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

"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

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!"