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!"

"That's true, Dodo!"

"And what is a gentleman?" she asked angrily.

He looked beyond her at the lighted windows of his club, arrogantly set in judgment over the multitude on the avenue, and answered, in mockery:

"A gentleman, Dodo, is one who is a gentleman because he associates with those who are gentlemen because they associate with him!"

She did not laugh at this; there was more below it than the sarcasm. Presently she drew his hand into hers.

"How much you need me, Your Honor!" she said softly. "What is the rest worth? Let me guide you!"

He did not reply. In fact, he knew too well that he had surrendered already, and in that moment, he said to himself that he would take his courage in his hands—that now, before the week had ended, he would go to his wife and claim from her his liberty, whatever her terms.

Doré returned early, after a dinner at the Hickory Log, riotous with the Christmas cheer. Massingale had an engagement; she wished to be in her room, childlike, eager for the excitement of arriving presents. Besides, she had planned a tree for Betty, and with Ida's aid, she set delightedly to the task of arranging candles, twining tinsel, tying up presents in neat tissue-paper with enticing bows of red ribbon. She had depleted her slender treasury in presents for Betty, having bought almost a dozen, inscribing each from some imaginary fairy prince or goblin whom they had met in their enchanted wanderings.

By ten o'clock the tree was completed, the pile of her own presents had stopped at respectable proportions, and the wanderlust having come, Dodo—not without a little feeling of treachery to Massingale—allowed herself to be persuaded, and departed for a "spree." When they returned in Peavey's automobile, which Dodo had commandeered, there was already a slight covering of snow, and at the windows the slipping wheels flung flurries of white flakes.

"I can't bear an old masher—a fossil that's falling to pieces!" said Ida gaily, returning over the events of the evening. "Did you see that old Caxton, that was buzzing around me all evening?"

Dodo laughed.

"He started after me, but I shook him!"

"Heavens, Do, how do you manage? I never can!"

"I gave him an awful shock," explained Dodo, continuing to laugh. "He'd been looking at me with big wolf eyes, licking his chops and telling me he'd leave his happy home for me—you know the stuff. He had me cornered at the upper table, and just as I started to slip away he caught my arm.

"'And what's your fairy name, you darling?' says he.

"And I answered:

"'Gussie!'

"You should have seen the face he made! He dropped me like a hot potato!"

Then she was silent, deliciously cradled in her own thoughts, convincing herself that what yesterday had seemed but a faint dream was now a possibility, visualizing, in dormant balmy seas, an island all white and green, a fairy island as enchanted as the kingdoms which each day she constructed for Betty's wondering eyes. To be Mrs. Massingale, to enter into all the irksome routine of formal society—no, that had no appeal! A year or a season in a world of her own, a great romance, a love that would sweep them up like the magnificently reckless storms of passion which came to her over the inspired motives of Tristan and Isolde—that, and then a life of work and accomplishment, a career.

All at once, as the skidding automobile slowed and sloughed about a corner, a group under a lamp-post, black and silhouetted against the snow, sprang across the fragile fabric of her dreams out of the horrid world of reality—a figure that scattered all selfish thoughts and overwhelmed her with the power of a great remorse. She leaned forward precipitately, beating on the window for Brennon to stop, and even in the moment of her disorder, true to the Salamander instinct, she explained hastily:

"A cousin—oh, dear! he's been on a spree for months; the family's distracted. Stop! Wait—I must get hold of him. No, no; let me out!"

And to Ida's amazement, opening the door, heedless of the slush on her delicate feet, of the bitter night, of what any one would think,—obeying only an irresistible cry from her soul,—Dodo had sprung out and run to the sidewalk, where the ghost of Lindaberry, come up from the abyss, was standing embattled, torn and disheveled, magnificently crazed, and at his feet a policeman, knocked out.

CHAPTER XXIII

"You're hurt!"

"'S nothing," he said, drawing a long breath, and his jaw growing rigid with the attempt to recover his control. He relaxed his grip on the collar of the inert policeman, who flattened out against the trampled snow. "This little misunshtanding—gen'lman spoke rather rude. Sorry—little mussed. 'Scuse me."

The fear that others might arrive and find him thus, the dread of an arrest—a trial and publicity—gave her a new will; for, strangely enough, even before his wild demeanor she had no fear.

"I've come, as I promised," she said quickly. "I'm going to take you home. Come, Garry!"

"Any one else?" he asked, shrinking back.

"My maid," she said quickly.

He bowed and gave her his arm to the automobile. At the door he placed her inside, saying, with careful courtesy:

"Sit outside. Thank you. Not fit. All right!"

Aware of his condition, by some tremendous exertion of his will, he had flung back the lethargy that held his senses, and recovered his dignity. Dodo, in the car, was thinking rapidly. The first glance at his eyes and quivering lips had told her how serious was the crisis. Everything else disappeared before this insistent need of her—romance, intrigues, calculation, or care of what others might think.

"Ida, it's not true what I said," she said rapidly. "He's not my cousin, but some one whom I would give my life to save. I'm taking him to his house. You must come in with me—until we can get a doctor. I can't leave him. If you get a chance, tell Brennon it's my brother; he mustn't know."

She had anticipated a struggle to get Lindaberry to his rooms; but, to her surprise, he walked from the car without wavering, and up the flight of stairs to his apartment. The two girls, leaving Brennon below with orders to wait, followed quickly. In a few moments his valet, hastily awakened, had let them in. He was a young fellow, strong and intelligent, and he gave a cry of relief at the sight of the master thus returned.

"Dodo!"

"Here I am!" she said quickly, touching Lindaberry's arm.

"Oh!" He looked at her, and then, as if suddenly recollecting himself, imbued with the need of taking command, said: "Pretty bad; can't tell what happened. Doctor—Lampson—quick!"

She turned calmly to the valet, feeling a deep delight in her control of the situation.

"You know Doctor Lampson? Good! My car's down-stairs. Go and bring him immediately!"

She returned to Lindaberry.

"Garry, lie on the couch! You've got a scratch; I want to bind it up. Ida, bring me a couple of towels, sponge, water."

He obeyed her, but his glance started nervously at the sight of Ida Summers.

"Who's that?"

She comprehended his humiliation that another should see him thus, and replied again, with a warning look at Ida, who came in:

"My maid, Garry; that's all!"

"Tell her—wait—outside."

"Very well!"

Ida, at a nod, went into the library, not without wonder at the quiet authority of voice and action in her butterfly friend.

She made him stretch out on the sofa, and with sponge and towel quickly bathed and bound up the gash across his temple. The application of cold water seemed to calm him. He relaxed and closed his eyes as she remained at his side, applying the healing sponge. She studied the racked body and disordered head with a tightening of her heart. The weak and quivering lips, the sunken cheeks, the dark circles under the punished eyes, everything cried out to her:

"You could have prevented this!"

She accused herself with a thousand reproaches in the presence of this wreck she had made, and before his abject weakness her sense of possession awoke. He was hers, as Betty was hers—by right of the unanswered famine in her maternal heart. Come what might, she would not leave him until she had seen him back into strength and courage again. She called him but he had gone off into an unseeing delirium, wandering through what black and sunken ways! She drew off his shoes, disengaged the stained tie and collar, and by patient effort slipped the torn coat from him, covering him with a clean dressing-gown.

Once or twice he sought to start up, but each time, at her hand across his forehead and her clear voice in his ear, he relaxed. This docile obedience, this willing trust in her little strength, one word of hers stilling the storm in his brain and bringing peace instead of fury, moved her almost to tears. She closed her eyes, her hand over his throbbing lids, and gave herself up to an impulsive prayer—another Dodo, back again in the quiet soul reaches of that unfathomable night when, reckless and defiant, ready to renounce the faith of a Salamander, she had suddenly found herself gliding into unforeseen deeps, miraculously inspired.

After a long half-hour Doctor Lampson came—a powerful man of quick eye, hearty laugh and abounding vitality.

"Hello, Garry! Been wrestling with skyscrapers?" he cried with a rumbling laugh, sitting down on the sofa. "Trying to drink up the Hudson River, eh?"

"Hello, Alex!" said Garry gratefully. He shook his head despondently. "Bad start!"

"Rats, man! Bad start? What are you talking about? Remember the first half of that Princeton game, eleven to nothing? That was a bad start, wasn't it? Didn't prevent you going through like a runaway engine for a couple of touchdowns, did it? Well, then! Don't talk to me! I've seen you start!"

"Good old Alex!" said Lindaberry, with a smile. "Oh, I'm in the fight!"

"Yes; you look as if you'd been fighting, all right!" said Lampson with a roar. "Now, just you shut up! What you want, man, is sleep! We'll fix you up in a jiffy!".

"Stay; get me quiet, will you, Alex?"

"Don't you tell me what to do!" said Doctor Lampson, with assumed fierceness. "Here, Rogers, get him undressed and into bed. Back in a moment!"

He nodded to Doré, and they passed into the next room.

"Pretty close to D. T's. I'll quiet him down, but we've got to get a trained nurse in here, Christmas Eve—bad time!" He began to whistle.

"But I'm here!" Doré said eagerly.

"You? My dear child, he may go quietly, and then he may take to chewing up chairs and walking on the ceiling. No, no! Who the devil could I get at this hour?" he said, studying Doré, at a loss where to place her.

A sudden thought came to her.

"There are two trained nurses where I live, friends of mine, just a few blocks away, Doctor. One is free—I know she'd come for me!"

"What's her name?"

"Stuart—Clarice Stuart."

"I know her. Good!" he said, breaking in. "All right! That'll do!"

Ida, with a note from Dodo, went off in the automobile, leaving them alone.

"You'd better go too, young lady," he said abruptly.

"I am going to stay!" she said, up in arms at once.

"This is no place for you!"

"If I were a trained nurse," she said obstinately, "it would be all right! Well, I'm some one who has a great deal more interest in saving him than any nurse, and I am going to stay!" She turned impulsively. "Doctor Lampson, Mr. Lindaberry started to get hold of himself for me. It's my fault, I didn't do what I ought to; now I'm going to think of nothing else! Don't you understand, this is my fault? I just must help!"

"Well, of course, that's different!" he said, still undecided.

When they entered the bedroom, they found Lindaberry angry and excited, struggling to rise, against the efforts of Rogers to keep him in bed. Doré went to him without a thought of fear, laid her hand on his wrist, and said quickly:

"Garry, be quiet!"

He relaxed immediately at the one voice that penetrated the roaring in his brain. She turned with a smile toward Lampson, who was pulling his short beard.

"You see? He will do as I tell him!"

And there was something in her defiant attitude, the ardor of a woman fiercely defending her own, which convinced him that she had the right to stay.

At eight o'clock the next morning she returned to her room, a cloak which Clarice Stuart had brought thrown over her garments of the reveling night. Yet, keenly buoyed up by the sense of ministering, she had no sense of fatigue. She had been at Lindaberry's bedside constantly, combating the delirium that seized upon him in abrupt gusts of fury. And in these moments of frantic wanderings, as he tossed helplessly before the stalking phantoms that rose out of the grim yesterday, when real and unreal went rocking through his tortured brain, no other hand but hers could control him. He seemed to know the moment she slipped noiselessly away, turning convulsively, stretching out his arm, querulously summoning her back. She obeyed, untired, willing, rapturously content.

Rogers, the valet, in the next room; Clarice Stuart, in her blue and white nurse's dress, silently in a corner; Doré, in pink and white evening gown, buckled satin slippers, with the odor of tired flowers still at her breast, sat endlessly, her eyes on the restless tormented head and the twitching lips that were never still, listening to incoherent phrases that still had intelligence for her.

What an inferno of desperation and defeat rose shapelessly about her! Through what dark corners of despair had he blundered in these last days! Sometimes, across the horror and the anguish of his mutterings, she heard her name called in a voice that rent her heart. But she thought no more of herself, only of the quiet that she must enforce on him; and quietly, smiling in the dark, she repeated in a gentle voice:

"I am here, Garry—Dodo; I am taking care of you! Try to sleep! No—I won't leave you!"

The hours rang from some unseen clock, and in the end the paling dawn filtered across the white roofs of Christmas morning. Clarice Stuart, noiseless as a shadow, rose and extinguished the useless candle. Some one touched her on the shoulder. It was Doctor Lampson, his finger on his lips. She glanced at the bed, slowly disengaging her hand. Lindaberry had fallen at last into a profound sleep, his hand clutching the bedspread, his head still impulsively turned toward her.

Once or twice she had wondered if she had been wise in introducing into this intimacy Clarice Stuart, whose frivolous side only was known to her. But, as soon as she had come, Doré knew she had made no mistake. Clarice Stuart, once in uniform, was another being, serious, matter-of-fact, concentrated, with a strength that surprised her.

"Cut out apologies, Dodo!" she had said, with brusk sincerity. "The presents are all in—the props can wait. What's a turkey between friends? This is the real part of life. You need me! That's enough, isn't it?"

She had asked no questions, and for that Doré was grateful.

When she reached her room, she calmed her nerves with a hot bath and went to sleep at once, without a thought of the heaped-up presents waiting to be opened, or the mail that had accumulated. She had only one idea: to snatch some rest, and to be back—on the field of battle. Snyder had been waiting, restless and apprehensive, looking innumerable questions at such an inexplicable return.

"Don't worry, Snyder!" she had said, with a tired laugh. "Nothing terrible's happened. Tell you later—must get sleep. Wake me at ten!"

But it was almost eleven when, impelled by some uneasy instinct, she awoke precipitately, furious at Snyder, who, on her part, retreated, dumb and obstinate. In the rapid ten minutes in which she dressed, Doré, remembering with fresh irritation the surveillance which had been instituted over her actions, burst out:

"Snyder, what's got into you? I'm beginning to get annoyed—yes, exceedingly so! I don't like your manner toward me. I sometimes think you don't approve of me! What is it? Do you think I am not capable of taking care of myself? Or do you wish to select my friends for me? Which is it? Let me understand!"

"Well, yes! I don't want to see you getting in trouble!" answered Snyder abruptly.

"Ah, that's it!" said Dodo indignantly. "I couldn't believe it. Now I know! So that's why you come sneaking in every time I have a man calling here?"

"Not every man!" said Snyder, reddening. "One man!"

"Judge Massingale? Say it!"

"Yes!"

"Why?"

"You know very well!"

"I don't!"

"He means no good!" said Snyder obstinately. "Besides, he hasn't the right. And you care!"

"The idea!" said Doré, flushing hotly under an accusation which she knew had point. "I suppose you think I've been out with him? That that's the sort of girl I am? Thank you for your confidence! And may I ask why you take it on yourself to regulate my conduct? Have I ever asked you any questions? Do I know anything about you?" She stopped abruptly at the pain that flashed into Snyder's face, and, being sensitive to such things, added quickly: "You've hurt me very much, Snyder, by your attitude—very much! I didn't expect it of you!"

"I'll tell you—when you want. Yes; guess I have been sailing under false colors!" said Snyder, in a blundering voice. "No, you ain't asked questions. But it isn't 'cause I want to judge you, honey!... Lord, why should I judge? I'd stick to you, no matter what you were. That's not it—only—"

"Only—what?"

"Only, pet, you don't know what's facts!" said Snyder, looking at her directly, "facts and consequences!"

"I've got a very wise head!" said Dodo, laughing to dismiss a subject she did not wish to discuss. "Don't you worry about me, Snyder! I've fooled many a man who thought he was clever. I won't make mistakes! Give me the mail! I'm off! Back at four for Betty and the tree. Be prompt!" She started out, then came back and caught Snyder playfully by the chin: "Why, you old dragon, don't you know I'm just amusing myself?"

But Snyder, always obstinate and direct, answered:

"Dodo, I tell you, you're serious!"

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Doré, departing with an exaggerated laugh.

Lindaberry was still sunk in long-needed slumber when she returned. Clarice, tiptoeing out, informed her that the worst had been avoided: he had a constitution and a will that was incredible; that alone had saved him from an attack of cerebral fever. What he suffered from most was insomnia and lack of rest; then, of course, there was the craving that had grown into the body, the hot thirst for alcohol. He would have to be watched every moment for days. There was the danger. She lay down on the sofa in the salon, asleep almost instantly, while Dodo, stealing back to the bedroom, encamped in a distant armchair by a fugitive gray slit of light, began to sort her Christmas mail.

There were a score of letters in all, gay with green and red stamps: some from already forgotten beaus, others from girl friends; a long annual letter from her aunt and uncle, distilling the heavy quiet and enforced lethargy of the small town; a note from Peavey; sentimental scrawls from the various props; a line in Sassoon's brief peremptory style, saying that he would call that afternoon—an announcement suggestive of presents to appear; a missive from Massingale, which she reserved for the last; several envelopes in unfamiliar hands which puzzled her—in fact, odds and ends of all the curious threads that had woven into her life. She arranged them in order, the old memories first to be read and forgot the quicker, the outer cohorts of admirers, the initiated, and for the last Massingale and a letter or two that she had not peeped into, in deference to her love of the mysterious.

She began with the news from home, her body stiffening as her mind set itself to resistance. It was ten pages long, closely and painfully written out in the familiar faded and trembling hand: news of the weather and of the year's building, a record of illnesses and deaths, who had married and who had moved—the tabulated inconsequentialities of village life; and through all the complaining note of solitude and longing which always left her uneasy before the querulous pleading note of duty. She finished rapidly, and drew a long breath. The next was from her old admirer, the grocer's clerk, now full partner, faithfully announcing his marriage. She stopped a moment at the name of the woman.

"Bedelia—Bedelia Stone? Funny I can't remember. Oh, of course! Delia—the girl with red hair and freckles who hated me so. Curious, I'd almost forgot!"

She went on to the next, shaking off the heaviness of spirit which these returning memories always laid across her ascending imagination. Then came Christmas remembrances from other outstripped chance devotees—one from a young dramatic critic in Buffalo whom she had enlisted in that short stop. She smiled at this fidelity, rather flattered. Peavey's letter, announcing a delay in his return, and the forwarding of a present, was signed, "Your devoted and faithful friend." This departure from formality left her in a reverie; she foresaw complications ahead, a new difficulty in the intimacy of the coming explanation which would require all her tact to prevent an open declaration.

Before beginning Massingale's letter she scanned anxiously the two unopened envelopes. What she had feared from the first nervous glance was a letter from Josh Nebbins. He had written her on her last birthday, and on the Christmas before—sentimental confident notes, the faith of a man who believes in the future. Each time she had determined definitely to announce the breaking of the engagement,—to her long since a thing of ridicule,—but she had delayed, mainly from cowardice, for fear that that persistent, terrible young hustler would come straight to New York. Lately she feared him at every turn, obsessed more and more in her dreams by his pursuing shadow. To her relief, no word had come from him. Perhaps he too had forgot, after all! She raised herself and glanced at the bed, where Lindaberry was still moving restlessly, but asleep. Then she opened Massingale's letter:

"My Lady-of-Dreams:

"Merry Christmas, and everything you can desire, even to impossible islands in southern seas! The bracelet I send you carries a talisman of good luck to keep you from an ugly world! I'll come for you at twelve, to tell your especial ear all the things that are too fragile to put on crude paper, and if the snow holds, as seems probable, we'll get a sleigh and go jingling off into the new world, and I'll promise solemnly to believe everything you wish me to believe, never once to say acting, to be entirely docile and joyfully credulous, for a whole twenty-four hours.

"His Honor."

She glanced guiltily at the clock, amazed how completely Massingale had gone out of her thoughts. It was almost noon. She arose hastily to telephone. But at this moment the man in the bed moved and opened his eyes, which remained profoundly set on her halted figure, so luminous and young in the glowing golden Russian blouse in which she had first appeared to him. She paused, poised lightly on her toes, as he stared out at her incredulously, striving to collect his thoughts.

"Dodo?" he said in a whisper, frowning before him.

She came to his bedside, all else forgot, smiling, radiant.

"Here I am!"

Suddenly some confused streak of memory seemed to cross his brain, and immediately he said, weakness in his voice:

"You—you ought not to be here!"

"I am not alone," she said, sitting down; "there is a trained nurse in the other room."

"I remember—last night—your coming suddenly. But—"

"Hush, don't try to remember!" she said quietly. "Rest; sleep all you can!"

He continued looking at her with great uncomprehending eyes.

"What day is it?" he asked slowly.

"Christmas."

"Good God!" He turned his face away, horror-stricken and ashamed; but she, struck by the movement and the shudder that passed through his body, called to him gently:

"Garry, I don't blame you. Look at me! No, don't turn away, please."

She stretched out her hand, and slipping it under his head, brought it back to her; when he lifted his eyes, hers were smiling through her tears, compassionate and tender.

"I went to pieces," he said slowly.

"Never mind! Now I know how much you need me—what I can mean!"

"I remember nothing. Good God! where have I been?" he said bitterly, and in his eyes was the black fog of impenetrable days and nights.

"It was my fault, too; I made the mistake, Garry!" she said hastily. "All that is over, though. Now we'll make the fight together!"

He watched her mutely, his eyes seeming to widen and deepen with the intensity of his gaze.

"Don't go away—just now—to-day...."

"I won't!"

"And wear—" He raised his hand and ran it caressingly over the golden velvet. "It's your color!"

She nodded, smiling down on him, her soothing fingers running lightly over his hot forehead.

"Lord! Such a defeat!" he said presently, shaking his head.

"Hush!"

"What can you think of me?"

She looked down at his great frame, at the bared muscles of the arm that lay at her side, the corded brown neck, rough cut of chin, the powerful features, now so weak and so appealing. The despondency she saw in that great strength and stricken energy brought her all the closer to him, with an impulse to join all her strength to his, to take away the sting and the mortification, to raise him with confidence and hope.

The clock on the mantel began to send out its twelve tiny warning notes. She did not remember. She was looking in his eyes, smiling, bending over him, claiming him by every gentle right; and the breath that came deeply from her moving breast descended to him, bearing all her strength, all her will, all herself.

CHAPTER XXIV

"Oh, that's very nice!" she said, with a nod, a little intrigued at the suggestion in his voice, very curious to see what he would offer her. Between them she was always conscious of move and countermove. Would he take this moment to make another overt advance, after these long weeks of acquiescence to her whims? Just how much did this infatuation and pursuit mean to him, translated into dollars? She sat down, keenly interested, holding out her hand.

"First, please!"

He laid a red plush box on her eager palm, slowly, delaying a moment en connaisseur, to appreciate the delicate wrist and the shell-pink fragile shades of the finger-tips.

"It's a ring, a valuable ring, to tempt me!" she thought, smiling wisely to herself. She opened the box—immensely surprised. Inside was a tiny watch bracelet in gold and enamel, rare in design, but quite modest as an offering from him.

She slipped it on her wrist, nodding appreciatively, choosing her words carefully.

"How cunning! What a dear little watch! How clever of you!"

"Wait!" He leaned forward, offering the other box. "There is a choice, you know!"

She pressed the spring, and remained staring, caught by surprise. Against a background of royal blue, a necklace of pearls met her eyes, luminous and humanly, nakedly beautiful—a necklace such as once she had stood before on Fifth Avenue, breathless with desire, coveting each pearl that lay like a rare and perfectly beautiful nymph asleep against the lawn. The choice! She understood the cruel cleverness of it now. She shut the cover quickly, afraid to let her fingers know the delight of such a caress. Then she raised her eyes steadily to his keen scrutiny.

"You ran no risk!" she said scornfully.

"Take it! I ask nothing!" he said quietly.

"Then why offer it?"

"That you may understand my nature," he said in a lower voice—"how I am when I care!"

"You know I could not honestly take such a present!"

"Why not? You have warned me!" he still persisted.

"I think such a woman is worse than one who pays," she said disdainfully, and with an angry motion she pushed the box from her, rising.

"Miss Baxter," he said, with studied courtesy, putting the necklace back into his pocket, "it was bought for you; it will be waiting for you."

"Ah, that's what you've been leading up to!" she said sharply, a note of anger in her voice; for the love of the jewels had left an ache.

"Yes," he said frankly; "but they are yours—whenever you ask."

"Why don't you say what you want to say, Mr. Sassoon? Are you so afraid of me?" she said, looking him directly in the eyes.

"Perhaps!" he answered, pulling at his mustache. "And yet, we may as well be open, hadn't we?"

She studied him a moment, and then resumed her seat, making him a peremptory sign to continue.

"It is difficult to express, perhaps," he said—without, however, any trouble showing in his even tones. He paused and looked at his hand, stroking it with the feline motion of his fingers. Then all at once he began:

"Miss Baxter, I have been careful to follow the laws of the game you laid down, haven't I? I have taken care not to offend you by word or action, haven't I?"

"Well?"

"Will you let me say this to you, little girl?" he said, finding all at once his note. "You are going to make up your mind very soon what you want in life. You are too clever to wait long. Now, to be quite fair, as you pride yourself in being, you know who I am, and you know what I want. Yet you are willing to see me, knowing that!"

She took off the bracelet immediately.

"I have not the slightest interest whether I see you or not!" she said coldly. "To be honest, I only care to annoy you, to pay you back for your impertinence at your luncheon, to teach you a lesson that every woman is not for sale—in a word, to humiliate you as much as I can!"

He did not receive this in anger—far from it: his eyes took on a sudden eagerness, an avidity that he had hitherto controlled.

"Are you sure that is quite the truth—all the truth?" he asked, smiling his heavy ironical smile. "Are you sure you haven't been a little curious to know what this might mean, before you reject it? No, don't fib!" he said quietly, as she turned. "Is there anything unnatural—extraordinary in that? Don't you think such ideas come into the minds of most women? If you are going in for a career, you know what you must face! This world is a ridiculous world; laws are made to crush petty offenders! If you allied your name to a little manager, every one would scorn you!"

"And if I were your mistress, Mr. Sassoon? Say the word!"

"If you were, with your cleverness," he said quietly, "you would be received wherever I wanted you to be received: more, you would be sought, courted, flattered by those who want something out of me. Or, if you wanted a career, every obstacle would disappear at one word! Ask any one, if you want to know the truth of what I say. That's the world, young lady." He checked himself. "I don't want to talk over that—now! You asked me a direct question. This is my answer. Accept me for what I am—considering me as a possibility. It's worth it; be sure that it is a bigger field than a marriage of drudgery that ends your liberty. Consider me carefully, simply as an abstract proposition! Meanwhile, give me credit for being quite submissive and obedient!"

She remained thoughtful, surprised at the keenness of his insight, feeling she had underestimated him, feeling, too, the dramatic opposition of herself, little wandering atom of mediocrity and the great powers of wealth that could impress her so convincingly out of the time-worn eyes of this bored man.

"What are you thinking of, pretty child?" he said, struck at her glance.

"It is only because you can't have me!" she said abruptly.

"Because you don't care for what other women do!" he said quickly. "Because I am tired—eternally tired—of women who fling themselves at me! Because you make me follow you. Listen! You won't believe me—it's true. You can do anything you want with me!"

"Harrigan Blood offers me himself!" she said maliciously, for she began to have the same instinct with him as she had with Massingale, to whip him out of his calm into a fury.

"Blood!" he said angrily. "Child, you would hold a man like that three months. He would devour you, crush you. That type only feeds on women! You think I don't care! Do you know that just because you turned up in my life I've broken with Blood—that we are fighting each other tooth and nail, that I've caught him in the market, and will wring him for forty or fifty thousand for daring to get in my path!"

"And he?" she cried, delighted.

He noticed the joy in her, the childish delight of mischief, which reckoned great disasters as a broken vase.

"Little devil! That's what I like in you!" he said, with a flash of his eyes. "Blood is hammering me tooth and nail. He'll put me back three years, perhaps, tie me up and cost me a million or two more. But that's all the good it'll do him! Well, are you pleased?"

"Yes, I like that!"

"And which is it to be?"

"The bracelet, please!"

He laughed, fastening it on her arm, taking no advantage.

"You see how domesticated I am!"

"You behave very well!"

"Grant me one favor, then!"

"What?"

"To see your room," he said eagerly.

She was about to refuse, when the thought of Snyder and Betty above made her bite her lip with malice, and ask:

"Well, for once! But why?"

"To see what you prefer to all you could have!" he said; but he said it impersonally, bowing his thanks, resolved to school himself to impassibility and patience.

No sooner had they reached her room than he comprehended her trap. But it was too late to retreat. He was forced to make the best of it, submitting to introductions, pretending interest in the child and the tree. Then, inventing a lie, aware always of the laughter behind Dodo's eyes, he drew a ten-dollar bill from his pocket, and addressing Betty, said:

"Miss Baxter was kind enough to let me come up just for the Christmas tree. This is my present; buy anything you want!"

And with a stiff bow, he fled from childish things, cursing his deception, rage and avidity in his heart. Dodo, with shrieks of laughter, threw herself rolling on the bed.

But all at once she rose anxiously.

"Snyder, did he come at twelve? You know whom I mean!"

"Yes, he came!"

"You saw him? What did you say?"

"Told him you'd been in—gone out—didn't know where!" said Snyder in her jerky way.

"Snyder!" she cried furiously. "Did he leave a message?"

"No!"

"Snyder, don't deceive me!" she said imperatively. "Where is the letter?"

The woman shrugged her shoulders, hesitated, then went to a drawer and flung a letter on the table. Dodo tore it open. It was brevity itself.

"Twelve to twelve forty-five.—Why?"

Though she herself was at fault, the curtness of his message aroused her irritation. She crumpled it in her hands, then tore it to pieces.

"Very well! Now for presents!" she said.

When, after the last mysterious box had been opened with rapturous cries, dolls dressed and undressed, enormous mouthfuls of sweets consumed and crackers pulled with shrieks of fear, Snyder went off with Betty in a gale of excitement. Dodo, left alone, hurried to her presents. The harvest had been abundant; the table shone with silver. Mr. Peavey had sent a magnificent toilet set, Harrigan Blood a vanity box in gold which she embraced in her delight, Blainey a brooch which had solid convertible qualities; scarf-pins and silverware abounded. There was a set of sable furs from Stacey (heavens! how often she had feared he had not understood!), but only a silver-mounted umbrella from Gilday (like a card with "P.P.C." across, she thought!). Massingale's bracelet was of exquisite workmanship, oriental, inclosing a talisman set in rubies, her favorite stone. She slipped it over her wrist, fascinated and content with its elegance and charm, which she associated always with him. Overcome by remorse, she hastened to the telephone. She tried his club, but he was not in. She left her number, and hurriedly sent off a note by Josephus, promising to explain all, a note full of healing affection and contrition, giving him a rendezvous for nine precisely. Then she ran down the stairs, and hurried back to her patient.

He was awake, waiting her coming, and the nervous longing in his eyes changed to peaceful contemplation as she came daintily in.

"I hoped you wouldn't wake up until I got back," she said, throwing off her new furs and raising her little toque from her tomboy golden curls, which seemed to dance in joyful liberation. The red snap of the chill snow was on her cheeks, in her eyes unmistakable eagerness to be back.

He saw it, and smiled too, beckoning her with a little motion of his outstretched hand. Then his glance went anxiously to Clarice; but she, as if interested only in the furs, bore them out of the room. Dodo took her chair by his side, looking down happily.

"Many presents?" he asked slowly.

She nodded gaily.

"Heaps!"

He put his hand under the pillow and drew something out. He held it a moment in his hand, his fist closed over it.

"My present."

"Really?" she said, clasping her hands.

He watched her hungrily, devouring every fugitive flash of youth and beauty. Then he held up a ring, a diamond flanked by two rubies, in an old setting.

"It's been in the family—long time. My mother's," he said.

But Dodo, drawing back, confused, touched, resisted.

"Oh, no! I couldn't! It's much too valuable. Please, please don't ask it!"

"Too valuable?" he said, with a touch of anger. "For you? Give me your hand—left, please!"

As she started to protest further, he closed his eyes wearily. She stopped instantly, afraid of over-excitement. If he wanted anything that she could give him, it was his.

"Here, Garry!" she said. "I—it's because—I am overwhelmed!"

He took her hand, discarding with a smile the finger she offered, choosing the one that was reserved for the pledge of lovers, and before she knew it, slipped it on. She caught her breath, and a sharp pain seemed to go through her. She could not refuse; yet to accept seemed a treason.

"It doesn't bind you—means everything to me!"

"Does it?" she said, suddenly pliant.

The light in his eyes, struggling out of the shadows of defeat, alone was her answer. She made a quick reservation. If this could mean anything to him, could help him in any way, had she a right to withhold it? When he had conquered, when he was strong again, when he saw her with clear eyes as she was, so far removed from him—then she would tell him, and he would at least revere her memory. She felt a lump in her throat, a smile on her lips, and a wetness in her eyes.

"Wish it on, then!" she said, laughing merrily. "Do you believe?"