceptions, and he saw at once that what he had blundered into was more immoral than the flesh hunter's seeking of the body, for this was trafficking with a soul.

When he had first paused to study Doré, he had perceived in her an unusual specimen of a type which he knew and enjoyed immensely. The interesting woman, to him, was the one who was destined to arouse passions and leave disaster behind her. The antagonism which had flared up between Harrigan Blood and Sassoon over her favors, the resulting quarrel as she had escaped, amused him immensely. He was not ignorant of the defensive alliance that existed between the Sassoon interests and Harrigan Blood's chain of papers, and though he judged too clearly not to doubt that a rupture was but delayed, it struck him as the very essence of human drama that forces of such magnitude could be shaken by the impertinent turn of a head or a luring smile.

"Here is a little creature who is going to make a good deal of trouble!" he thought to himself, and interested at once before the possibilities at her clever finger-tips, he had said to himself: "I am seeing the beginning of a career, and a career that will be extraordinary!"

With this keen curiosity in mind, not insensible to the fleeting compelling lure of the girl, he had gone up to her room, and suddenly, as, delighted, he had prepared to watch the net prepared for others, it had closed over him. He had had his doubts about Doré, that doubt which waits in the mind of every man before every woman; but all this left him the moment when, conquered in his arms, she had clung to him blindly, in ecstasy. He comprehended what had overwhelmed her—had overwhelmed her by surprise.

It was only when he had a dozen times sought to compose a letter which would be neither caddish, prudish, or brutal, that he perceived to what extent the old departed famine in himself had fiercely awakened. He had made up his mind instantly to master such a peril, but he had not succeeded. His conscience rose up at every turn, accusing him of cowardice. How deep had been the wound he had inflicted? Had he the right, for his own security, thus violently to separate himself from the girl who, without artifice, had suddenly revealed herself? And what would become of her? This latter idea pursued him constantly, tormenting him. Finally, oppressed by the doubts which her absence made to surge about him, he had gone to her door. She had left that very afternoon. He did not leave his name, but retreated hastily, affecting to believe that Providence had thus interfered to save him from a great calamity.

When she had flashed into his life again, that night in the noisy Jungle Room at Healey's, as he knew she must sooner or later, he was stricken with the sudden imperious claim she exerted over all his impulses. He understood all she sought to show him in the bitterness of her mood, but, beyond all the pain he saw he had inflicted, he was terrified by the thought of the danger to himself. He felt the fatality that waited in the intensity of her nature, the fatality that for a glance and a word had made enemies of Sassoon and Blood. The sight of her in the arms of other men was intolerable, and yet he could not avert his eyes. He was afraid to speak to her, but at the thought of her risking herself with Lindaberry, he had broken through all restraint. When she had gone, he had a feeling of thankfulness. He had done all he could to prevent it. After all, what did he know of her? If she could go thus with Lindaberry, what had she done with Sassoon, Harrigan Blood, others? With fifty desperate reasonings, he sought to excuse himself and find a justified way out. But always the accusation in her eyes, as she turned scornfully, disdainfully to him in all the shifting points of the dance, remained.

"She will wreck my life!" he said to himself fifty times a day, to prevent his going to her. "Why am I responsible? She knew what she was doing, that night!"

But at the first glimpse of Dodo in the blue Russian blouse, open throat and white toque turning into the aisle, he had felt a profound relief. He had done all that he humanly could do: he had resisted to the last, struggled against the impossible; and, now that she herself had resolved it, he felt immensely thankful.

The last case before him was one of daily occurrence—domestic trouble. A young mother, baby in arms, a child at her skirts, preternaturally bent and worn, had summonsed her husband into court on grounds of non-support, accusing him of intoxication. He looked at the couple, seeing deeper—the man vigorous and young, the woman whose prettiness had led him to vow eternal constancy, now lost in drudgery and unequal burden. What could he say to the unscathed young male who stood staring at him with awed glance—bid him to love what he had driven from her face and figure? The mockery of futile charges!

"Why don't you support your wife and children?" he asked, for the thousandth time. "Why don't you stop drinking?"

The husband, a young mechanic, promised volubly what each knew he would not perform.

"Put you on probation for three months!" he said sharply. "She's your wife; you married her because you wanted to. Now, stop drinking and be a man, or I'll send you up to the island. Do you understand?"

The man bowed and went out, the woman at his heels, dragging her second child, believing that a word from His Honor could change everything. Massingale watched them go, staring a moment, glanced at the clock and ended the session with a nod to his officer.

"Does it interest you?" he said to Doré, in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Yes!"

She had not seen a thing that had transpired.

They went to his private room, noisy and dark as the rest, the window-panes rattling at every elevated train that went crashing through the air. He gave his gown to an attendant, issued a few orders and they were alone. Neither spoke, waiting silently the other's advance, afraid to speak that first word; for in such moments it is the first who speaks who must explain. He continued to look at her with his magisterial stare, at bottom suddenly vindictive, resenting this girl who had dared to return into his life, to reclaim him to uncertainty and perils against his logic.

She extended her hands in a little helpless movement, shook her head and said timidly:

"Well?"

A moment before, still counseled by his reason, he had been on the point of a cold answer, resolved correctly to beg her pardon and make this interview the last. At her surrendering gesture and the plaintive note in her voice, a great pity brushed aside everything else, and he said impulsively:

"I went once—you were away. I wanted to see you!"

"I did not know," she said hurriedly, rushing at the hardest to be said,—"that night—that you were married!"

"I understood that."

The court officer returned, announcing his automobile, and they passed out. They had said nothing, and yet everything had been said.

"Where do you want to go?" he said, smiling.

"Anywhere!"

He hesitated, and then gave her address.

"We've got to have a frank talk," he said lightly; "then we can run up somewhere for dinner—to celebrate. Did you notice Riley, my special? He's a great character!"

"Funny mouth; does it ever stop grinning?" she said, joyfully, wonderfully, perfectly happy. She leaned to him, whispering in his ear: "Was he shocked at my coming?"

He was about to answer indiscreetly, but caught himself.

"Riley? No; he's quite a man of the world!"

The sunlight and the frosty December air restored his clarity of thought. He would have the plainest of conversations with her. If they could go on as free comrades, well and good. Perhaps even a certain intimacy were better; it might serve to readjust certain illusions that lingered in the memory.

He glanced at her sidewise, physically comforted at the delicacy of her profile, the light airy youth that hung about her, intangible as a perfume. He had known ten, twenty women more beautiful than Dodo, more stimulating mentally, with an elegance that she did not possess. It was impossible that this child, enticing and gay as she was, could really have stirred him to uncontrollable emotions! With these thoughts running through his mind, his confidence returned; he even began to wonder at his former fear, holding it ridiculous. If she were foolishly resolved in the conviction of a great passion, he was clever enough subtly to undeceive her, to regulate their relations and keep them within the safe limits of a confidential flirtation.

Pursuing this idea, he said nonchalantly, as they entered her room:

"Do you know, young mischief, that you have a great deal to answer for? Sassoon and Harrigan Blood are at each other's throats. Blood's been caught in the market, and is hammering the Sassoon interests like a wild one. What have you been doing with them all this time?"

"How false that all sounds!" she said abruptly.

Disconcerted, he changed his tactics, saying seriously:

"Dodo, you are a very combustible sort of person. Do you realize the danger of what we are doing?"

She shrugged her shoulders impatiently, going directly to the issue:

"Tell me about yourself—about your real self: your home, your wife! I must know!"

"I don't wish to talk about others," he said, irritated in his sense of delicacy.

"But I do!" she said passionately. "I saw her. There can be nothing between you—and her!"

He made an imperative gesture, checking himself immediately, saying with more restraint:

"There is nothing between us. Dodo, there are some things I don't think you quite understand. Whatever may exist, I can not discuss Mrs. Massingale with others!"

"'Others'!" she said indignantly, turning from him, deeply hurt.

He took her by the wrist and led her to a seat, feeling the necessity of asserting his supremacy. She allowed herself to be forced into it, looking up at him with rebellious eyes, like a naughty child.

"Do you know the danger of what you are doing?" he repeated. And then he corrected himself—"What we are doing?"

Her face changed instantly, becoming very serious. Her eyes looked past him out of the window, beginning to be blurred by the gathering tears. He drew back hastily.

"Why do you talk to me like this? What is the use of it all?"

"Why?" he exclaimed fiercely. "Because you are a child; because you try me beyond my patience; because I want to be fair and honorable with you; because I could—"

She was on her feet instantly, clapping her hands together.

"Ah, that's what I want to hear again—again!"

He halted directly, with a helpless gesture.

"Dodo," he said firmly, "listen to me! I will not make another mistake! If you don't realize things, I do. I want to be your friend; I do want to see you; but, unless it can be so, I—"

"Oh!" she cried furiously, dangerously near the point of self-dramatization. "Don't always reason; don't think of what is going to happen! Let's be as we are! I can't help it—can you? You know you can't!"

"And then?"

"Don't talk to me of then! Think of to-day! Do you think, when the first great thing has come into my life, that I'm going to put it aside for—what?" She flung her arm out toward the ugly brick side that symbolized to her all that she hated: "A little ordinary life, like every other ordinary little life? No! I told you I won't be like every one else! It's true! I don't want to live, if that's what life means!"

He said to himself swiftly that he had made a great mistake in coming; that he would end it as soon as he could; and that he would never venture again, even if he had to run away. For every accent of her voice, every flashing look, moved him perilously.

"What do you want? Do you know?" he asked roughly.

"I want to be near you; that's all I know now!" she said, folding her hands over her breast and closing her eyes.

"And the end?"

She was at his side with a bound, clutching his arm.

"Do you know what is the difference between us? I am honest; I say what I think! You are afraid to admit what you feel!"

"The situation is not the same," he said stubbornly. "The responsibility is all on my side!"

"Oh, Your Honor!" she said sublimely. "Don't let's talk! Don't you know it won't change anything? It will be such a great, great love. I know it—I feel it! So beautiful! And what else matters? It's our life, and you—you have never really lived!"

Her impetuosity sobered him. He made a turn of the room; when he came back he was smiling, with the smile she hated. "Dodo, I suppose at this moment you think you would go off with me anywhere."

"Anywhere!"

"But you wouldn't!" he said quietly. "Luckily, I understand you!" He shook his head. "Acting—always acting!"

"No!"

"Yes—acting with yourself, dramatizing a situation. But that's all! Just another precipice! Dangerous for you, but fatal to me if I were to believe you!"

"Oh, I swear to you that isn't so!" she cried, with a gesture that he appreciated, even at the moment, for its dramatic verity.

"Come!" he said quietly. "Let's be good comrades. Don't dabble with fire!"

"You think, when you leave, you will never see me again!" she said swiftly, surprising him by the penetration of her intuition. She went to him, fastening her fingers about him like the tendrils of clinging ivy. "Well, Your Honor, I will never let you go! Remember that! If you don't come, I will go and get you! You have caught me, and you can never get rid of me. I swear it!"

She sprang away quickly, affecting nonchalance. The door opened and Snyder came in, stopping short at the sight of the two figures, indistinct in the twilight.

"Come in, come in, Snyder!" Doré said hastily. "My friend, Judge Massingale."

Snyder gave him her hand abruptly, with a quick antagonistic movement, watching his embarrassed face keenly.

"Just came up to get my coat," said Doré glibly. "Going out for dinner!"

They left hurriedly, ill at ease. On the second stairway, in the dark, she stopped him, and approaching her lips so close to his ear that they almost brushed it, said:

"I am not acting; I mean everything. It is to be the great thing in my life!"

He laughed, but did not reply.

"I understand her now," he said to himself, with a feeling of strength. "She may deceive herself; she can not blind me!" Later he added uneasily: "If I ever believe her, I am lost!"

But Doré believed implicitly what she had said. At the bottom, what was working in her soul? That instinct, second only to the nesting instinct, in woman, that great protective impulse which alone explains a thousand incomprehensible attachments. He had taken her, caught her soul and her imagination, lawlessly, unfairly perhaps; but there it remained, an imperishable mark. Only one thing could atone to her self-respect—the glorification of this accident. Only when into his acquiring soul had come an immense overpowering love, could a renunciation be possible which would live in her memory, not to recall blushes of anger and shame, but to give the satisfaction of a heroic sacrifice. But the danger lay in his incredulity and resistance!

CHAPTER XX

On their fourth meeting a furious quarrel developed. Dodo had expected that, with the difficulties of the reconciliation resolved, their relations would be resumed where they had been interrupted. She found, to her surprise, that only a new conflict had opened. She did not divine at once all the hesitation of his character, but she perceived an opposition which amazed her. In her infatuation, she wished to run heedlessly, with bandaged eyes and hungry arms, into these enchanted gardens of her imagination. She did not wish to visualize facts, hungrily seeking the satisfaction of undefined illusions. That he should follow gravely, with troubled searching glance, aroused in her a storm of resentment. She little guessed at what price he paid for his self-control. She could not comprehend this resistance in him. What was it held him back? He spoke of everything but the one vital issue—themselves. Unconsciously she felt herself forced to fasten to him, as instinctively she felt him seeking escape. But always, while thus led to compel him on she refused to consider where the road might lead.

Massingale, in fact, in the moments of her absence, was continually torn between his impulses and his logic. Logically he saw the danger without an attempt at subterfuge. He did not believe in her, and he was certain that at the last crucial test she would never break through conventionalities; but he foresaw that the true danger lay, not in her romanesque imagination, but in the hunger that would awaken in him. Even the appearance of evil must always be inscribed to his account by that judgment of society that never goes below the surface and would persist in seeing in the present situation only an inexperienced young girl and a man of the world, married, who pursued.

By every reason he sought to liberate his imagination, and only succeeded in enmeshing himself the more securely in the silk imprisonment. To each clear and warning argument a memory rose victoriously, confounding reason and bringing new longings. When in her presence, he found the study of this perplexing and ardent disciple of youth, who had darted across into his life out of nowhere, one of endless mystification and satisfaction. He forgot all his resolves in the sensation of gazing into the profoundly troubling blue of her glance, watching the divine subtleties of that smile which began in the twinkling corners of her eyes and glided, with always a note of arch malice, to the childlike lips. Sometimes he incited her to assumed anger in order to watch the sudden lights that awakened in the cloudy eyes, the sharp little teeth, brilliant against the parted red of the lips, the heightened danger-signals on the cheek. And when, in curious restaurants, removed from the prying gaze of Mrs. Grundy, they ensconced themselves, laughing with the delight of truants at finding a hiding-place, the slight pressure of her foot against his, a moment offered and a moment gone, created new philosophies in his logical brain, and he repeated to himself again and again that he would change all to be a young cub, as the young fellows who surrounded them, starting life undaunted and free. To have the right, or to do no harm!

Often, watching her sparkling mood, that showed itself in a dozen laughing tricks with cutlery or glass, mystified, he asked himself:

"Does she realize what this means?"

There lay this great difference between them—he sought gloomily to foresee the end, she was in raptures only at the beginning. In this period which preceded the inevitable one when he would find subterfuge and evasion to put his conscience to sleep, a period in which he still felt the closing of the trap on his liberty, and saw clearly because he still wished to resist, Massingale asked himself logically where each step would lead. How long could his embottled control be kept to phrases? And when, in one combustible moment, he should obey the longing to recall that hour when, conquering her, she had conquered him, what would follow?

Shrinking from the thought of another solution, he asked himself once or twice if, under her artless insouciance, there was not a deep calculation; or if, indeed, she were planning to upset everything in his life, drag him into the publicity of the divorce courts, create a new home, dissolve old habits, estrange old friends, and fasten on him new ones. He thought thus, not because he thought honestly, but because he wished to recoil from immediate responsibility.

Dodo had not the slightest care of the future. The next month or the next week did not exist; the day sufficed. She raised no questions; she contented herself rapturously with emotions.

"He will come at five—how many hours more? He will be here at five—where shall we go for dinner? Where can we be alone? He will come—"

Her mind satisfied itself with such speculations. If, at this time, he had again asked her seriously what would come of it all, she probably would have answered him pettishly, like a gay child:

"Oh, don't let's talk of annoying things."

He began a hundred comedies of resistance, some of which she detected scornfully, others which eluded, in their subtlety, her analysis. There were times when, uneasy at the growing responsibility that she was slowly drawing about his shoulders, he tried by artful questions to convince himself that she was not quite so innocent as he had believed.

"And how do you put off Sassoon all this time, and Harrigan Blood?" he asked her once, abruptly.

They had gone to the Hickory Log

It was their fourth successive evening together. They had gone to the "Hickory Log," a chop-house on lower Seventh Avenue, secure of finding privacy. The walls had been decorated to simulate ancient Greenwich village; the floor, fenced off with green palings, affording convenient nooks. In the back, before a spacious open oven, chickens and steaks were turning savorously over glowing hickory embers, that mingled their clean pungent perfume with appetizing odors. Up-stairs, in special rooms, some East Side club was noisily celebrating over a chop supper, while from time to time two or three young men in white berets and coats came singing down the turning stairs, saluting gaily the sympathetic audience.

Below, everywhere was the feeling of the people, happy, prosperous, relaxed, feasting on heavy bourgeois dishes flanked by huge bumpers of the beer which made the "Hickory Log" a Mecca for the thirsty. The floor was sanded, the tables bare of cloth. Opposite them a young man had his arm about his sweetheart, bending his head to her ear. When a group of the revelers saluted them with enthusiasm, each returned a laughing acknowledgment, but without change of pose.

"How natural all this is!" said Dodo, finding in her hungry soul a kindred longing. "How they enjoy things! We must come here often. This garden, this table—it shall be ours!"

"And how do you keep Sassoon and Blood in good appetite, little Mormon?" he persisted.

She hated this incredulous cynical mood of his, and she disapproved of the epithet.

"Why do you always begin like this?" she said, chopping off the head of a celery stalk with a vicious blow of her knife. "I am not a Mormon, and you know perfectly well that no one else exists now for me!" She turned, saw his quizzical look, and added vigorously: "And I am not acting!"

"Do, please. It is your great charm!"

"You are positively hateful!"

"Well, why did you encourage Sassoon, then?" She looked at him with a little malice in her eyes.

"I suppose you want to think yourself one of many?"

This was too near the mark. He answered evasively:

"All I wish is to be your father confessor, you know!"

This simulation of friendship was another thing that always aroused her. She wished to punish him, and began to embroider.

"Yes, I encourage Sassoon," she said, leaning on the table, nodding in emphasis, and switching a celery stalk among the glasses venomously, like the tail of an irritated leopard. "Harrigan Blood, too. And I have my reasons. You think I am a wild little creature who never looks ahead. Quite wrong! Everything is planned out. Everything will be settled—definitely—soon!"

"When?"

"On my twenty-third birthday—on the tenth of March. Remember that date!"

"Very appropriate month," he interjected.

"Then I am through with this sort of a life—good-by forever to Dodo!" she went on rapidly. "You don't believe me? I assure you, I never was more serious! Then I shall choose"—she raised her fingers, counting—"a great love, marriage, career, or"—she ended with a shrug—"lots of money!"

"I see," he said, comprehending her maneuver, and yet annoyed by it. "And so Sassoon is a possibility?"

"If you fail, quite a possibility!" she said, to irritate him further. "At any rate, I shall keep him just where I want him—until the time comes to decide!"

"You could never do that, Dodo!" he said sharply.

"Oh, couldn't I?" she cried, delighted that he had entertained the thought. "I'm quite capable of being a cold-blooded little adventuress! Perhaps I am one, and am only making sport of you. Beware! As for Sassoon—do you know what I'd do? I'd make him give me a career, and then, when I am very, very well known, perhaps—if I wanted—I'd make him divorce, and become Mrs. Sassoon! How would you like to meet me in society?" She laughed at the thought, but added immediately: "Oh, it is not so impossible, either! Nowadays, a clever girl who sees just what she wants can do anything!"

"Is that what you would do with me?" he said quietly.

She turned swiftly, abandoning all her pretense, pain in her eyes.

"Oh, no, Your Honor! Not with you! I would take nothing from you, now or ever!"

"Then don't say such things!" he said, strangely soothed by the passion in her voice.

"Don't be—friendly, then!" she retorted, and with a quick appealing raising of her eyes she laid her hand on his.

"I must talk frankly with her!" he said to himself, with a groaning of the spirit. "She will not face the situation, and there can be no solution to it—no possible solution!" He turned heroically, resolved to lay down the law, and his stern eyes encountered hers, so troubling and so untroubled, tempting and yielding—glorified and inconscient.

"I am so happy!" she said; and, in an excess of emotion, as if suffocating, her eyes closed and her breast rose in a long sigh. Arguments and fears went riotously head over heels in flight.

It was almost at the end of the dinner before, his calm returning, he said:

"Let's talk of your career. Do you know, I believe you'd do big things!"

She glanced up suspiciously, judging the tone rather than the words.

"You say that because you wish to get rid of me!" she said abruptly.

He protested vehemently to the contrary.

"Yes, yes, you would! I'm beginning to know you and your tricks! But look out! I warn you, you will never get rid of me!" She rose impatiently. "I don't like it here. We do nothing but quarrel. Come!" Outside his automobile was waiting. "No, no; let's walk a little. It's good to be among people who are natural!"

"I have a meeting I can not put off—at nine; I told you," he said, irritated and impatient to be free.

It was cold, with a sharp, dry, exhilarating sting. The shop-windows were set with glaring enticements for the Christmas season—red and green or sparkling with tinsel and gold ornament. The sidewalks were alive with the sluggish loitering of a strange people, Italians, Germans, Jews from Russia, negroes flowing in from dark side streets, occasional Irish about the saloons, whose doors swung busily; but the signs above the shops were foreign, without trace of the first Anglo-Saxon emigration which had passed on to the upper city.

Everything interested Doré. She wished to stop at every window, mingling with the urchins and the curious, prying into cellars whence the odor of onions or leather came to their nostrils. He yielded his arm, following her whims, and yet unamused. A policeman saluted him, grinning sympathetically at the spectacle of His Honor unbending. Massingale did not look back, but he divined, with annoyance, the smile and the interpretation. All this sodden or abject world, which passed before his eyes day in and day out, with its unanswerable indictments, its bottomless misery, left on him a very different impression. He saw in it the quicksands of life, where those who steered their course without foresight sometimes disappeared, closed over by floods of mediocrity and poverty. Natural and happy? He felt in it only a horror and a threat. On his arm the touch of the young girl grew imperiously heavy, that touch which stopped him abruptly or forced him ahead, unwilling, bored and reluctant.

"I could be happy here—very happy!" she said romantically. There was something in this that recalled the few regretted sides of her early life. Sorrow was sorrow, and joy pure delight, and each walked here, unhesitating and unashamed, unhampered by little spying social codes or the artifices of manners. Her hand slipped down his arm to where his was plunged in his pocket, closing over it.

"It's wonderful! So free, so honest! Don't you adore the feeling?"

"No!" he said abruptly. He had been thinking of a college mate of his who had broken through the permitted of society and married where he should not have: a forgotten friend who had dropped out, who might have ended,—who knows?—in a howling stuffy flat in just such a quarter.

She drew her hand impatiently away.

"I hate you to-night! I won't keep you any longer. Take me home!"

In his own automobile, surrounded by the atmosphere of things he knew and enjoyed, Massingale felt an easier mood. Besides, her indifference and flashes of temper always exercised a provocative effect.

"What a little whirligig you are, Dodo," he said, laughing. "Happy there? You wouldn't last an afternoon! Besides, romance is one thing, but think of the dirt!"

"You want to antagonize me; you've done it all evening!" she said, drawing into her corner.

He defended himself lamely, aware of the truth.

"Never mind!" she added vindictively. "I shall amuse myself to-night."

"Sassoon or Harrigan Blood?" he said, pinching her ear.

"Perhaps."

She refused to be enticed from her offended dignity. When they reached Miss Pim's, contrary to his determination, he descended and went up-stairs with her, seeking, with a quick pity in his heart, to repair the effects of his ill-humor. Then, judging the moment auspicious, he began gravely:

"Dodo, where is this going to end?"

"What? Which?" she said, frowning and whirling about, as if she had not understood.

He repeated the question with even more seriousness.

"I want to be genuine!" she said, stamping her foot. "I don't want to be dissecting everything I do before I do it! Whatever comes, I want it to come without calculation!"

He groaned aloud.

"Hopeless! Crazy! Impossible child!"

"It's you who are impossible!" she retorted hotly. "It's you who are neither one thing nor the other! It's you who back and fill! I am honest; you're not! What are you thinking of all the time—your wife?"

His sense of decorum was shocked.

"Dodo, kindly leave my wife's name out of the conversation!"

"And why should I leave it out?" she answered furiously. "She's the one thing that comes between us! I hate her! I despise her! I could kill her!"

"Dodo!"

"Do you love her? No! Do you care that for her? No! Or she for you? No! Well, then, why shouldn't I discuss her?"

When she fell into a passion, he no longer heard what words she said, fascinated by the impetuosity of the emotion that shook her—man-like, longing to have it translated into clinging in his arms. He felt himself beaten in this discussion where no logic was possible, and he said desperately that he would no longer quibble or avoid issues, that he would lay the truth before her, and pronounce ugly names. But, before he could venture, the telephone interrupted. She went to it joyfully, seeking a new means of tantalizing him.

He sought to catch some inkling of the man at the other end, but her ingenuity evaded him. Presently she leaned out of the hall, covering the mouthpiece with her hand.

"You are sure you have to go to that meeting?" she said, in a dry staccato.

"Sure!"

Then her voice rose again, answering the telephone.

"Yes, indeed—free.... Delighted.... Oh, longing for a spree.... How gorgeous! How soon?" She turned, glancing at Massingale.

He took up his hat, answering with asperity:

"Immediately!"

When she returned, they stood eying each other, rage in their hearts.

"Thank heaven, now I shall enjoy myself!" she said abruptly.

"And who is the gentleman?" he said.

"Any one you like; it's quite indifferent to me!"

"In that case, good-by!"

"Good-by—good-by!"

"Good! Now I am free," he thought, with a sudden liberation of the spirit, resolved to make this a pretext for his emancipation. He went to the door, but there a little shame made him halt. If this was to be the end, he wished to leave behind a memory of gentleness and courtesy. He returned and held out his hand, saying:

"I have been rather ill-humored—"

She looked up at him solemnly, hostility still reflected from his defensive antagonism. They had so opposed and tantalized each other all evening that all their nerves were on edge, vacillating toward a sudden obliterating reaction. He did not take her hand; his arms instead clutched her whole body to him, closing furiously over what he had resisted futilely all the day—every day since that first disorganizing embrace, until he could resist no longer. Her arms caught him. She gave a little cry that ended on his lips, her whole body relaxed, half turned and half fallen, as he bent over her.

This kiss, wrenched from him at the moment he felt himself strongest, obliterating useless exasperation and futile combat, ended his resistance. From his soul the eternal rebel cry of the transgressor went up:

"Ah, I must live!"

The moments slipped by unheeded, and still he held her, imprisoned. All the stifled side of his nature started up. It seemed to him that all the genuine in his life was in this kiss: the denied ardent self; the young Massingale and the girl he had adored in his first extravagant passion: the Massingale in revolt, surrendering to the fear of the world, clasped in the last renunciation with the woman who might have been—the past and more than the past, the present and the exquisite pain of time, youth renounced and youth fleeting. He raised her, convulsively strained to his breast, closing his eyes, and breathing the same air that came to her, as if pursuing on her lips the last precious dregs of a cup that was almost drained.

"By heaven, I've done all I could! I'm not going to fight any more!" he said, in a rage at her, at himself, at life.

And as, erect, he held his head from her the better to study the faint face, the closed eyes and the parted lips, her body swayed toward his, one arm wrapping about him, one arm winding about his throat, the fingers closing over his shoulders like the tendrils of ivy, that subtle feminine vine that fastens itself to the monarchs of the forests, stealing their strength. Even in this moment he felt in her this fatality, but a fatality that drew him recklessly, gratefully on.

All at once she had a sensation of fear—as if the victory were over and another conflict were on. She sought to free herself, seeking air to breathe, afraid of herself, of these half lights, neither day nor the glaring night, of every vibrant sense, warned by some still unmastered instinct within her, that struggled through the dizziness in her mind and body.

She wrenched herself from him, springing behind a table, and once liberated, feeling an instantaneous buoyancy of triumph. He stood quietly, breathing deep, locking and unlocking his hands. She stood, as free as though a canon separated them, watching him, her hands folded poignantly at her throat, her body leaning toward him, victorious, mentally alert.

"Oh, Your Honor, Your Honor, what's the use!" she cried. "You care—you do care! Say that you care!"

His answer was an exclamation, inarticulate, convincing, a cry rather than a word! The next moment, transformed, no longer calm, restrained, judicial, but tempestuous, revealing and defenseless, he stepped forward with a threatening gesture.

"Dodo, if you are acting! If you—"

"Ah, that's how I like you!" she cried rapturously, flinging out her arms. "No, no—fear nothing; I am not acting! You will see! You will be satisfied! When I tell you my plan—a wonderful, beautiful plan—Only, first I must be sure!"

She was transformed, radiant; but on her glowing face and glorified eyes he saw, with a return of incredulity, the elfish lights of the dramatizer.

He stood angry, perplexed, defiant, examining her with distrust. All at once he passed the table abruptly, caught her as she sprang away, turned her in his arms fiercely, roughly, pinned her arms to her sides furiously, more in anger than passion, covered her cheeks, her eyes, her lips with kisses, and suddenly, almost flinging her from him, rushed out of the room.

She rose from the sofa where she had fallen, listening breathlessly, a little frightened, satisfied at last. Then suddenly she ran to the window, flinging it open, leaning out, happy, victorious, eager. He did not see her; he was rushing down the steps abruptly, flinging himself into his car, departing quickly.

The reaction from all the petty miseries of the spirit which she had suffered in these days of fencing and resistance had been so acute that she returned in a perfect delirium of delight. Even the tragic shadow that hung about it heightened the heroism of their infatuation. At last she had shaken off the tentacles of the dreaded commonplace. She might suffer; what did it matter? All her life might pay for it; she did not care! It was not an ordinary bread-and-butter affection. It would be magnificent, like the great loves of history, tragic but magnificent! And the solution she had hinted of to Massingale, the end which she had imagined in her romanesque, runaway mind was something that seemed so supremely great, so extraordinary, that she abandoned herself into its misty vistas without doubt or hesitation, radiant, convinced.

"Ah, now I know—now I know what the answer is!" she cried rapturously. She went to the hostile window, shaking her fist at it triumphantly: "Ugly wall, horrid wall, hateful wall! You are beaten! I am no longer afraid of you! That for you!"

And snapping her fingers, laughing gaily, she returned, whirling on her toes like a child, crying:

"He cares—he does care!"

But the moods into which she had flung herself had resulted in such an intoxication of all her emotional self that she forgot her first resolve to remain quiet. She felt the need of more excitement: lights, music, movement, noise! She was too exhilarated, too tensely throbbing with conquest and recklessness. She could never remain now alone and still. She resolved to go out, for a little while only, for an hour or so. On her table was a note from Lindaberry, unopened. She had seen it on her first return. She saw it now in all her whirling progress about the room, imperative, appealing. But did she not go to it. It represented to her a self that she wished to avoid just now—for this bewildering night of senses and emotions. It was another world, the world of the hushed spaces and tranquil shadows, where her vibrant theatric self could not rest. So she let the letter lie unopened, fearing an imperative call, conscience-stricken at the neglect of these last days. When she returned at three o'clock, fatigued at last, she went precipitately to the letter, carrying it to the gas-jet, with an uneasy glance at Snyder, who was moving restlessly in a dream.

"Dear Dodo:

"Pretty tough going. Tried to get you many times. What's the matter? Tried to get you many times. Is the bet off? Wouldn't blame you. Will stop at ten sharp. At exactly ten. If you could—it would mean a lot. You see, it's—well, it's a backsliding day—at first, you know, hard going.

"Garry."

The slight waver in the handwriting, the repeated stumbling phrases, told her everything. In a fever of remorse and self-accusation, she flung herself on her knees at her bedside, vowing that never again would she fail him, come what might, resolved to run to him the first thing in the morning and repair the damages she had selfishly inflicted. She prayed fervently, accusing herself, unable to control her tears. Snyder, in the dim luminous reflection from the windows, bolt upright in her bed, watched her breathlessly, unperceived.

The next morning, when, after vain calls at the telephone, she went to Lindaberry's apartments, the janitor, with a shrug of his shoulders, informed her that he had not returned. It was not unusual: sometimes he was gone for four days, a week—God knew where!

CHAPTER XXI

Days passed without word of Lindaberry, and the fear of what might have happened was never absent from Doré. Other anxieties crowded in on her. One day she suddenly perceived that the bi-weekly basket of champagne from Mr. Peavey was three days overdue. She had heard little of him beyond the brief answers to her punctual acknowledgments, nor had she availed herself often of the opera tickets, turning them over to Winona, Ida Summers, or Estelle Monks. The automobile had been needed rarely, her entire absorption in Massingale leaving her little time. Once or twice Ida had repeated her mysterious hints as to Winona and trespassing, but, obsessed by the fever of new and strong emotions, she had paid little heed.

All at once this warning returned with a new suggestion. Had Winona, whom she had introduced to Mr. Peavey, been trying to supplant her? She went directly to Ida Summers, surprising her by the determination of her manner:

"Ida, is Winona trying to cut me out with Mr. Peavey?"

The look on the girl's face told her the truth of her guess.

"How far has it gone? What do you know? Tell me everything!"

"I have seen them at the theater together, at a restaurant once or twice."

"When? Lately?"

"No; when you were in Buffalo...."

"Alone?"

"Yes!"

"But since I have been back? Think! Be sure!"

"I am not sure, Do," said Ida slowly. "Lord! don't look as if you'd eat me up!"

"But you think—"

"I think he took her to the opera Monday night."

Dodo returned to her room in a rage. She divined at once the cleverness of the stroke. Each time she had given Winona her seats, the girl had called up Mr. Peavey as an escort—thus, even without a word, convincing him how lightly his presents were held. How far had Winona gone? She remembered now that since her return she had hardly seen her. Had Winona been deliberately avoiding her? Was she playing to marry Mr. Peavey? Had she gone so far even as to tell him of the true uses to which his presents were put?

Dodo, who was generosity itself, had also, when her sense of injustice was aroused, unfathomed depths of hatred and vindictiveness. Winona, to whom she had opened her slender purse a dozen times, whom she had placed with Blainey at the moment of her despair—Winona, of all the world, to betray her! She called up the garage and asked for Brennon immediately. From him she would get some information. Then, without knocking, she entered Winona's room. She was not there. Doré, restless and suspicious, examined the mantel and the table, halting before three vases of gorgeous American Beauty roses.

"Can these be from Peavey? That's not like him!" she thought, wrinkling her forehead.

On a table was a present newly arrived, a cabinet of different perfumes, in red morocco and silver. There was a card still on the top: "Penniston Schwartz."

"Don't know him," Doré thought, forgetting Ida's story of the dinner. She continued her examination. On the bureau were several bits of silver that she did not remember seeing before; in the closet a new gown or two; but in all this no note of Peavey. What she was seeking was a basket of champagne, and though she sought under the lounge and the bed and in the dark recesses of the wardrobe, she found no trace.

Nevertheless, her anger did not abate. Winona had betrayed her: she would strike at once, and deep. She would go to Blainey and make a personal request for the part she had procured for the ingrate. When Brennon arrived, she remained a moment talking with him. Her confidence had solidified itself in him lately; from many things, she was certain that he was her ally, that she could trust him.

"Brennon," she said directly, "is Mr. Peavey in town?"

"Left this morning."

"Then he's been back? How long?"

"Three or four days, Miss Baxter."

"Has he seen my friend, Miss Horning, much?"

He nodded energetically.

"Look here, Miss Baxter," he said, with a sly important look, "been wanting to slip you a pointer for some time. She's not your friend. Danger ahead! Look out!"

"What do you mean, Brennon?" Doré said confidentially. "I wish you'd speak out! Mr. Peavey's been to see her a good deal, hasn't he?"

"No; but she's seen him! She's a sly one—clever, too; wouldn't risk his coming here!"

"Has she talked against me? What has she said?"

"We know what the governor's like, you and I, eh?" he said, with an impertinence that she did not notice, in her distraction. "Well, she plays the quiet game—home talking, family type." He leaned forward, looking at her directly: "See here! This is straight. If you've got your mind fixed in the governor's direction, better grab him now!"

"What has she said about me?" Doré said anxiously Then, suddenly: "Has he asked you any questions? Where I go? Whom I see?"

He nodded, laughing.

"Sure he does—every time! Look here! He's one of those kinds you've got to snake with salt on their tails. But he got nothing out of me! Trust this old fox for that! I like to see a pretty girl have her fling as well as a man!"

"Thank you, Brennon," she said, without much attention, entering the car.

When she reached Blainey's office, she was forced to wait some time, Sada Quichy being in conference with the manager. The Red Prince had made an enormous success, and the diva had leaped into instant popularity. Of a consequence, Blainey, who had treated her with abrupt tolerance on the night of the dress rehearsal, now accorded her the honors due to royalty. At the end of a quarter of an hour he appeared at the door, according her the favor of a personal escort, which she, comedian herself, repaid with an extra languishing adieu, each sublimely indifferent to the motley audience of actors, agents, authors and musicians who assisted respectfully at this sport of the gods.

Blainey perceived Doré, and giving her the preference with a curt bob of his head, reentered his den. There was in the gesture something unusually abrupt that struck her. When she followed him into the room, this impression was reinforced by the evident atmosphere of ill-humor.

"What's the matter with you, Blainey?" she asked directly.

He turned—hostility in every movement—flinging himself back into his chair, cocking his cigar in the corner of his mouth, running his hands into the arm-pits of his vest, frowning, determined.

"See here, kid, it's no go! Don't start anything! You've worked me for a sucker once!... Thanks; I've retired from charity committees!"

"What do you mean? I don't understand!"

"Ain't you come here to get me to take back that stuffed doll you panned off on me?"

"Take back!" she cried, amazed. "You mean to say Horning's fired?"

"Come off!" he said, grinning.

"Honest, Blainey, I didn't know! Since when?"

"Ten days. Say, she was fierce! I wouldn't trust her to carry a spear! The next time you try to work me, kid, on the charity racket, just pick my pockets. It'll save time!"

"Horning fired!" she repeated, suddenly furnished with a clue to all that had happened.

"Clever kid!" he said, watching her appreciatively. "You don't have to be taught!"

"Honest, Blainey, I didn't know!"

"What you come here for?"

"I came to get you to bounce her," she said. "That's straight!"

He gave a long delighted whistle.

"Cripes! Why, pussy's got claws! You don't say! What's she been up to? Crossing the heart line?" he added, possessed always with the idea that he had divined the cause of her troubles.

"No. Tried to double-cross me with a friend—but one that counted! However, if she's bounced, all right! No need to bother you!"

"No hurry, no hurry, kid!" he said, with profound disdain for the forty-odd clamorers in the outer purgatory. "Don't get a chance to look you over often. Well, how's the heart?"

She laughed.

"Better!"

"What's that mean—worse?"

"Perhaps!"

He shifted his cigar.

"Better get to work!"

"Be patient!" she said, shaking her curls. "Only three months more!"

"Hein?"

"The tenth of March is when my season closes!"

"Honest?"

"Quite so!"

"You'll begin to work?"

"Either that, or other things!" she said provokingly.

"What other things?"

"Oh, I might marry!"

He snorted with rage. Then, drawing his calendar to him, he turned ahead.

"March ten, eh?" He paused, and put a big cross on the day before. "I'd like an option of the ninth myself!"

"How so?"

"Let me discuss a little contract with you before you come to any other decision. What do you say? Promise!"

She laughed. She had no illusions in her mind as to the nature of what he might propose.

"Listen to what I've in mind before you close anywhere else!" he persisted.

"All right, Blainey!"

He rose, dragging himself up from his chair.

"Heavens, Blainey, do I get the honors of Sada Quichy?" she said, laughing, as she perceived his intention was to accompany her to the outer door.

"Come to me, kid, when you need a tip or for anything else!" he said quietly. He put out his stumpy hand, tapping her shoulder. "I'd like to do a lot for you—know that, don't you? All right! Good luck!"

She gave him a quick pressure of her hand and went out. The atmosphere of the theater always impressed her, throwing her other life into futile outlines. Here was something definite—the satisfaction of a purpose, the reality of work. And as she returned, thinking of Massingale, of the wild romance she had created for themselves, she felt more and more drawn to a career. A woman who achieved things, who had even a trace of genius, had a right, in the eyes of the world, to her own life, to be judged differently.

The news she had received of Winona doubled her suspicions. If this chance had failed the girl, no wonder that she had set herself deliberately toward a marriage with Peavey. Dodo was wildly indignant at this double dealing. She considered the least of her admirers her inviolate property, and she never saw one desert without a feeling of resentment. In Peavey's case it was thrice blameworthy, considering all the prodigies of planning she had spent to bring him to the point and maintain him in the status quo. For Peavey was in truth, as Judge Massingale had laughingly expressed it, the "man behind the rock," and even in the wildest flights of her imagination she retained, unconsciously, a prudent spirit toward the uncharted future. She might fly in the face of society, and then, again, at the last, she might not find in herself all the audacity she desired to believe in. Peavey was a bridge back into conventionality, security and certain necessary luxuries which she never for a moment, in her thrifty mind, intended to neglect.

As soon as she reached her room, she sat down to write to him. This letter called for her deepest intuition; it was a very difficult letter to compose. She tried a dozen methods, rejecting each as too obvious. In the midst of her labors, Josephus, to her surprise, arrived with the basket of champagne, which, strangely enough, it appeared, had been below, forgot, all this time. This at once relieved her, and suggested a bold stroke. She wrote:

"Dear Mr. Peavey:

"Thank you for the champagne. Certain things which have come to my knowledge make it impossible for me to accept any more such favors from you. Indeed, I reproach myself for what I have permitted in the past. But I have always had a different feeling about you, a real respect and trust, and I have always believed in you as an ideal of what a gentleman should be. I am very disappointed—very sad.

"Sincerely yours,
"Doré Baxter.

"P. S. I thank you also for your automobile, which I shall never use again.

"P. P. S. I return the remaining tickets to the opera."

She studied this, well content with its indefinite reproach.

"There; he will believe I know more than I know," she said, with a bob of her head, "and he will have to come to me in person. That is better!"

Once Mr. Peavey was before her eyes, she had no doubt of the interview. She posted the letter immediately, telephoned again without being able to receive any news of Lindaberry, and went out to shop for Christmas presents for each of her score of admirers—presents which she would see were carefully delivered to their destinations by three o'clock on the preceding day. For a month she had carefully gone over her acquaintances, much as a fisherman overhauls his nets, consecrating hours at the telephone, fanning back into substantial flames little sparks of intimacy that were sinking into gray forgetfulness. She did not throw herself into such machinations with any relish, but as a necessity forced upon her; yet, once embarked, she did nothing by halves. She lunched, motored, descended for tea, dined, dipped into theaters and danced without a rest. She even revived the hopes of Harrigan Blood and Sassoon by a few discreet concessions—matinée performances, tea at five, or an innocuous luncheon.

With Massingale she was still far from that moment when she could distinguish the man who was from the romantic ideal her imagination had visualized. After the second meeting in her rooms, when she had a second time reached the man in the raw, each, as if by mutual consent, had avoided further opportunities of dangerous intimacy, each a bit apprehensive. But the conflict between them continued. There were moments when he seemed to abandon his attitude of incredulity, relaxing into humorous or confidential moods, and others when he seemed to be flinging barricades between them. If he had planned deliberately to seduce her (which God knows he hadn't!) he could have adopted no more adroit means than this intermittent opposition which rose from the struggle in his own conscience. She could not brook the slightest resistance in him. It roused in her a passion for subjugation, an instinct for reprisals which sought insistently to reverse the original rôles.

In the moments of these half-hearted retreats he adopted a policy of far-off analysis, putting questions with impersonal directness, inviting her into indiscreet confidences. She divined that all this curiosity had one instinctive object—to discover something in her harum-scarum present or devious past that could roughly and effectively repel him. At such times she responded with a violent antagonism, paying him back in coin, tantalizing him, inventing stories to plague him, and always succeeding. Once she said to him:

"You know Sassoon's getting reckless. Look out! Some day I'll disappear!"

He chuckled, inciting her on.

"You needn't laugh! I'm serious—he's serious, too. Where do you think I went this afternoon? To look at a house. Oh, the loveliest little house, a little jewel-box—within a stone's-throw of you, too; and everything beautifully furnished, wonderful rugs, bedrooms in old red brocade, like a palace!" She continued with an account of details, warming up to the part: "Sassoon began by talking apartments. But I killed that quickly. Entirely too common!"

"But the house?" he said, forcing a smile.

"Only one thing lacking; yes, and I told him so at once—flat, like that!"

"What?"

"No garage!"

He affected to laugh hugely at this bit of fiction.

When he sought to explore her history she was ready with another artfully contrived story to infuriate him:

"My life? Oh, it's terribly exciting! Father was a gambler—Mississippi River, mining-camps and all sorts of dangerous places. Mother was in the circus, bareback riding—hoops, you know. They separated when I was five; had a terrible fight, they say. I went around with the circus, in the processions, dressed as a star. Mother was teaching me the tight-rope; I'd learned a bit of acrobating, too. There was a funny old clown."

She stopped, with a far-off pensive look. When she invented a story she had a natural gift for dramatic detail. She said very sadly, as if conjuring up the figure of a mournful child, sinking her voice to a whisper:

"My mother drank. When she was in her tantrums she was very cruel to me—she beat me! I remember my poor little arms and legs all blistered and smarting! Then I used to run to Jocko—that was the funny old clown's name. He had three colors in his hair, red, white and brown—all natural, too! Jocko used to put a poultice on my wounds and give me candy. I loved old Jocko; he taught me the back-somersault, too. Then mother ran off with a dentist—one of the kind that travel around in a band-wagon from village to village, teeth-pullers, you know, and whenever a tooth is to be taken out the bass-drum goes off bang! so you don't notice the pain. The dentist hated me! He was a horribly tall, long man with a broken nose. I can see him leering down at me like an ogre and saying:

"'Soon as you get your second teeth, little brat, I'll make a fine set out of 'em, worth seventy plunks at the least. Just you wait!'

"He used to pinch me and box my ears when mother wasn't looking!"

She considered this phase thoughtfully, satisfied that she had done it justice, and said suddenly:

"Then, one night, father turned up. Whew! that was a scene! He came up suddenly just as Crouch—that's the dentist—had finished with the cymbals and was beginning:

"'Ladies and gentlemen, I come not to take your hard-earned money, but to do you good!'

"He always began like that. I can see it all now—the kerosene lamps flaring below, the country crowd standing around, gaping, and all of a sudden a Spanish-looking man, broad-shouldered, pushing his way violently through them all, and then mother shrieking:

"'My God! Crouch, it's Baxter!'"

She drew a quick breath; the recital had made her tremble a little. He watched her closely, with that lantern stare with which he transfixed the accused at the bar, amazed at her exhibition, incredulous, and yet with a lingering wonder.

"Mother got away," she said, resuming. "Crouch was laid up in a hospital for months, they told me. Father took me with him. He was very kind, very; but it was a terrible life; rough company, squabbling and shooting, no home, no rest, always taking French leave! Then he struck a run of luck and made enough to strike for Gold Fields and open a saloon—faro at the back. Gold Fields was worse. Every one drunk by eight o'clock at night; poker and faro until breakfast!"

"And you saw all that?" he said gravely.

"Yes, all!" she said simply, shaking her head. "Father dressed me up in red slippers and white stockings, red dress and mantilla, and rigged up a flower-booth for me—said it brought custom. And there I had to sit, so tired and sleepy, with all the vile tobacco smoke, and the men—black, red and white—shouting and singing. Once or twice I fell asleep."

All at once, as if groping in the dark, her hand had at last found the door, she said abruptly:

"But one night a Mexican tried to kiss me, and father shot him. He fell across my counter, grabbing at me. It was awful! The next night father was called to the side entrance, and when we found him there was a knife in his back, and he was dead!"

She rose.

"What, you're going to leave me there, Dodo?" he said maliciously, forcing a smile. "You're worse than a dime novel!"

"That's enough for now. It tires me! The rest for another time," she answered. "Now you can understand all that happened after,—I never had half a chance!"

The next time she began all over again, saying:

"My real story is much more terrible. Now, this is the truth!"

These inventions usually started from her insistence on discussing his wife with Massingale. She had an imperative curiosity, which always shocked his sense of delicacy, to hear him criticize her, to admit her faults, even to drop a hint that there might be other men—that, in fact, she lived her own life; which would mean, to Dodo's illogical need of self-justification, that he also had the right. But Massingale curtly, peremptorily refused to be drawn into such discussions. Whereupon a coolness arose, and she sought to annoy him by pretended pasts. He knew that she was embroidering, and yet the very facility of it amazed him. The past was one thing: he did not like her references to Sassoon and Blood and what they implied, even though he was sure it was specially fabricated for his confusion.

So, as soon as peace had been restored, he always pressed her for a denial. Whereupon with a laugh, after some coaxing, she would admit the fiction. But the moment the next cause of conflict came, she was always quits by turning on him and declaring:

"You know all I told you? Well, half of it was true!"

At the end of the week she received an answer from Mr. Peavey. Contrary to custom, it was not typewritten, but performed in his minute and regular hand:

"Dear Miss Baxter:

"Your letter has caused me the utmost pain. Please do not, I beg you, judge me by appearances! I have found, to my cost, that I have been greatly misled in the character of a person I trusted. I must see you and explain everything. I am now in the Middle West. I shall be able to run over to New York for five hours on Thursday next, and shall advise you. Believe me, this is the first opportunity I can make.

"Your devoted friend,
"O. B. Peavey."

She had found this letter, on entering, in the pile of mail that always accumulated on the hall seat, and had read it standing in the hall. She sought for other letters, and suddenly encountered one that made her halt with surprise. It was in Mr. Peavey's handwriting, and addressed to Miss Winona Horning. She took it and went up-stairs. Winona was in her room, looking up a little startled at Doré's determined interruption.

"I have brought you a letter!" she said very quietly.

The girl took it, glanced at it, but did not raise her eyes.

"Read it, why don't you?"

Winona Horning opened the letter and read slowly—once, then a second time. Then, without a word or a raising of her glance, carefully and scrupulously tore it into bits.

"Have you anything to say to me?" said Doré in a hard voice, triumphant.

Winona did not raise her eyes. From the first, she had not met Dodo's glance. She hesitated a moment, opening and shutting the case of red morocco, shifting the card, that lay too exposed. Then her shoulder rose defiantly:

"No, nothing! What's the use of words?"

Dodo remained a moment, enjoying her defeat, waiting an overt act, ready to blaze forth. But, Winona continuing inert and unresisting, she turned on her heel, with a final scornful glance, and went to her room.

"There's one thing, at least, she'll never be," she thought to herself, "Mrs. Orlando B. Peavey!"

Had she known then just what had transpired between the bachelor and the girl who shared the dingy wall with her, she would have been even more amazed—and perhaps a little inclined to make allowances.

CHAPTER XXII

Snyder's attitude during this tumultuous time was exceedingly puzzling to Dodo. She seemed fairly to haunt the rooms, arriving at the most unexpected moments, remaining determinedly camped on her trunk by the window, endlessly silent and immersed in reading. Betty came often now in the late morning, or toward six o'clock, hours when Dodo was sure to be at home. Doré had a passionate affection for children, and remained for hours on the floor, romping boisterously, or with Betty in her lap, brown curls against her golden ones, exploring endless enchanted realms. Once or twice in the fairy twilight, when eyelids had gone nodding, overburdened with wonder and long listening, and she felt the warm flesh of tiny fingers clinging to her neck, she had waited, cramped and motionless, subjugated in a soft tyranny, glowingly happy and at peace. At other moments, with the little body pressed against her own, encircling arms and childish kisses awoke in her a sudden famine, poignant even as the emotion that flowed through her when Massingale had held her in his arms.

But Snyder she could not understand. She paid no attention either to Dodo or to the child, keeping always aloof, always with averted eyes. This indifference revolted Dodo. How could any one care so little for a child so young, so soft and so clinging! In her heart she resented it as something inhuman and incomprehensible, until suddenly, one day, her eyes were opened.

Their great enemy, the clock, had stolen around to the inexorable hour, and Snyder had announced the moment of farewells by starting from the trunk with a loud closing of her book.

"Time up!"

A cry from Betty, and a convulsive closing of arms about the protector.

"What! already?" said Dodo, with a sigh, coming back unwillingly from a painless world of dreams.

"Past time!"

"Just five minutes more!"

"Dodo!"

"Oh, dear!" she said, with a last protesting hug. "What a dreadful mother you have, Betty! How would you like to change mothers, young lady?"

A giggle of delight and a furious nod of assent.

"I'll be your mother, and you can come and stay here all the day and all the night, and then there'll be nothing but dolls and fairies and good things to eat all the time! What do you say? Will you come and be my little girl forever and ever and ever after?"

She had begun in a light tone, and had insensibly drifted into a tender note, hushed and with a touch of real longing. All at once she looked up, startled. Snyder had snatched the child from her—Snyder as she had never seen her before, towering, with tortured eyes, stung to the quick.

"Why, Snyder!" she began. But the woman turned away quickly, with a murmur, gone before she knew it.

She was startled at this incomprehensible revelation. "What? She's jealous! Snyder jealous! But then, why does she act so indifferently to Betty?" she thought, amazed.

Still other things puzzled her about her taciturn room-mate—one thing in particular. Whenever Massingale came, Snyder was sure to appear, hostility writ openly on her direct eyes. Dodo almost believed that she had instituted an espionage.

For Massingale came in often now to her room after the close of the court. She had found, with a new rebellion, that there were bars beyond which she could not penetrate into his life, and much as she scorned the conventionalities, she found that on certain points she could not move him. In public places where they were apt to meet his world he refused to take her unless a third was provided. When she declaimed he answered abruptly:

"I am a public man; you don't understand."

And he flattered himself that on this side, his public life, he would always be immovable, no matter what disorder she might exercise over the rest of his existence. This brought her a strange feeling of being outlawed, of standing beyond the pale. She resented it fiercely, not realizing, perhaps, how much she cared, turning her anger against society, vowing vengeance, more and more determined to flout and affront it. Denied complete liberty to participate in his life, she had resolved to bring him into hers. He agreed readily to meet her friends, seeing in this a way to save appearances. Ida Summers amused him, but it was Estelle Monks who interested him most.

Like most women of advanced ideas, she held her opinions, not so much as convictions, but as a sort of revealed truth which it was her duty to spread; and she was determined to inflict them on her listeners, crushing out all disbelief, restless and unhappy before opposition. To her, marriage was the arch-enemy. Woman suffrage she dismissed lightly.

"That's of so little account. Of course it will come, sooner or later. That does not interest me. The great question between man and woman is marriage!"

"Perhaps it were better to say the greatest problem that the human race has had to consider," responded Massingale, smiling. "That's why we keep putting off its readjustment. What would you do? Abolish it?"

"Some day, yes!" said Estelle, without evasion. "I say flatly that two human beings weren't made to live together all the time. It may happen once in a million times, and then—do we ever know? What I hate about marriage is, it is so intellectually debasing: one has to lie all the time to make the other happy, and then you end by lying to yourself!"

Massingale, awakened from a tolerant amusement to a quick curiosity by her boldness, shifted to a more alert position, asking:

"Just in what way?"

"The thing I want to do," said Estelle Monks, her face lighting up with enthusiasm, "is to think honestly, not to fool myself! Now what is marriage? It is really an institution for the assembling and transmission of property." ("Ah, she's been dipping into socialism," thought Massingale.) "Good! But, in order to make it convincing, we Americans try to give it a romantic basis!"

"And you think that's worse?" said Dodo, opening her eyes.

"Much! That's where the lie begins! We swear not only to live together in a business partnership, but to love and adore each other, and to love no one else for the rest of our lives."

"Why, Estelle!" exclaimed Dodo, who was profoundly shocked in her deepest romanticism.

"Yes; and in order to bolster up this absurdity we have to corrupt our whole literature. Young girls and men are brought up with the idea that God, in some mysterious providence, has arranged for us a special affinity—that there can be only one person to love in the whole world. Why, some are so fanatic that they are certain that they shall go on together riding a star for a few million years through a few trillion spaces! Now, that's what I call fooling your intelligence!"

"Yet I know those who have been married forty years and still love!" said Massingale seriously.

"As comrades or as lovers?" asked Estelle quickly. "Comradeship—yes, that I admit: comradeship between man and woman, each equal, each free, not forced to account to the other, comradeship such as exists between you men—absolute loyalty, absolute trust, each working for the same object, working together, an object outside of yourselves. That is life and liberty! And what is the other—your marriage? Each sacrificing what he doesn't want to sacrifice, unless, which is worse, one does all the sacrificing. What happens now? A woman exists as a free being for twenty—twenty-five years; then a man comes along and says, in so many words:

"'If you have lived a virtuous life—which I have not—I will allow you to renounce all your male friends, or retain those whom I approve of as acquaintances, to limit your horizon to my home, to bear my children, to accept my opinions, never to be interested in any other man but me, to keep my house, amuse me when I'm tired, convince me of my superiority over all other men, go where I must go, and age before I must age; and in return for these favors I will swear to convince you that I have loved no other woman but you, will blind my eyes to all other women but you, and, if I die first, you will find me waiting patiently by the pearly gates!'"

Her listeners acclaimed this sally with shrieks of laughter.

"May I ask, out of curiosity," said Massingale,—for, these conversations being serious, frankness was the rule,—"how you feel toward my sex—your oppressors?"

"Being a healthy woman who enjoys life," said Estelle simply, "I like men very much—better than women, who are to me usually nothing but sounding-boards. More, it pleases me exceedingly to attract men, and to be attracted!"

"And if you fall in love, temporarily? Or perhaps—"

"Not at all! I desire very much to find a man big enough, courageous enough, so that I could love him. When I do, I shall live with him openly!"

Massingale looked up, rather startled; but Estelle, without embarrassment, in her simple fanatic way, continued:

"I should hope that it might be for life. If it were not, there should be no tyranny. Only, whatever I do will be done honestly and openly: when such a man comes I shall announce it frankly to my friends and to those who have a right to know!"

Massingale was about to interject that she would be a long time finding a man who, on his side, would have the courage to assume such responsibility; but a certain analogy to his own predicament tripped up his impulse and made him change his remark.

"Others have thought the same, theoretically," he said carefully. "Few have dared to put it into practise."

"Which is immoral, that or nine-tenths of the marriages to-day? Am I selling myself, as many a woman in your world does who marries for ambition and retreats under the mockery of a legal phrase? And when love has changed into indifference or hate, is there anything more horrible, more brutalizing, than marriage, and is such a woman anything but a paid mistress? I know women who tell me their stories, who look at marriage as a sort of social umbrella. And they are right! Society demands only appearances; it never cares what goes on under the umbrella! That's why I want to live honestly and think honestly, and that's why I intend to have the courage to live as a free and self-respecting, intelligent human being!"

These extraordinary sentiments were pronounced with the fire of the revolutionary; nor was all that she had earnestly proclaimed without its effect on him. He did not seek to amuse himself, but, impressed as if seeking to perceive the extent of what might be coming, he asked:

"One question. You are a good reporter. You go everywhere, and women talk to you frankly. How many share your ideas?"

"As ideas—many!" said Estelle. "Unfortunately, women are still what history has forced them to be; their courage is in deceiving!"

"I know it is so!" said Massingale, aroused in a way that Dodo had never seen him—a perception which was allied with a little jealousy that Estelle should thus appeal to him. "It is inevitable, too. Women who are in revolt to-day see in marriage the instrument of all their oppressions. It is natural that women are resisting the idea of marriage. But they are doing so blindly. They do not distinguish between marriage as an ideal, and the defective conception of marriage: just as people who violently attack the shortcomings of the church confuse a human instrument with a divine religion. I can answer you at once. Are you perfect? Am I perfect? Why, then, should marriage, which is the union of imperfect beings, be a perfect thing?"

"But such a union as I believe in would be a true marriage!" said Estelle Monks, restless under the doubts his words had brought to her philosophy. "You'll answer, 'Marry and divorce.' But that's all quibbling; my way is more honest!"

He did not continue the conversation, wondering to what extent Dodo had been listening to such an advanced apostle; but he said:

"Miss Monks, you're very honest, and I know you believe all you say; but—don't be offended if I tell you this!—opinions change with experience, and you have not yet had that experience with actual conditions that is necessary!"

Estelle Monks, piqued at this answer which precluded argument, rose stiffly and went out.

"Why did you say that?" asked Dodo reproachfully, yet not displeased to be left alone in the tête-à-tête which he usually avoided.

He was in a serious mood, and because he wished to be honest in his own mind, he answered warily:

"She is too fine a type. I'd hate to see her make a mistake!"

He was thinking how much of what Estelle Monks had said applied to his own marriage. What a mockery it was, and what right had two human beings who were driven apart by every personal antipathy—physical, mental and spiritual—to go on, bound by a convention, preventing each other from seeking happiness elsewhere? And, remembering her attack on marriage as the slavery of woman, he thought bitterly that she had expressed only half the truth. He was, indeed, neither married nor a free man, checked in every impulse, denied at every turn.

"What are you frowning about?" said Dodo.

He answered hastily in that language which, as has been said, was given us to conceal our thoughts:

"I was wondering how much she had affected you!"

"Not the least!" said Dodo, adding impulsively: "And yet, that is just what I feel!"

"You, Dodo?" he said anxiously.

She went to him with a sudden enthusiasm, taking his hands, perhaps subconsciously divining the bitter personal reflection that had been going on in his mind, feeling the moment to be propitious.

"Ah, let me tell you now what I want for us!" she began ardently.

"The great dream, Dodo?" he said, smiling.

"Yes, a dream, but a dream that will come true!" She hesitated, and standing before him, her eyes lighted up by the penetration of a woman, a glance that left him confused, she said directly: "You think you understand me? You don't; but I understand you! You are afraid of me! You love me, but you try not to, because you are afraid of me!"

"How?" he asked lamely.

"Because you think that I want to interfere in your life. Oh, yes, you do! I remember the look in your face when I was romancing about Sassoon, making him divorce—you remember, when you asked if that was what I intended to do with you?"

"I was joking!"

"Not entirely! There's been a good deal of such thoughts back of your eyes. You are afraid I'll take it into my little head to be Mrs. Massingale. Don't deny it, Your Honor; I know! That's where you are totally wrong. I hate marriage; I could not stand it a month!" she said curtly. And she continued dramatically, stretching out her hand: "I swear to you now that, whatever happens, I will never be your wife! I've told you I would take nothing from you; I mean it!"

He watched her, erect and impassioned, weakly conscious of the dominion she had established over every craving and every impulse.

"Ah, no, no!" she exclaimed indignantly. "It's nothing so commonplace I want! There's only one love possible to me—a great transcending passion, which would be so far above all earthly things that a year—a month—would compensate for a whole life of loneliness! Don't you see, it's love, an immense love, such as only comes once in a million times, that I'm seeking?"

"How?"

Suddenly her mood leaped into playfulness, her eyes sparkled with delight, and her clasped hands pillowed themselves against her cheek, as if imprisoning in a caress a beautiful and precious thought.

"First, let's run away—away from all this ugliness, from all these eyes, from all this hateful, noisy, black-and-brown city! Run away! Oh, that's such a wonderful idea in itself, to go flying through the night, just you and I, leaving it all behind, to a place I dream of night and day—to some wonderful island, far off in the Pacific, where we can be alone, live for ourselves!"

He did not check her, though he was wondering from what book she had found such ideas, curious to learn to what extent she had visualized her romance.

"And how long would you keep the island, Dodo?"

"Not long!" she said quietly. "Perhaps a year, perhaps only a season. That must be agreed; and when the dream is over we would come back!"

"And then?"

"And then we would separate and never see each other again!"

"Why?"

"So that it could never become commonplace or stale—so that it could live in our lives as the one great memory, with no regrets."

She stopped, looked at him tensely, and went on:

"You would take up your life again, and I would bury myself in my career, and you would watch me, little by little, become a great name!"

"And never see each other—"

"Perhaps when we are quite old," she said suddenly. "You won't believe me! I would do it!" She clasped her hands tumultuously over her heart. "Oh, how easily I would do it! Ah, to have such a romance—anything might come!"

"What book have you been reading?" he asked quietly—yet feeling a little sad that he could not follow where her lawless imagination ran.

She turned away hotly, clenching her fists, crying:

"Ah, you will never let go of yourself! You are afraid—afraid of everything!"

He followed her, laying a hand on her shoulder as she stood by the window.

"Keep your island in southern seas!" he said, with such emotion in his voice that she wheeled about. "Believe in it all you want, extraordinary child, even if it ends by my paying all the penalty. Go on with your day-dreaming."

His glance lay in hers, his arms were longing to take her into them, when Snyder entered, with a quick knock that gave them only time to spring apart. At this moment Dodo could have driven her out, fiercely rebelling against this constant espionage. What right had Snyder or any one to interfere with her liberty, or to say whom she should see? She resolved hotly to have an explanation when she returned. Now it was necessary to master her emotion.

"A moment—a moment to change my dress; ready in ten minutes!"

She ran quickly to trunk and bureau, gathering up her articles of dress; disappearing behind a screen in the corner. Massingale, after a calculating glance at the figure of Snyder, rigid in the window, sat down, drawing a magazine to him. He no longer felt the unease he had experienced at the woman's first interruption. It seemed so natural to be there, in the musty high room, littered with trunks, with its patches of carpet and incongruous wall-paper.

In the closet, behind a discreetly closed door, Dodo was laughing at her narrow quarters. Outside, through the windows, the marshaled city was setting its lights for Christmas Eve—thousands on thousands of human beings disciplined under the old order of what is called right and wrong, the millions who never really entered his life and for whose approval his every word and action must be calculated.

"Snyder, come and button me!" called Dodo, emerging from the closet behind the screen.

She felt nothing unusual in this hidden change of dress, but to him the touch of intimacy aroused more than his curiosity.

When they descended to the closed car, gaily brushing the snowflakes from each other, a little moved by all that had passed, feeling, too, the obliterating unrealities of dark streets and lights glistening amid the obscurity, he said:

"Dodo, I wish it could be!"

"It can, it can!" she answered impulsively, excited at his approach to consent.

"The world's too big for us!"

"Some men would have the courage!"

"The trouble is, I am born under a curse," he said moodily. "I'm limited—a gentleman: that's the best and the worst of me!"

"A gentleman!" she repeated scornfully. "Yes, that's the whole of it! That's why you're afraid of everything—why you'll never, never dare!"

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THE SALAMANDER

THE SALAMANDER By OWEN JOHNSON

TO MY WIFE

FOREWORD

THE SALAMANDER

List of Illustrations

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

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автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу The Salamander
Owen Johnson

THE
SALAMANDER

By
OWEN JOHNSON