User:SnowyCinema/P/Little Sins (Brush)

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/ch//SPOTLIGHT ON A PARTY GIRL

The spotlight was a great white eye. It was a Cyclopean eye, set in the high brow of a balcony. Sometimes it was a naked eye. Sometimes it donned a monocle of green or of red or of purple. Always it moved, restlessly, ceaselessly, sweeping over the walls of the Copley-Plaza ballroom, flashing on the horns of the two jazz bands, stabbing with brilliance the acre of floor where danced the young men of Harvard and the young men of Yale and the slim, shapely, bobbed-haired loves of both.

Tomorrow, Yale and Harvard were going to play football in Cambridge, across the Charles. Tomorrow these same young men would sit on opposite sides of a monstrous concrete horseshoe and yell increasingly raucous, increasingly rude opprobriums toward one another. But tonight they were friends. They clasped hands. They amicably laid bets at five to four. They swapped partners and flasks and barometrical predictions; they borrowed and lent and smoked the Lucky Strike of peace.

There is no dance in the campus category quite like this football dance. It is a democratic and confused affair, larger than a fraternity hop, less dignified than a prom. It is not Simon-pure collegiate, for anyone with a dinner coat and the price of a ticket can gain admission; but it is madly rah-rah. It has a special spirit, born of the crimson and blue that vie in the decorations, of the challenging

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campus songs the orchestras play, of the consciousness of tremendous things about to happen. Music and laughter and light badinage are its overtones: the referee's whistle, the boom of a boot on a ball, the long, wailed "Ya-a-a-ale" and the short "Hah-vud" of the morrow, throb in the heart of it.

Other northeastern educational institutions send delegates unofficially. M. I. T. is represented by a number of gentlemen striving to look supercilious—for M. I. T., as everyone knows, has a soul above varsity football, has put away childish things. Boston University and Tufts contribute sparsely. Dartmouth is down from Hanover in the persons of half a dozen of its more irresponsible scholars, who had a wow of a party the week end of the Dartmouth-Harvard game, and hope to repeat. Andover and Exeter are present, potential collegians intensely desirous of being taken for actual ones. Wellesley and Smith and Dana Hall lend their fairest buds. It is withal a very young and glad and vivid gathering, and a unique one, not entirely possible anywhere else in the world.

Upon such a gathering the great white eye, the eye of the spotlight that is to show you Gay Leonard, stared down. And presently, somewhere in the midst of the riotous phantasmagoria, it found her. And having found her, it was as loath as a human eye to glance away.

She was all gold. Pigmy gold slippers with stilt heels and up-sticking fan-shaped buckles. Gold chiffon stockings, most artistically filled. Gown of gold fabric that worshiped the lines of her exquisite little boy's body. Hair made of sunbeams and gilt and daffodil dust.

She was dancing with a Yale youth a great deal taller than she, and the spotlight held them both, moving as they moved, pooling them in radiance. They were conspicuous, theatrical, under the spotlight, and the Yale youth seemed somewhat bothered. But not Gay. She merely smiled, a mocking tiny smile that said, "All right. I don't mind. Why should I?" n -

Against the black of her partner's dinner coat her hair glowed startlingly yellow: a huge yellow boutonnière on a black lapel. Against the gloss of his shirt-front her profile was a cameo, clear-cut, faultless, and very faintly golden, as if her skin had caught reflections from the rest of her. She had dark eyes like atoms of velvet with long dark threads of velvety fray curving up on the lids. In the spotlight they were luminous eyes, and the lids were etched with the shadows of the lashes.

She was the prettiest girl in the room. You knew it without searching further, and you knew too that she must have been the prettiest girl in a thousand rooms on a thousand evenings before this evening. You saw that it had spoiled her rather terribly. Things told you, in an instant. The imperious tilt of her head. The little red sulk of her mouth. The cool, sure, lazy arrogance of her carriage.

If you were masculine you forgave her these things. If you were feminine you didn't. Of course you didn't. Women never forgave Gay Leonard anything at all. d Her short life had been glamorous. It is difficult to set it down in plain black words. One should make a song of it, a ragtime song, medley of all the tunes to which her feet had danced. One should sew a patchwork quilt of tatters from a host of gowns and scent it with the essence of myriad dead bouquets; or paint a picture, mad with color, dotted thick with motors, moons and men.

A thousand evenings before this evening. Evenings in bannered gymnasiums, in fraternity houses, in hotel grills, in beach pavilions, in the great high-raftered halls of country clubs. Evenings on roof gardens, at roadside inns, on shipboard. Evenings everywhere where young people laugh and flirt much and mean little. These she had known. n -

The history of a woman is said to begin with her first kiss. Gay's began, then, when she was thirteen. In the seven years since, she had permitted innumerable kisses. She had been proposed to a score of times. She had been thrice engaged, for transitory frantic periods. She had worn rings, and athletes' small trophies, and aviators' wings; and an unbroken succession of jeweled Greek letters had staked out ninety-day claims above her heart.

Men loved her for several reasons, most of them absurd. Because she caused a stir wherever she went. Because she was the most celebrated prom girl of her day. Because other men loved her. Because she never appeared to care in the least whether any man loved her or not. Because she treated them wretchedly about four-fifths of the time. Because her fragile slimness made them feel strong and omnipotent, and the discontented, where's-what-I-want expression of her face made them think, man-like, "Aha! Maybe I'm it!" . . .

They were pathetic, these adorers of Gay. They did the wrong things so inevitably. They tried slavish devotion; and bored her in a week. They tried gifts; and were scarcely thanked. They tried rages, threats, tantrums, slamming of doors; and amused her. They essayed every play but her own play—indifference, with which they might have won.

Twice she had met her match. The first was an AllAmerican fullback whose incredible conceit took girls as much for granted as Gay's amazing splendor took men. She had resented him, to begin with. Then been piqued. Then interested. Then utterly absorbed. She had not been able even to scratch the armor of his ego, and for three years thereafter she had remembered him with small inward squirms and a prayer that somewhere, some time, she might have at him again.

The second really worthy opponent was Jerry Davis. That duel was now going on, incited to fever heat by

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Gay's parents, who had lately forbidden her ever to see, or to talk to, or to think of him. d Said the Yale youth, "Thank God they've moved that spotlight!"

"Did it annoy you?" Gay murmured. She always murmured. She had a drowsy, murmurous voice, soothing to hear, and an accent composite of New York, where she lived, London, where she had spent a year, and New Orleans, whence hailed the girl with whom she had roomed at boarding school.

"I felt like a bug under a mi—" began the Yale youth, but never finished, having been cut in on at this juncture.

"Hello," said his successor.

Gay looked up into a blue-eyed face, hazily familiar. "Hello," she echoed. "Who're you? I suppose I'm supposed to know, but I'm damned if I do." Profanity was one of her parlor tricks.

"You should. We had quite a little petting party once upon a time."

"Oh, so you were the man!"

They both, laughed.

"Tell me," insisted Gay.

"Tom Nichols, Does it convey anything?" Ascertaining that it did not, he complained, "My feelings are hurt. I met you at a party the Andersons gave a couple of years ago, and between dances—"

"I remember now. In a Stutz roadster."

"Cheers!"

"How's the roadster?"

"I sold it."

"Now," Gay said, "'"my feelings are hurt. You ought to have kept it, for its associations."

A beaming pudgy person in a soggy collar cut in.

"You're a little drunk, Johnny," Gay detected. n -

"I am very drunk," said Johnny, adding politely, "And you?"

He was relieved at this juncture by a Harvard sophomore with Ducoed hair, named Dixon.

"Answer me!" demanded Dixon. Their last ten foxtrot steps together had ended on an interrogation point some moments before.

"Yes," said Gay.

"Yes what?"

"Whatever it was you asked me. I forget."

"I asked you," said Dixon severely, "who you're here with?"

"Oh. Alan Pomeroy."

"Yale?"

"Ex-. He graduated last year."

"I don't know him."

"And a very tough break that is," said Gay, "for both of you."

"Drive from N' York?"

"No, we came with a bunch in a private car belonging to some friends of mine."

"Who?"

Gay looked slightly exasperated. "Their names," she announced, "are Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Matthews. The name of the private car is Hemoglobin or something, and it got in at five o'clock this afternoon, and is now sitting on a track back of the Hotel Lenox, not far from here. The porter's name—"

"I was just asking," Dixon broke in plaintively.

"You learned," said Gay.

"You turned down my invitation to this game, and so I just wondered—"

Two black, snowy-breasted figures approached through the dim light, bumping and being bumped. "'Zent Mr. Cole, Miss Leonard," mumbled one, and the other nodded and seized her.

Gay guessed at once that he was about sixteen. n -

"All the evening long," he intoned, "I've been waiting just for this minute."

"All the evening long," she countered, "I've been saying to myself, 'Hell's bells, why does he wait?'"

There was a pause.

"You're kidding me," said Mr. Cole then, in the manner of one who has carefully thought his way to an erudite decision.

Gay's eyes flew open. "Kidding you? My dear, you know I wouldn't for the world."

"Funny thing," chuckled Mr. Cole, "the fella that introduced me to you doesn't know you any more than I do—did. He just knows who you are, your name and all. He told me all about you. So I said introduce me, and he introduced me." Mr. Cole chuckled again in a pleased way. "Just shows what you can get away with."

"If," Gay emphasized, "you have an honest face." To herself she was saying, "Who is this ass?"

"I want to ask you," continued Mr. Cole. "At the school where I go we give a knockout dance just before Christmas vacation—it's going to be December sixteenth this year—and I want to ask you if you—"

Alan Pomeroy cut in. A very large, athletic young man, not quite handsome, but engaging, with crisp ruddy hair, gray eyes, a big white smile that flashed like a darky's in an always sunburned face, and ears that protruded a little, alertly, as though they feared they might miss something. This was Gay's escort of the evening, her escort of many evenings—as many as he could induce her to allow him. This was the young man regarding whom she had said once, "If I had any sense I'd marry him. But I haven't a particle—I'm happy to say."

She hailed him now with unprecedented fervor and requested to be told where he had been "for hours and hours."

"Stuck," he answered grimly. "That's the trouble with these dances with two bands. The music never quits and

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neither can you—you get an ouch on your hands, and you keep her, that's all."

"Well, did you see me?" Gay wanted to know. "Nothing less than the ballyhoo man for some kindergarten prom had me in his clutches. Let's dance out and go and sit somewhere, Alan. I crave a cigarette and a little peace."

They pushed through the dense thicket of stags that grew at the door, and emerged, blinking with sudden light, into the corridor. "I think I'm hungry," Gay remarked then, and stood still, speculatively, as if letting her mind and her appetite confer on the matter. "I am hungry, Alan."

"Come on then, we'll go to the dining room."

Gay extended a minute right hand with a thin blaze of diamonds around the wrist and held it under Alan's chin, palm upward.

"Complexion," she commanded.

Sighing deeply, he fished in his pockets and produced, one by one, a lipstick in a cloisonné holder, a cloisonné powder case, a fat gilded capsule of rouge, and a doll's flask of perfume. These he piled on the little petaled shelf below his chin.

The shelf remained motionless, peremptory.

Sighing again, Alan once more explored, and this time brought forth an eyebrow pencil. He put it with the rest, and grinned at Gay. The grin was much more genuine than either sigh had been; it is only married men who really object to bulges in their dinner coat pockets.

"Back in a minute," Gay promised optimistically. d The dressing room sparkled with many mirrors and was sweet with many fragrances. All the girls one always finds in dressing rooms at dances were present. There was the girl who had been a wallflower all evening, pretending to be waiting for someone. There was the girl who had torn her frock, sitting in her lacy pink undies

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while the maid mended busily. There was the girl whose hair simply wouldn't fix right—very near tears. There was the girl who had brought another girl for her escort's best friend, asking anxiously, "How are you and what's-his-name getting along?" There was the girl who had temporarily forgotten that gin and Scotch don't mix and was now taking bicarbonate of soda in an effort to continue to forget it. There were the girls who crowded before the biggest mirror, and though there were twenty noses in the mirror, saw none and powdered none except the right nose.

Two spoke to Gay as she entered. One was a fellow member of the party on the Matthews' private car. The other was a brunette in scarlet velvet whom she vaguely identified as having shared the same room at some longgone fraternity house party. A vision of the brunette in kimono, cold cream and water wave combs recurred to her.

She found an empty seat before a dressing table and possessed herself of it. She went to work, staring into the glass, humming absently. March, mar-chon, down the field, Figh-ting for E-li. . . . They were playing it now in the ballroom, and lusty Eli voices were singing it. Good old song. It reminded her of so many things. Blue megaphones. Dried leaves stirred by sharp November wind. A leopard-skin coat she had had one year. Violets tied with purple cord. Great slopes of little people. Flanneltrousered bands, tramping, wheeling. The time Sid Varney found he'd left the tickets back at Harkness. . . .

She became aware, via the mirror, that girls all over the room behind her were sending her sidelong glances. They were hating her with their eyes. She smiled slightly. She derived, as she would have put it, a kick from their antagonism, envious and hence flattering as it was. She recalled something a man, a friend of her father's, had said to her once: "My dear, the number of members of your sex who will be glad when you grow old is quite appalling."

She applied the final touch of rouge and leaning for-

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ward, examined herself for ten seconds with passionate interest, as if she had heard of herself a great many times but had never chanced to meet herself before.

Simultaneously she thought of Jerry Davis.

This was natural. She was especially pleased with her appearance, and whenever a woman is especially pleased with her appearance she thinks of the man for whom she cares most, subconsciously wishing he might be there to behold. Gay wished that Jerry Davis were at this Harvard-Yale dance. She wished he were somewhere near, somewhere in Boston, so that she might get into a taxicab and go to him. She wished she had not left New York. Which was foolish; she seldom managed to see Jerry Davis of an evening when she was in New York, thanks to parental vigilance. But a city, when you are young and far away and quite in love, means just one citizen. New York meant Jerry to Gay, and she wanted desperately to be there.

She wondered what he was dong. She wondered where he was, and with whom. She even thought of calling his apartment on long distance—a notion abandoned as soon as it was born. Other girls might do that sort of thing, but not she; not Gay Leonard, who knew so well the tricks and trumps and technique of the game. d Across a corner table in the big deserted dining room she said without preamble to Alan, "Didn't you tell me once you knew Jerry Davis?"

He nodded, striking a match for her cigarette. "Sure. I know him."

"What do you think of him?"

"Plenty," said Alan succinctly. "Let's order, shall we, honey?"

Ordering took some time. It always did with Gay, because she never could make up her mind what she wanted. "I don't see a thing that appeals to me," she would say.

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And to her vis-à-vis, "What are you going to have?" And then, shaking her head decidedly, "No, I don't want that." In the end the vis-à-vis would make suggestions, and if he chanced upon some viand that caught her fancy she would examine the menu with a hopeful but skeptical eye, querying, "Where do you see squab?" and refusing to order until she had satisfied herself that squab was not simply a figment of his imagination.

"Now!" she said, when this was over. She sat back, hands folded on the table's edge, and regarded Alan expectantly.

His face was blank. She prompted him. "About Jerry Davis. What's so terribly wrong with him?"

"I didn't say anything was."

"You implied it."

Alan hesitated. "Why are you so interested? You don't know him, do you?"

"I've met him," Gay said. "I know of him. In the dressing room just now," she explained equivocally, "there was a girl who—plays around with him some. Looking at her made me think of him."

"I bet I can tell you what kind of a girl she is, then."

"What kind?"

"Either a roughneck or a natural damn fool. She'd have to be one or the other."

Gay's eyebrows—dark thin brows, arched, like parentheses set end to end—lifted a fraction of an inch. She dropped back her head, exhaled two smoke rings from a mouth that invited a kiss, said casually, "You certainly are down on him, aren't you?"

"I haven't any use for him," Alan averred, "at all. He's just no account. I knew him first at prep school. He got tossed out of there in a hurry, believe me!"

"What for?"

"Some fuss about a girl. I've forgotten the details."

Gay thought, and almost said, "Ah, but that was years ago!" n -

"He's got a weakness for women," Alan went on, warming to his theme. "Always has had. Finally married one, you know, in a drunken moment. A waitress, or something like that. That was while he was at Cornell. It ended his college career sweet 'n' pretty, but his people dragged him out of the marriage somehow—anyway, I guess he's not married now."

"I guess he's not," Gay accorded evenly.

She crushed out her cigarette and accepted another from Alan's proffered case. "Still," she said in the tone of one who opposes merely to make conversation, "I think it's rather unjust to hold things like that against him forever. Lots of boys go ga-ga in college. He's probably all right now."

She felt Alan's eyes, but kept her own eyes lowered and picked bits of tobacco carefully from the end of the new cigarette.

"You say you've met him?" he said.

"Yes."

"Recently?"

"Fairly."

"Do you think he looks all right, for heaven's sake?"

For just an instant Jerry Davis' face was in Gay's mind, clear as though she saw him. Dark hair that dipped low on the forehead and receded over the temples, in the line of the top of the capital letter M. Dark smoldering eyes, half open. Lean cheeks, but not too lean, carved with two deep vertical lines that dug still deeper when he smiled. Straight nose. Cleft chin. Ivory pallor. . . .

"I think," she said slowly, "I remember thinking he was rather attractive. That he had an interesting face."

"Interesting, hell! It's dissipated. He's sick looking. He looks as if he needed a couple of blood transfusions."

"Well," Gay's voice was mild, indulgent, "don't roar about it, darling." She thought, "Shut up, you idiot," and could have struck him.

"I don't care," Alan continued doggedly, "I see red

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every time I think of that tramp. He's the limit, Gay! He is, I tell you. I know some stunts he's pulled that—well, I know, that's all. And he's never sober. And he doesn't work—God knows how he lives, his family gave him the out long ago. And he brags about his affairs with women. Brags! Give him half a dozen drinks and he'll—What are you laughing at?"

"You," said Gay. "You amuse me."

"Why?"

"It always amuses me to hear people argue and argue, and get madder and madder—when nobody's arguing against them! It'sfunny. It's sort of a—a verbal shadow boxing."

"But you were arguing! You said—"

Gay's eyes were very wide. She indicated herself with a shiny-tipped forefinger. "I was? Don't be absurd! Why should I care whether or not this Davis keeps the Ten Commandments? I hardly know the man." In her mind she was saying fiercely, "I don't care. It doesn't make the slightest speck of difference—and besides, it isn't true!"

She added aloud, "Let's change the subject. This bores me."

"You began it."

"Then I'll end it. Tell me, who's going to win this football game?"

They talked lightly after that of many matters. But while Gay's bright mouth smiled at Alan, her heart resented him bitterly for the things he had said. And her thoughts were of Jerry Davis; loyal, protective thoughts, more tender than ever.

All the rest of the evening, in the shimmering blur of the ballroom, through the maze of the ceaseless foxtrot marathon, she thought of him. And nothing else seemed real or significant. Dancing was mere mechanical motion. Partners were just stuffed dinner coats. Voices were just voices.

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/ch//SMILES IN A GARDEN

That same November Friday night was Dolly Quinn's first night as a hostess at the Broadway Garden of Jazz. She had already begun to suspect that it might be her last.

As outlined by the proprietor that afternoon to herself and one other neophyte, the duties of a hostess at the Garden of Jazz were simple. Pure and simple. "Each o' you," the proprietor had said in an oily voice assisted by facile baboon hands, "have one o' them little tables. You set there, an' when a gen'l'man comes along wot likes your looks, he says hello, an' you say good evenin' an' smile at him frien'ly. Then if he wansa dance a little bit you take him to that ticket window, see, over there, an' he buys tickets. The tickets is twenny-five cents the dance an' the more he buys the more you get out of it, see? If he don't wanna dance he sets down at the table with you, see, an' you call a waiter an' you an' him order. An' the more is ordered the more you get too, see? You mount the check, unnerstan'? I got a goil woikin' here for me, Clarice her name is, with a fine appetite, see—" the proprietor winked owlishly "—an' she makes big money, big! An' all straight and proper, see? Everythin' fine. Stric'ly high class dance place, I got here. Best in New Yoik."

But it was rather difficult, now, to believe the proprietor.

Garden of Jazz. Often, from the street below, Dolly Quinn had seen that sign across the tall top of the building. Always it had stirred her imagination, excited her faintly. Garden of Jazz. Moon and stars and perfumed

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Smiles in a Garden flowers and lovely secret shadows, and a soft and rhythmic melody dreaming through. . . . She sighed now, looking about her. The moon was a spotlight. The stars were yellow bulbs in a dingy plaster sky. The flowers were wire-stemmed paper flowers strewn over the latticed walls. The shadows were not lovely, but suggestive, and the melodies did not gently dream, they nightmared. . . .

/poi// Boom! Boom! Why does my baby cry-HI-i Ah said crrrr-iiiii //poi/

She sat alone at a little painted table, a bead in the giant necklace of tables that encircled the vast waxed floor. The clasp of the necklace was the orchestra's platform, an oblong clasp, chased with the gold and silver of instruments, gemmed with a lighted drum like a pre posterous ruby. Outside the necklace there were other tables all the way to the walls; inside, a few couples were dancing, close-locked in the semi-gloom.

/poi// Because she know-HO-ose Ah'll get a new gal By an' by //poi/

Her table was close to the orchestra. A deafening location and not, she perceived, particularly strategic from a business standpoint. The closer you were to the orchestra the farther you were from the entrance; and the entering patrons were snapped up before they got to you. During Dolly Quinn's first quarter of an hour in the Garden of Jazz perhaps a dozen unaccompanied males had strayed through the swinging gate at the far end. Of these, only two had come her way. One, evidently a habitué of the place, had passed her by with a grin and a "Say! Look who's with us!" and sought the society of a girl two tables beyond, with whom he appeared to be on possessive terms. One had deliberated long between Dolly and the redhead

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at the table adjoining. He had stood off and scrutinized them both in the calm and comprehensive manner of a shopper contrasting the relative merits of two upholstered chairs. He had finally chosen the redhead, probably because the frien'ly smile recommended by the proprietor had remained fixed on the redhead's lips throughout, while Dolly Quinn had permitted hers to wither, finally, into something rather resembling a sneer.

She reproved herself afterward. "That's no way to act. I'll never get anywhere that way. But his eyes! Ugh. Awful."

Between dances the spotlight moon died out and lights blazed up, and it was noon in the Garden. Brilliant, hot high noon. Dolly stared with interest around the oval of ringside tables. A girl, a hostess like herself, presided over every one of them. There were blond girls and dark girls, bobbed and unbobbed, all young, all in evening dress, all brightly rouged and lipsticked and whitely, grotesquely powdered. There were (she counted) thirty hostesses, at thirty little tables. Those who had already appropriated partners leaned intimately toward them above the table tops, giggling and flirting. Those who were still unattached slumped low in their seats in attitudes of somehow rigid relaxation, and watched the swinging gate attentively. Constant small traffic went on. Couples crossed to the corner booth marked "Tickets," and returned. Waiters in aprons trotted here and there. A cigarette vendor with a laden tray under one bare elbow sauntered lackadaisically, crying her wares. Girls and men slapped in by the gate found tables beyond the inner circle and settled down to fatuous tête-à-têtes. Men alone entered and began—some sheepishly, some boldly—the tour of inspection and selection.

One approached Dolly. Out of the tail of her eye she spied him, a massive figure, headed straight for her. She thought, "Now. Now I must look at him and smile." Thinking which, she looked away from him, at a sign

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tucked among the paper roses on the nearest wall. "Vulgar and Indecent Dancing Will Not Be Tolerated." She found herself studying the sign as if it were a puzzle, noting how soiled it was and greasy, and how one of the paper roses almost obscured the "Not." . . .

"'Lo there, little one!"

She saw his hands first. They were grasping the back of the opposite chair. Pudgy hands, with grime in the knuckles, and broken nails, and a diamond on one of the squat little fingers. Her glance traveled up the blue serge sleeves, over the striped silk shirt and the frayed collar. He had two chins. His mouth drooled a little at the corners and smirked hideously, and his teeth were stained tobacco-brown in the crevices.

To the mouth Dolly said, glancing no higher, "I'm so sorry. I—this place is taken."

She felt curiously limp when he had left her. The drop of his hands from the chair-back, the receding thump of footsteps bearing him off to more hospitable climes, unnerved her, like sudden safety after ghastly peril. She drew a deep breath, and turned her head to watch him go. It occurred to her that he might watch thereafter and, if no one came to occupy the chair to which he had aspired, report her to the proprietor. "Well, let him," she said to herself grimly.

But another did come, not more than a minute later.

This was a young man, garbed in a young way that he himself would unquestionably have described as "snappy." He came with a strut; his red shoes, adorned with patterns of pockmarks, peeped from beneath gray trouserlegs like two long skirts hung on the same band. He wore a woolly vest, a factor-tied bow tie, and a dark coat with a round white button pinned to the right lapel. "If you can read this you are too damn close," the button scolded coyly in red letters.

For the rest, the young man was short and shiny-haired and lately shaven, and withal such an improvement on his

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predecessor that Dolly's smile of welcome was almost genuine.

"Good evening," she said, according to formula.

"Same to you, many of 'em," returned the young man. With a backward motion of his arm he slid the empty chair between his knees, and sat down. He folded both arms on the table and thrust his face toward Dolly's. It was rather a handsome face, in a soda-clerk sort of way. Nevertheless she drew back slightly.

"You're new here," he stated. "Am I right?"

"Yes, this is my first evening."

"Thought I never seen you before. What's your name?"

"Quinn."

"And aside from that? I mean," said the young man when she failed to interpret, "what's the rest of it? What do I call you when the lights go out?"

"I—my first name is Dolly."

"Dolly, huh? And depend on me, boys, she's some dolly! Yes sir! I'll shout that above the static. Like it here?"

"I guess so. It's kind of soon to tell."

"You'll like it, the young man predicted. "Good place. Good crowd, most nights. I've had some big times up here. See that peroxide baby straight across? Purple dress, lookin' this way?"

"Yes."

"She's sore as a floorwalker's corn."

"Why, what about?"

"'Cause I'm here with you. 'Cause I tossed her the third strike about a week ago. Her and me used to be just like that—till then." "That" was a close conjunction of two fingers on the young man's up-propped right hand. He held them so for a moment, then plunged them into a vest pocket. They flipped out again with a white square cocked between them. "My card," said the young man impressively.

Dolly read, "James (Gyp) Macmahon." And printed

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in small facetious letters in the lower corner, "If you forget it, ask Central."

"Gyp is just a nickname the boys gimme," he explained. Seeing that she was about to restore the card to him, he added with a grandiose air, "Keep it, keep it, I got thousan's."

A waiter strolled near their table, interrogated Dolly with his eyebrows. Obviously, action was expected of her, and soon.

"Sh-shall we order something to eat?" she stammered. Somehow it was inordinately difficult to ask. She would as soon, she told herself, have stopped a stranger on the street and implored him to buy her a sandwich.

James (Gyp) Macmahon shook his head. "Naw. I ain't hungry."

The waiter came to her aid. "Maybe a little something to drink?"

Mr. Macmahon regarded the waiter coldly. "Pete," he said, "I know what you got here. And if I want any I'll say so. I can make up my mind easy, without no help from you."

"But maybe the lady—"

"The lady," interrupted the lady's escort with conviction, "don't want nothin' either, yet a while. She don't want nothin' but music, so she can dance with me." He captured Dolly's small hand and flattened it between damp, squeezing palms, "Am I right, baby?"

(Did all the eyes in the Garden have that look—that look that made you want to slap faces?)

"I bet you can dance like a fool," he continued. Then, "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," Dolly said. She had attempted to withdraw her hand. "I thought we'd better go over to the booth and get some tickets, that was all."

"No need. I got plenty. Some I had left over." Mr. Macmahon released the hand of his own free will and reached in a hip pocket. He produced a worn black wallet,

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parted it with his thumbs, and took out a pack of small paste-boards corseted with an elastic band. These he sorted. A rain check from the Polo Grounds. A pass to a cinema theater in Passaic. Two trips on a Coney Island roller coaster. A pawn ticket. Several cigarette coupons. A soda check worth fifteen cents. A Lackawanna fare refund slip. Lastly, a considerable collection of dance tickets in variegated colors.

From the latter, Mr. Macmahon selected lavender ones and laid them out on the table before him after the fashion of a man about to play solitaire. There were nine lavender tickets. They all said, "Palace of Jazz, Broadway at —th Street, Good for 1 (one) Dance Only."

Dolly Quinn contemplated them gravely. She was thinking that each of them meant fifteen minutes in the probably bearlike, certainly unpleasant Terpsichorean embrace of James (Gyp) Macmahon. Nine times fifteen was—well, far too big a total of minutes anyway. And without profit. No profit whatever would accrue to her from those lavender tickets, purchased, doubtless, under the supervision of James' purple-gowned, peroxided Past across the way, and credited to the account of the same.

"Hm," thought Dolly Quinn.

She was by no means altogether mercenary. On the basis of a fifty-fifty split with the management, she might have brought herself to dance nine times with Mr. Macmahon—but if Mr. Macmahon had been charming she would gladly have danced nine times with him anyway, without any remuneration at all. She did some things for money, did Dolly Quinn, because she had to. And she did some things for love.

But for neither love nor money she did nothing. She had quite a long time ago made up her mind that life was too short.

The band drew a sudden protracted whining breath, and all over the Garden the lights faded until they were no longer fires, but embers. n -

"Come on!" cried Mr. Macmahon, and bounced to his feet.

"No," said Dolly firmly.

She saw him hesitate, nonplussed. Then he was looming over her, and she could feel his hands, pinching her arms, pawing her, seeking to drag her from her chair. "The kid says, 'Make me,'" he chuckled. "She likes the ole caveman stuff—"

"No!" her voice soared hysterically. "No, no, no—I won't. You—oh, let go!—"

He had left a cigarette burning in the ash tray on the table. Swift as thought she picked it up . . . quashed it on the back of the hand that clutched her shoulder. . . d The dressing room for women employees of the Garden of Jazz was an ugly room, ugly and dirty, with a worn bare floor and pea-green walls and a line of mirrors that reflected a row of coats drooping from hooks. But to Dolly Quinn just then it was a blessed refuge. She reached it breathlessly, through the heavy door, and sank down on the wooden bench before the line of mirrors. She braced her elbows on the dressing table, pressed clenched fists against her throbbing temples, closed her eyes. "Ooh," she sighed. "Golly!"

The room was empty and very still. She sat for a moment motionless, basking in its security and peace. Once she emitted a tiny snort of disgust. Once, remembering the name that Mr. Macmahon in his wrath and pain had hurled at her, she scowled and bit her lip, and pounded her fists together furiously, as if the gentleman's slick head were between them.

And at last she jerked her own head up and confronted herself in the looking glass, "Well," she said, "I guess this means you're fired, doesn't it, hmm?"

Blue eyes gazed back at her somberly. They were large eyes, frank, wide, nothing-on-the-conscience eyes,

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and the blue of them was the high lovely blue of a picturepostcard ocean. Above them, straight black eyebrows tweezered by Nature almost met in her present anxiety. The creamy shoulders, bare except where her gown ran up slim pennants of pink chiffon, sagged a little, and the tilt of the black head was not as dauntless, as debonair, as usual. There was a dimple in her right cheek; but it was far from a mirthful dimple now. Not a smile, but a grim tightness of the curved coral lips produced it.

Beauty in distress.

Of the distress and its causes, more will presently be told. Meanwhile there is this to be said, in footnote, of the beauty: It was not the flamboyant type. You did not stare at it on the street—but after you were past you had a vague conviction that you should have, a sense of something subtle overlooked. When you met her, you were drawn to her by some inward sweetness not definable. The realization that her features were exquisite came second, and seemed relatively unimportant.

It was, moreover, a delicate, a thoroughbred type of beauty—astonishing, considering her ancestry. It was not a beauty that belonged in the Broadway Garden of Jazz. It was not a beauty that the Garden could appreciate. Some people prefer lithographs to water colors, drums to violins, geraniums to small sweet forget-me-nots. d She took her coat from its hook and put it on, reflecting drearily as she did so that a payment came due on it tomorrow. She pulled a diminutive black felt hat low over one brow. Coat and hat were undeniably inexpensive; but they were not cheap. They had a certain air, a certain artfulness. Dolly Quinn bought few hats, but the hats she did buy fitted close in the crown, depended for effect on line rather than trimming, were never that fatal half-inch too long in the back of the neck. She bought one coat a year, not a gay coat, or a fur-edged coat (be-

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cause the fur couldn't be real) but a slim coat of dark cloth that might be held around her little figure snugly and that wore a brave bright flower on its collar. Taste was a gift of hers, inherited Heaven knew where. Certainly not from Amelia Quinn, her mother, who had lived and died in a calico wrapper and a dotted Swiss boudoir cap.

Seating herself once more at the dressing table, she opened her hand bag and checked over its contents. There was a small plain linen handkerchief; a vanity case with a double lid, red powder caked in one side, white in the other; her latchkey to Mrs. Minafee's boarding house; a stub of pencil; a notebook half full of hasty thumbnail sketches; and a dollar and thirty-seven cents.

"But," remarked Dolly Quinn, "tomorrow's pay day—"

And then, because her stock-taking reminded her of James (Gyp) Macmahon, and because she possessed a sense of humor that never let her be mournful long over anything as fundamentally ridiculous as he, she laughed. Bubbly, carefree, eighteen-year-old laughter.

"Fool!" she said. His verbal epitaph.

In this mood of restored cheerfulness she left the dressing room and went in search of the proprietor.

The proprietor stood at the main entrance. Monarch he was of all he surveyed, and he surveyed much, for from his vantage point he had a triple outlook. On his left was the Garden of Jazz in spreading tinsel glory. On his right were the elevators whence came, by ones and twos, his clientele. Directly in front of him was the cash box in which they deposited dollar bills entitling them to enter and spend other dollar bills. . . .

He stood with both hands on the cash box, and when Dolly halted at his elbow she fancied she saw the hands instinctively tighten their grip, as though he feared an attempt might be made to take it away from him.

There was no recognition in his jet-button eyes, so she said, "I'm one of the girls you hired this afternoon." n -

The eyes crept over her face like slow black beetles, clung for an instant to the brim of her hat, dropped to her coat, crawled up again laboriously. "I know. I been hearin' about you."

"Well—I suppose I'm fired?"

"I ain't said so," said the proprietor laconically.

He shifted his eyes, and focused them, after a leap more cricket-like than beetle-like, on the indicator above'the door of one of the elevators. It was rising.

"What for," he queried aggrievedly, still with averted gaze, "must you boin a gen'l'man on the hand?"

"He got fresh," said Dolly simply.

The elevator clanged to a stop. The glazed door slid open, and from it issued—shot, rather, as if impelled with great force from the rear—three young men. Dolly had an absent-minded impression of dark topcoats, silk scarfs, uproarious merriment.

"I knew he'd tell you, Mr. Winberg," she continued, "and I thought of course I'd be fired. But even if I'm not I guess I'd better go. I'm afraid it isn't the kind of job that—that I can fit into, exactly."

Mr. Winberg appeared not to have heard. His entire attention was centered at a point behind and somewhat to the right of Dolly. She eyed him an instant, then turned inquisitively. . . . The three young men were shedding coats and scarfs and hats at the check room door. It was to be seen that they were arrayed, all three of them, in dinner jackets of a knowing cut and a quite Fifth Avenue correctness. It was to be seen also that they wore these as matter-of-factly as bricklayers wear overalls.

While Dolly looked, one of the young men wheeled around. Across a dozen yards of intervening haze his face struck at her, as strangers' faces do now and then; and she had a prescience that she would remember it vividly, in all its details, for a long, long time. . . . Dark hair that dipped low on the forehead and receded

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over the temples, 1n the line of the top of the capital letter M. Dark smoldering eyes, half open. Lean cheeks, but not too lean, carved with two deep vertical lines. Straight nose. Cleft chin. Ivory pallor. . . .

The proprietor was speaking. With an effort she broke the invisible chain that held her eyes to those dark smoldering eyes across the way. "What did you say?"

"I say," Mr. Winberg repeated softly, "you think maybe you stay a little while an' not boin no more gen'l'men on the hand?"

"I—" began Dolly.

"Them're swells," persisted Mr. Winberg. "The dark one—already he likes your looks, see? An' I'm short of goils anyway tonight. Maybe you stay?"

She turned back again. The dark one was still watching her. He smiled, and the two deep vertical lines in his cheeks dug deeper.

"We-ell," she said. d The orchestra was muted now. It played an aching, yearning, broken-hearted tune. Indian Blue. A weird tune, full of minors, sensuous and heady. Over all the Garden dusk lay, punctured with firefly gleams, patterned with shadows slowly spinning. The faces of the dancers were big white blossoms; the spotlight was a stream of glistening drops that poured down on them.

/poi// In-di-an In-di-an Blu-u-u-u-ue. . . . //poi/

Pulse of drums. Sob of horns. Little hushing "Hst! Hst!" of feet.

"Oh," sighed Dolly Quinn, "I adore that piece!"

"Does sort of get you, doesn't it," he answered.

Dancing with this man, she thought, was like dancing

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alone; as easy, as careless, as that. And yet you knew you were not alone. There was the hand outspread between your shoulders. There was the hand that held yours, the thumb around which your fingers curled. There was the satin lapel that caressed your cheek, and the cool, just barely scratchy jaw that grazed your temple sometimes. There was the odor of shaving cream and cigarettes and recent highballs.

She speculated as to the number of highballs; fixed it at two, possibly three. The faultless rhythm of his foxtrot steps indicated that (unless he was a superior drinker) it could hardly have been more. Dolly Quinn knew all about drinkers, superior and otherwise. She had called one "Father" for almost nineteen years.

She said aloud. "You don't like to talk when you're dancing, do you?"

"Depends. I don't with a marvelous dancer like you."

"I don't either. It spoils it."

So they said nothing more at all . . . until the foxtrot neared an end. Then Dolly said suddenly, earnestly, "Please. I wish you wouldn't."

His face drooped over hers. "So?" he drawled. "Not that kind of a girl?"

"No. I'm not. Really."

The shoulder under her right hand rose and fell in a quick, light shrug. "Have it your own way," he said equably.

The incident passed out of her consciousness almost at once. "He's been drinking," she told herself. "And besides—a Garden of Jazz girl—he's not to blame for getting me wrong." Thus he was forgiven and exonerated, on grounds that during the similar incident of James (Gyp) Macmahon she had not even thought of.

When the music stopped and the lights grew strong they left the fldor and sat down, face to face, at Dolly's same little table, and smiled at each other.

"Let's introduce ourselves, shall we?" he said. "I'm

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Jerry Davis—" his smile quirked whimsically "—loafer. Ofttimes known as the Bootleggers' Delight. Which reminds me—"

He signaled for a waiter. One came running. Dolly noted with a pleasant feeling of self-justification that it was the same waiter, the eager Pete.

"Bring us cracked ice," directed Jerry Davis, "and—what will you take with Scotch, child? White Rock? Ginger ale?"

"Ginger ale."

"Two bottles of ginger ale, two of White Rock, a flock of chicken sandwiches." He addressed Dolly again. "Chicken O. K.?"

"Absolutely."

"Anything else you'd like?"

"I can't think of anything just now."

"Avaunt," said Jerry to the waiter. And to Dolly, resting her chin on his fist. "Now. Tell me about you."

She adopted his method. "I'm Dolly Quinn—" Because she longed to impress him, she hesitated; then because she was Dolly Quinn, she told the unvarnished truth. "Shop girl."

"Name the shop," he said promptly. "It gets a new customer tomorrow."

Dolly's single dimple presented itself; a big dimple, round and deep, as if someone had puckered up lips and blown into her soft pink cheek. "For the infants' wear department, does it?"

"My God, is that what you sell?"

She nodded.

"But what a hell of a thing to sell!"

"It isn't, she protested. "It's a darling thing to sell. Such wee little tiny bits of clothes! I love 'em."

Jerry studied her for a silent half minute, so intently that she became confused and said at last, "Don't!"

"Don't what?"

"Look at me like that." n -

"All right," he assented cheerfully, "I'll try not to. But you'll have to promise not to do that again."

Which made it Dolly's turn. "Do what again?"

"Get all sparkly like that. Smile like that. Wave those just-can't-believe-'em eyelashes at me. After all," he reminded her, "I'm only a man. And somewhat more subject to eyelashes than most."

Dolly informed herself sagely that this was probably true.

"You know, he went on, "you're the greatest surprise I ever got in my life, you are really. I haven't stopped gasping yet." He put out a tentative forefinger and touched her hand. "Are you real?" he asked ingenuously. "I did a lot of high pressure drinking earlier this evening, and I'm still not sure I'm not seeing things. Are you—you?"

Dolly shook her head gravely. "No. I'm two pink elephants."

Jerry was just as grave. "Odd!" he mused. "I could have sworn you were a most wonderful little blue-eyed girl about as high as my heart." He pulled a silver flask from a hip pocket and regarded it fondly. "Flask," he said, "good old flask, never leave Jerry. Never, never forsake him. Any flask that can make two pink elephants look like that—"

He broke off and again fixed Dolly with his intent, intensely personal gaze. This time she met it without embarrassment. It lasted for many seconds.

"I can't understand you," he said at last in a puzzled voice. "I—well, what you said a while ago when we were dancing—you meant that, didn't you? You aren't the usual dance hall kind of girl at all. I can see that perfectly now. And yet—you're here."

"Um-hum. I'm here."

"Why are you?" he asked directly.

"Oh—money."

There was a pause. Jerry sat meditatively fingering his

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flask, opening and shutting and reopening the top of it. Dolly watched him. She thought, "I like him." She thought, "Is he always so pale?" She thought, "I'd like to draw his hands."

Then she said to herself, unexpectedly, not knowing why, "Poor kid." It was a curious thing. Women were prone to think Jerry Davis fascinating, dangerous, wicked—anything but pitiful. But to little Dolly Quinn, from that clairvoyant early moment on, he was pitiful above everything else.

The waiter returned. He set two glasses half full of cracked ice before Jerry. He put a platter of chicken sandwiches panting tongues of lettuce before Dolly. He: lined up green bottles and brown bottles between them. And withdrew.

"Not for me, thanks," Dolly said. "Just the ginger ale."

Jerry halted, flask poised. "You don't drink?"

"No." She sounded apologetic, so as not to criticize him. "Isn't it dumb? But I just never have. I loathe the taste of it."

Again his eyes probed hers. He finished mixing his own highball, then leaned toward her, twisting the glass in his fingers. "What are you doing in this place, Dolly Quinn?" he said gently. "Come on. Tell me. I want to know."

Through Dolly's head there flashed the reflection that she could tell this dark-eyed young man anything, that he would understand and not be bored, that she wanted to tell him. . . .

She laughed shyly. "You'll have me blurting out my whole life history in a minute!"

"I hope so, very much indeed."

"But it's not a bit thrilling."

He seemed to ponder this, pro and con. "Perhaps not," he decided. "It hasn't had much time to be yet, has it? A few years from now—" n -

He let the sentence hang there, piquant with prophecies unspoken.

"You're one of the people things happen to," he went on after a pause. "You know there are those people? I know you're one, just by looking at you. It's inevitable, with that face." Thoughtfully he joggled his glass, so that the ice clinked. "You're lucky—because you'll live. You'll suffer sometimes, and break your heart—but you'll never miss anything. Not anything at all." He lifted his glass, and surveyed her over its rim. "To a great life," he said, and nodded, and drank deeply. d Now the story of Dolly Quinn's past was brief. That is to say, she made it brief when, later, she told it to Jerry. It was a little like taking a person unable to read to a movie, that recital. She spoke the subtitles aloud; but of the pictures that came between, that reeled in panorama across the screen of her remembrance," she said nothing.

"Well, first," she began, "I come from New Hampshire, from a little town called Seavale. I lived there always, till about a year ago."

(Narrow village street, unpaved, clouded with saffron dust in summer. The fourth small rickety house from the corner. The weatherbeaten front door that never was opened. "Go 'roun' the back!" . . . Wet laundry on a line, Chickens scratching. The back door at the top of four steps flanked with piles of tin cans and refuse. The smell of food and yellow soap and steam and stale alr, when you entered.)

"I'm the youngest of five children."

(John, the taciturn, the sullen, who wore rubber boots and worked on the clam flats and never looked very well washed. Mary, whom you didn't dare mention toward the last because she had "had to get married." Amy, whose eyes were also blue, who clerked in the millinery store and was in love with young Sullivan, the grocer's son. Frank of the sleek hair and the drooping cigarette

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and the checked suits procured during his frequent mysterious pilgrimages "away.")

"We all had to work, and I worked in the summers for a lady named Mrs. Wendell, taking care of her two little girls. And after I got through school—I left high school the end of my second year, I was sixteen then—I worked for her right along."

(Breath of flowers and cleanliness. Great cool rooms full of precious, marvelous things. Rugs like moss. Chairs like thrones of velvet stuffed with feathers. Leafy lawns to walk on. Gardens. Rides in a glittering automobile. Two curly-headed little faery girls. And that lovely laughing lady who was always dressed up, who was always soft-voiced, who said, "We say 'She /i//doesn't,'//i/ Dolly, not 'She don't,'" and "Do you think you could make this frock fit you, my dear? It's really not becoming to me.")

"Then, about a year and a half ago, my mother died—"

(Tired face, worn face, worn hands folded on rusty black taffeta, resting. Resting at last.)

"—and my father and I didn't get along so very well—"

(Stumbling footsteps late at night. Muttered oaths. Things broken. "You think I got money for foolishness?" . . . Reek of stale alcohol. Maudlin tears sometimes. Whimperings. Blows. Stocking feet in the other rocking chair.)

"—so finally I left home and came to New York. Mrs. Wendell helped me. She did everything for me, Mrs. Wendell did. She believed in me. Thought I had talent—"

Dolly halted. "You see," she explained diffidently, "I try to draw. That's my—one ambition. To be an artist."

Jerry Davis' eyes were sympathetic, encouraging. He sat very still and did not speak at all.

"I'd saved up a little money," Dolly resumed, "out of the salary Mrs. Wendell paid me. And she sent me more every week. For art lessons. I worked daytimes at the

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store where I am now, and at night, three times a week, I went to art school. I was getting along pretty well—at least I think I was—up until about a month ago. Then—the money stopped coming."

Jerry uttered an involuntary sound of compassion. "Why?" he demanded.

Dolly shook her head. "I don't know why. It just did."

Sincere concern was in every line of Jerry's pallid face. "But look here," he said, "didn't you—haven't you written her? Maybe her letters got lost coming, or something. You ought to write her. She can't mean to leave you in the lurch like that! If she's the kind of person you say—"

"She is," Dolly declared stanchly. "She's just perfect."

There was a little silence; then she added slowly, as if considering his suggestion, "One letter might have got lost, yes. But not four. She always sent a check once a week. And don't you see I can't write her? I—" Dolly was flushing painfully—"I can't beg. She's been so much more wonderful to me than I deserve, to have sent it this long."

"Stil—" Jerry began. But something in Dolly's expression forbade any further remark that might be construed as censure of her benefactor, so he said instead, "Well, go on."

"There isn't much more. The art lessons have had to stop, of course. I mean—it's all I can do just to live on what I make at the store." She was speaking lightly now, as if it were quite unimportant. "I applied for a job at this Garden of Jazz place just today, after work, because I thought it might be a good way to earn a little extra money, that I could put away and save until I had enough. But—" her eyes roved the room, and she shrugged—"it's not so good, after all."

"Where," said Jerry, "were you going when I first saw you? Home?"

"Yes. I was quitting." n -

"And you came back just for the rest of this one evening?"

"Yes."

"Tell me why."

Their eyes met. For just an instant it was on both sides a poignant glance, breathless, fraught with meaning. Then Dolly's eyes narrowed to slits between her twinkling, laughing lashes. "Because the proprietor asked me to," she teased. d He did not try to kiss her in the taxicab on the way to Mrs. Minafee's boarding house. He put his arm around her shoulder and held her hands in one of his, but he did not try to kiss her then, or later, when the taxi stopped.

The last thing he said to her was, "Tomorrow evening? About eight-thirty?"

And when she said yes he smiled at her for a long moment in the dark of Mrs. Minafee's vestibule; then he turned and ran down the steps.

It was most unlike him. It would have astounded Gay Leonard, could she have known. Also the chorus girl with the burnt-orange hair. And the model from Madame Lilli's. And the indiscreet young matron on Long Island. And others.

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/ch//RENDEZVOUS

First, second, and third breakfasts were served daily in the Leonard household. The first was served at eight-thirty—punctually, else there was trouble. The second left the kitchen about ten. The third had no fixed hour; it might be called for at any time between nine A. M. and two P. M., depending on the night-before activities, or the day-to-come engagements, or the mere inconsequent whims of the consumer.

The eight-thirty breakfast was a hearty one for Mr. Henry Harbison Leonard, father of Gay. He ate it alone, in a great hurry, and blindly, with his eyes fastened on the market quotations in the New York Times. When he had eaten it he departed in his limousine, behind his uniformed chauffeur and the smoke of his matutinal cigar, for Wall Street.

The ten o'clock breakfast was borne upstairs on a tray and laid across the embedded knees of Mrs. Henry Harbison Leonard, who thereupon said in a tone of surprise, "Breakfast?" Mrs. Leonard was one of those people who always seem surprised, and even incredulous, about every smallest happening in life. She appeared perpetually to doubt the evidence of her senses, and was prone to cry, "Home, dear?" when her husband came home, and "Awake, dear?" when her daughter awoke, as if these things were the last she had expected and entirely too amazing to be true.

Mrs. Leonard breakfasted slowly for the sake of her

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digestion, and sparingly for the sake of her avoirdupois. Having breakfasted, she lay back against her pillows and seized the Times, which had been brought up with her tray, and by successive spread-eagle flingings of her arms, turned to the society page. Then for half an hour she perused accounts of the doings of people she had never met, and wondered why, with all Henry's money, she never met them. . . .

The third and final breakfast was Gay's, and it was usually consumed with Mrs. Leonard as an argus-eyed spectator. Supervision of her daughter's diet and health was one of the few duties of which sudden riches and re sultant corps of servants had failed to deprive Mrs. Leonard. It was a duty she loved, a lingering ghost of the vanished happy days when she had had things on her mind. She clung to it obstinately.

Observe her at noon of a day in early January:

Having assured herself that it actually was noon, and having consulted a maid named Martha as to whether or not Martha was quite certain that Miss Gay had said noon, she ascended in a small elevator like a coffin on end from the first floor of the house to the third. There were four mirrors in the elevator, slivers of silver down each eorner. These photographed her en route. One caught her plump placid face and mild blue eyes; one the back of her head, with its graying blond hair coiled tightly; one the profile that was like a careless cartoon of Gay's. All the mirrors framed sections of her brown Georgette dress, and one revealed a much begemmed and rather puffy hand, with which she fingered the elevator button.

Arriving at the third floor, she stepped out into a small hallway and turned to her right. Past three doors—the open door of Gay's sitting room and the closed ones that led into Gay's dressing room and bath respectively—she walked, and reached a fourth, and entered.

This was Gay's bedroom. It was darkened, and very chilly, and Mrs. Leonard moved at once across to the win-

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dows. She moved cautiously, eyes on the floor, so as not to tread upon the twin metal slippers, one rampant, one couchant, the fur-trimmed silver cloth negligée, the nebulous stockings, the round green circle of evening gown and the several bits of lingerie with which it was strewn. A school days roommate had once said of Gay that she did not undress, she molted; and the accuracy of this remark was here self-evident.

Mrs. Leonard put down the windows and raised the shades halfway. In the new illumination the room waa revealed as precisely the sort of bedroom Gay would inevitably have had. Spacious. Silken. Sophisticated. Even delicately improper. It might have been created in Hollywood as a background for a Naldi or a Negri. Ac tually it was the work of a young Fifth Avenue decorator who had fallen in love with its owner while he did it.

Mrs. Leonard turned on a radiator, picked up the furand-silver negligée from the floor, brought a pair of mules from a clothes press, and approached the bed. A vast, perfectly square bed it was, at the head of which taffeta draperies reared in an inverted V toward the ceiling. Gay lay in its exact center, her yellow hair sprayed over the pillows. She had pulled a taffeta puff to her chin, and she clutched it with four fingers incongruously clad in an old tan kid glove. The glove might have puzzled a bachelor, but a benedict or any woman would have known that it was worn to keep a layer of skin cream intact upon the hand.

Mrs. Leonard said, "Gay."

The sleeper's eyelids flickered, but did not open.

"Gay!"

"I heard you," drowsily.

After an interval she pushed porcelain shoulders etched with black lace straps from under the covers and sat up, yawning. "Ah-hmm! What time is it, Mother?"

"It's just twelve, dear. You wanted to be wakened at twelve." n -

"Did I?" Gay sighed.

She peeled off her gloves and flexed her fingers relievedly; then held one hand at arm's length and surveyed it, head tilted sideways. "Anybody phone?"

"Yes, Peter Newton. He said he'd call later. And Irene—she said for you to call her. And someone else who wouldn't give his name."

"Wouldn't give his name?"

"Well," explained Mrs. Leonard, "he hung up before Wilkins could ask him. I wonder who it was?"

"Might have been anybody."

Mrs. Leonard drew the negligée tenderly around Gay's shoulders and sat down on the edge of the bed, facing her, "How do you feel this morning, dear?"

"All right."

"What time was it when you came in?"

"Oh—" Gay yawned again "—it must have been about four, I imagine. We were night-clubbing."

"Who was 'we'?"

"Oh, Tim Holden, and the Matthews, and Windy Grant and Jane McClure, and Harry—"

Gay stopped short, and all of a sudden sneezed, feebly, punily, as a kitten does. (Men always laughed, and felt especially muscular and mighty, when Gay sneezed.)

"Sneezing?" cried her mother. "Catching cold! Get back under the covers, dear, this minute. I'll go down and see about your breakfast. You want it up here, don't you?"

Gay nodded. "In the sitting room." d The sitting room was not the largest of Gay's four rooms, nor was it the most artistic in design and decoration. But more than any other room, it expressed its owner. It was full of Gay. Full of her personality and her triumphant youngness. Crowded with her small significant possessions. Photographs of men. Snapshops of men and

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girls, prisoned under the plate glass top of the desk. Letters and more letters. A memorandum pad with such notations as "Peter tea Wednesday Ritz" and "white velvet dress to cleaner's" written thereon in dashing girl chirography. A souvenir hammer from a jazz café, serving as a paper weight. Golf sticks acquiring winter rust in a corner. The wooden paddle with which one Punk Wyman had been spanked into his fraternity. An original drawing of Gay herself, framed and autographed. A prodigious scrapbook she had kept one year, cracked at the binding and mended with adhesive tape, its pages so laden that they held the top cover at an acute angle to the lower and drooled tassels and tiny pencils on cords and scraps of candy-box ribbon and wisps of corsage tulle in all directions.

The table beside the chaise longue had a trough below it, in which reposed four of the latest novels, a University of Michigan year book, a pamphlet on the care of the skin, and a much bethumbed volume which Irene Matthews' younger brother had secured in Paris the summer before and brought into the States concealed in the seat of his trousers. . . . Gay's real library occupied the shelves on both sides of the fireplace and presented a chronological chart of her life's reading, from Peter Rabbit to Sinclair Lewis. In the lower shelves were the Elsie books, the Little Colonel books, the Lawrenceville stories of Owen Johnson, Kipling's Jungle Tales and Pollyanna. Just above them was a shelf of textbooks. French readers with profuse interlinear translations done in pencil. An algebra illustrated with caricatures of the algebra teacher. A trot for Cæsar's Gallic Wars with its front cover torn off, disclosing mystic symbols understood only by the foolish early 'teens:

/po// Gay Leonard m Henry Blythe l //po/

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(Henry Blythe had been the romantic looking sideburned riding master at Miss Madison's school on the Hudson.)

The upper shelves held books she had bought within recent years; and books people had given her, long lines of them, their fly-leaves inscribed variously: "Happy birthday to Gay from Aunt Lucy," or "Eternally thine, S. B." Or "Take this and shut up! Jimmy."

There was a painted extension telephone on a little painted stand in one corner. There was an open fireplace before which stood the big cushion-laden chaise longue. There were three windows draped in heavy silk, and a door that led into the hall, and a second door that, left ajar, afforded an entrancing glimpse of the many-mirrored pale-green-and-orchid dressing room adjoining.

There were approximately twenty young men in frames along the sitting room mantel. A motion picture star, a campus poet, a pole expert, a tennis champion, a magazine cover artist and a saxophone player from a famous band—not to mention assorted collegians, bond salesmen, gentlemen in business with their fathers and professional playboys in no business—were among the twenty. d When Mrs. Leonard returned to the third floor and bustled into the sitting room, followed closely by a butler with a tray and a maid with an armful of little birch logs to be burned in the fireplace, Gay was telephoning. She sat perched on the arm of a chair, her legs crossed, her slight body in its silver robe bent over the instrument, which she balanced on her knee. This was her telephone attitude. Like all her attitudes, it was pictorial, charming.

Upon the entrance of the little procession she frowned slightly and swung around so that her feet were in the chair and her back toward the room. Mrs. Leonard and Wilkins and Martha, busying themselves behind her, were then treated to the following discursive monologue: n -

"Oh, but I did! I always do what I say I'll do unless I change my mind . . . Well, it's that kind of a mind . . . Um. Yeah . . . Of course not, I'm never serious before breakfast . . . I can't tell you just now . . . You know damn well I haven't forgotten! . . . Yes . . . Yes, I'm planning to . . . Well, not this minute. Not in my black lace nightie—particularly since it's raining . . . Oh, I don't know . . . Yes, about that time, barring accidents . . . Yes . . . Be sure you do! You know how afraid I am of you! . . . Yes, I'll try . . . 'Bye!"

Gay hooked up the receiver and placed the telephone back on its stand. Her breakfast was by this time spread out on a table beside the chaise longue, and the log fire was sputtering promisingly.

She stood silent, hands on hips, until the butler and the maid had departed. "For heaven's sake, Mother!" she exploded then. "Must I have an audience when I'm telephoning? You could've waited a minute!"

Mrs. Leonard was accustomed to filial unbraiding and took it humbly. "I'm sorry, dear. I didn't like to keep them standing in the hall with that heavy tray and those logs—"

"What are servants for?"

"I'm sorry, dear."

Gay sat down beside the breakfast table. Her expression as she attacked her meloh was somewhat mollified, and it gave Mrs. Leonard courage to add, "I don't believe their being here made much difference in your conversation, did it, dear? You swore, and talked about your black lace nightgown—I wish you wouldn't, Gay!"

"Wouldn't what?"

"Talk so—so intimately to young men. It doesn't sound nice a bit."

"Don't be silly," Gay said.

This, too, was quite usual. A dozen times in an average day Gay enjoined her mother not to be silly, not to be

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absurd, not to be mid-Victorian. Though she cared more for her mother than for any feminine human being except herself, she unquestionably treated her worse than any of either sex, believing her a sweet soul but a stupid one, tedious, aggravating, and even more at sea than the rest of her generation as to what it was all about.

And whenever Gay said, "Don't be silly," she said it in such a way that her mother began weakly to think perhaps, after all, she had been. Thus the three impatient words effectively ended most of their smaller disagreements. It ended this. Mrs. Leonard coughed a nervous cough, and took a new tack. "Who was it on the phone, dear?"

"Alan Pomeroy," lied Gay, for reasons of her own. "I'm going to meet him downtown for a matinée later."

"Alan is a dear boy," said Mrs. Leonard.

"Umm," said Gay.

There was then a stillness in the sitting room. Gay devoted herself to her melon, mining it with small shallow digs of her spoon. Mrs. Leonard, from a near chair, watched her, and thought what a trial she was sometimes, and how lovely she was always, how like a flower with a silver-wrapped stem in that two hundred dollar negligée.

After some moments she said timidly, "Dearest, I want to ask you something."

Gay was pouring coffee with one hand, holding her huge bell-shaped sleeve out of harm's way with the other. She lifted her eyes uninquisitively.

"It's about Jerry Davis—"

The coffee pot banged on the table. "Good Lord, do we have to go all over that again?"

"Now, Gay," began Mrs. Leonard pacifically, "wait till I—"

But Gay, who had talked with Jerry Davis ten minutes since and agreed to see him three hours hence, would not wait; she believed in starting ahead of the gun when possible. "I've told you and told you," she cried furiously,

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"that I'm not seeing him any more! What more do you want? Why can't you forget him? I would've, ages ago, if you and Dad weren't forever dragging him out and dusting him off and cramming him down my throat. As it is, I've a good mind to start going places with him again. I might as well do it as get blamed for it!"

"Dear, nobody is blaming you."

It occurred to Gay that there was such a thing as protesting too much. She glanced sharply at her mother, but perceived only unhappiness and faint fright on that lady's countenance, and so was reassured. "Well, what are you doing?" she demanded. "What is this racket, anyway?"

In a very few seconds she possessed the facts. Her father, at his club the previous evening, had encountered an acquaintance named Thompson, and had played bridge with him and others. In the course of the game Thompson had complimented Mr. Leonard on his ravishing daughter, whom he knew by sight. "I'll wager she does a lot of damage," Thompson had said jovially. "I saw her just the other day having luncheon at the Brevoort with some young fellow, and I give you my word he didn't know whether he was eating food or hay!" Mr. Leonard had wondered aloud which of his daughter's admirers Thompson had seen, and Thompson, mistaking this casual rejoinder for an expression of keen paternal interest, had gone to some pains to describe the young fellow in detail.

"His description," declared Mrs. Leonard, "sounded to your father, and sounded to me when he repeated it, exactly like Jerry Davis. He said he was tall and thin and dark, and that he kept his eyes half shut all the time, and that he was as white as chalk. We couldn't think of any other man you know that fitted that description—"

"Mother," broke in Gay, "do you honestly think you know every man I know?"

"Well—most of them—"

"You don't. You don't know half of them. Do you realize how many I meet, just meet and perhaps dance

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with a couple of times, wherever I go? For instance: the boy I was lunching with at the Brevoort that day was a boy I met at a football game last fall. You've never seen him—I've only seen him twice myself—but he fits that description just as well as Jerry Davis, if not better. In fact, he looks something like Jerry, although it didn't occur to me until now.

"I haven't seen Jerry," she added, "since you told me not to. Honestly I haven't, Mother. Don't you believe me?"

She was a perfect liar. With steady, innocent, convincing brown eyes. With poker face. With voice that had in it just the right degree of emphasis, just the right abused and injured note.

"My dear, of course!" Mrs. Leonard said heartily. "I didn't really suspect you, as a matter of fact, only—Well, there wasn't any harm in asking you, was there?"

Gay agreed that there was not, and smiled her forgiveness.

"Now!" sighed Mrs. Leonard on a large breath of relief. "Eat your trout, dear, before it gets all cold."

Gay obeyed. She ate trout and thought indignantly, "New York is getting too damn little, that's all." She munched a muffin and drank coffee pale with cream and reflected that she'd learned her lesson anyway; they would meet only at his apartment after this. . . . d Mrs. Leonard napped that afternoon from two until three-thirty. She then arrayed herself and descended to the first floor, for the purpose of writing a letter.

It was not written.

Half way down the stairs Mrs. Leonard heard the telephone ring; and arriving in the lower hall, she encountered Wilkins on his way to answer it.

"Telephone, Wilkins?"

"Yes, madam."

"If it's for Miss Gay," said Mrs. Leonard, "she is out.

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At least she said she was going out. She went, didn't she, Wilkins?"

"Yes, madam."

Wilkins proceeded on to the telephone. His mistress waited tranquilly, with no forewarning of calamity, to learn who might be wanted.

"Mr. Henry Leonard's residence," said Wilkins.

Mrs. Leonard smiled slightly. She still was not altogether inured to the elegant sound of that.

"No, sir," continued Wilkins into the transmitter. "She is not in at present. Whom shall I say called?"

Mrs. Leonard started toward the writing room.

"Mr. Pomeroy? Certainly, sir, I'll—"

Mrs. Leonard took two more steps; then she halted so abruptly that she gave an effect of collision with some large invisible object. "Mr. Pomeroy, Wilkins? Mr. Alan Pomeroy?"

Wilkins nodded, and his lips formed a noiseless, "Yes, madam." Aloud he said, "Thank you, sir. I will see that she gets the message—"

"Wilkins! Wait! Don't hang up, I want to talk to him!"

Be it said for the trustful mind of Mrs. Leonard that at this stage she never doubted her daughter. Her thought was not that Gay had deceived her about the afternoon's engagement, but that something must have happened to Gay because she had not kept it.

She snatched the instrument from Wilkins. "Is that you, Alan? This is Mrs. Leonard. Didn't Gay meet you?"

Alan's agreeable barytone came back to her. "How-do, Mrs. Leonard. Why, no, she didn't—"

"Didn't she even call you?"

"Well, you see, I just got in," Alan explained. "Just this minute. She may have called earlier." Polite bewilderment crept into his voice. "Was she planning to meet me? Are you sure, Mrs. Leonard?" n -

Mrs. Leonard was not anywhere near as sure as she had been. "I thought so," she said guardedly. "Perhaps I'm mistaken."

"I believe you must be. You see, she had no way of knowing what train I was coming on—"

"Train?"

"Yes. I've been in Philadelphia all week and just got back. Gay didn't even know I was coming today, now that I think of it."

"You didn't telephone her this noon—from Philadelphia?"

"No, I didn't, Mrs. Leonard."

Mrs. Leonard, after moistening her lips rapidly several times, made a gallant recovery. She even laughed. "There!" she said. "If that isn't like me! These anxious mothers, you know, Alan! I heard Gay talking to some young man on the telephone about noon, and agreeing to meet him somewhere this afternoon, and I felt certain it was you. It must have been some other young man, then, mustn't it?"

"I'm afraid so, dog-gone him!' Alan laughed back.

They chatted a moment longer, then rang off. Mrs. Leonard sat down heavily on a very small telephone chair that vanished completely beneath her. She sat there for several seconds, thinking hard. Then she rang for Wilkins.

"Did you see Miss Gay go out, Wilkins?"

"Yes, madam. I called a taxicab for her."

"A taxicab?"

"Yes, madam. She said she didn't wish to drive her car when it was raining so."

Mrs. Leonard hesitated. "I don't suppose you have any idea where she went?" she said hopelessly.

"As it happens, replied Wilkins gravely, "I have, yes, madam. I accompanied Miss Gay to her cab with an umbrella. I heard her give an address on East Ninth Street." He supplied the number. "I believe that was the number, madam." n -

"Thank you, Wilkins."

The butler retired. Mrs. Leonard seized the telephone book and began to flutter through its early pages.

"D," she muttered. "D, a. D, a, v—Here. Davis." Her stubby forefinger went down the list of Davis's, her pale eyes following. Suddenly the finger stopped. The eyes, albeit they saw what they had feared to see, appeared to start from their sockets. . . .

Mrs. Leonard shut the book with a slap and, turning wildly to the telephone again, called up Mr. Leonard. d Gay reached the tall white apartment house soon after three o'clock, and was lifted to apartment ten-A. She had been there before, several times, for "tea"—so called because occurring somewhere near the tea hour, and because the round brown bottles and the square white ones reposed, when not in use, on a tea wagon. There had always been other guests beside herself. She always insisted, laughing outwardly, and inwardly wondering what made her insist. There were to be other guests today. Over the telephone Jerry had said in his mocking drawl, "I suppose I must summon the Watch and Ward society, as usual?" And she had answered, also mockingly, "Be sure you do! You know how afraid I am of you!"

As she pushed the bell beside his door she suddenly regretted having given such an answer. "I won't," she thought, "again. It's so high-school."

She stood waiting, a spectacular small figure in a chinchilla coat and a gray cloche with an arrow of pearls in the crown. From behind the door she could hear voices and victrola music. She recognized the tune with a smile. Indian Blue. Jerry's favorite. During her last visit he had played it over and over and over, until she had said to herself, "I never shall hear that again, anywhere, without thinking of him."

She glanced about her, puzzling, not for the first time, as to how a man who toiled not nor spun and who had been

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disinherited by his family, managed to live in so luxurious an apartment house as this. Then she stiffened and fixed her eyes on the door. She distinguished Jerry's voice, louder as he approached it: "—that confounded horse did everything but sit down in the track and start knitting—"

The door opened.

"Go on about the horse," Gay said casually, and leaned against the frame and crossed her ankles.

"Come in here!" retorted Jerry Davis, and yanked her in by her wrist.

When the door closed again they confronted each other in the little lamp-lit foyer. "You're late," observed Jerry, taking her hand. His dark eyes swept over her. "You're late, and you're very gorgeous, and that's a nice hat." He ducked his head gracefully and sniffed the twin orchids she wore pinned to her fur lapel. "Real ones. Who loves you so extravagantly, honey? No, don't tell me, I'll be jealous."

"If I thought so," Gay said lightly, "I would tell you. Oh, hello, there!"

This salutation was addressed to a couple dancing in the living room beyond; a sleekly mannish-bobbed brunette, and a pink young gentleman with a wee blond mustache, like a moth, above his smile. These were friends of Jerry's whom Gay had met before. The girl taught dancing and answered to the curious pseudonym of Boo. The boy hailed from Savannah and was fondly believed by his parents to be in New York for the purpose of studying journalism. His name was Parker Lane.

Both shouted return greetings above the tintinnabulations of the talking machine. "I'm certainly glad you're here at last!" cried Boo. "Jerry has been pacing the floor."

"Truly?" Gay murmured to Jerry, smiling.

"Truly," he answered, and did not smile at all.

He was in the mood she had hoped for; the adoring mood. "If he were always like this!" she thought, not

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realizing that his other mood was the one that kept her interest high aflame. In his other mood he seemed impervious, and almost a little bored. He maddened her. He made her wonder, and worry. He caused her to try—to work at enchanting—although she knew better, although she had always known better. She thought she hated that mood, but she didn't. It is not the killing, but the chase, that fascinates the hunter.

"Let me have your coat," suggested Jerry.

She allowed it to slip off into his hands, and as she did so, felt his lips touch the nape of her neck. "You use the dreamiest perfume," he said. "I love it. It's—clever. But of course, it would be. Aren't you going to take off your hat?"

"I thought you said it was a nice hat."

"No hat is a really nice hat that hides your hair."

"It seems to me," Gay remarked, removing the hat before a Venetian mirror, "that my host is uncommonly complimentary this afternoon. How many cocktails brought this on, darling?"

"One. A little golden cocktail that I'm drinking with my eyes, that goes to my head and makes me dizzy."

"Parker!" called Gay. "How many has this apple had?"

"Didn't bring my adding machine," said Parker.

Gay moved out into the room, laughing impishly back at Jerry over her shoulder. "I'll have a few myself. Then maybe I can make some pretty speeches!"

She sat on the low divan. Parker Lane, the dance forgotten in the prospect of further refreshment, cast himself down beside her. Boo chose the largest, deepest chair and curled up in it, one leg tucked beneath her. Jerry at the tea wagon became very business-like and solemn. He filled a little glass four times with gin, and emptied it into a hammered silver shaker. Heo stirred in sugar and orange juice. He added a raw egg and a dash of pink syrup and much ice. He put on the lid. He lifted the shaker in

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both hands, shook it up and down and sideways, shook it high, shook it low, shook it close to his ear to hearken to its clucking. Eventually, as if he had heard it cry "Enough!" he straightened, and poured the concoction into four silver goblets.

"There!" he said triumphantly. "If those aren't good—"

They were excellent. Everybody drank three, each after his own fashion. Jerry drank with a quick backward toss of his head and a single tremor of his throat. Gay drank in little meditative sips. Parker Lane drank as if he remembered that drinking was law-breaking; he drank roguishly, rakishly, with the air of one putting tacks in the chairs of the Senate and throwing a snowball at Volstead. Boo drank with lip-smackings and ecstatic exclamations. "I know the type," Gay meditated. "Just loves liquor in public—and would as soon think of taking cod-liver oil as a cocktail if no one was looking."

For half an hour the conversation was general. They talked of shows, of speak-easies, of motor cars, of mutual acquaintances, of one another—constantly and banteringly of one another. Jerry and Parker and Boo talked a great deal because their tongues were loosened by the drinks that had preceded these. Gay talked a great deal because Jerry listened. She sparkled and scintillated and was vivid, because Jerry watched.

A discussion of supper clubs arose; of favorite ones recently padlocked, and promising ones newly thrown open. "We went to a cute new one last night," Gay said. "The Club Penitentiary, it's called. Heard about it?"

They had not.

"It's only been open about a week," she continued. "You ought to try it. It's awfully different. The musicians wear convict stripes, and the walls are painted to represent stone walls, with little iron-barred windows high up, and it's dim and—sinister looking, sort of. Then at one end they have a big cell, all lighted, with bars across it, and inside the cell a lot of girls with shiny handcuffs

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on their wrists, and a uniformed guard with a gun marching up and down. Whenever a man without any girl comes into the club, or a party of stags, the guard unlocks the cell and lets out a girl, or several girls, and takes their handcuffs off and sends them over to join the men. Or if you'd rather, you can go to the cell and pick out a little jailbird for yourself, through the bars. Some of them were darling, too, I thought. They all wore loose white silk blouses and tight little short velvet breeches, and bare legs—"

"Where did you say this place was?" demanded Parker.

"Oh, take me!" Boo shrilled. "Please, Parker, take me, I want to see it."

Parker fixed her with a stern eye. "Any day I take a ball and chain to prison! You stay home. Jerry and I are going by ourselves, aren't we, boy?"

"Willing. Not to say eager."

"Maybe you'll find another pearl among swine," Parker said with a meaning grin. "You never can tell."

"Biblically, Parker," remarked Boo, "you're a flop. It's 'pearls before swine,'"

"This pearl was among swine," Parker insisted. "Ask Jerry if she wasn't."

Gay glanced at Jerry, and saw that he wore the unmistakable, purposely vacuous expression of one who wishes the subject changed. Instantly she determined that it should not be changed without investigation. "Let's have the story, Jerry," she said.

"No story to it."

"No story!" echoed Parker. "Say! It's a front page feature with a double column head! 'Dance Hall Girl Steals Heart of Prominent Young Clubman,' or something."

Boo applauded with vigor. "Yea-a-a! Parker's making noises like a journalist! He must have attended a class this week in an unguarded moment."

"He doesn't need to attend classes," Jerry said irritably.

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"With his gift for exaggeration, he could get a star job on a yellow sheet right now. As is."

"Jerry, murmured Gay, blowing smoke, "has your heart been stolen really? When I flattered myself I had the slippery thing under lock and key?"

"Blonde or brunette?" Boo wanted to know.

It was Parker who answered. "Brunette. Black hair and blue eyes and awful good. Name's Dolly. Dolly Quinn." Wickedly, ignoring Jerry's air of ennuied unconcern, Parker plunged on. "You see it was this way: ene night about a month ago—oh, longer than that—Jerry and Lefty Somers and your distinguished correspondent got very full of juniper juice and jocular ideas, and concluded that we would a-slumming go. So we set sail up Broadway and in due time and without casualty arrived at a place called the Garden of Jazz, where they rent you a gal for two bits a dance with the kiss in the dark thrown in—"

He strung the narrative out for some minutes. Gay listened intently. From behind a thick smoke screen of her own exhalation, she scrutinized Jerry's face. It told her nothing.

"And," concluded Parker, "I have it on excellent authority that he has been quite devoted ever since. In fact I may say extremely devoted. For when a gentleman of the well-known proclivities of our protagonist arises at nine of a Sunday morning in order to have a full day with his inamorata—then that, I submit to you, is devotion, devotion what am!"

"Finished?" inquired Jerry rudely.

"No indeed!" Parker was imperturbable. "Continued in our next. Heaven alone knows what the end will be."

Gay thought, her eyes on Jerry, "I never saw him mind being kidded before, about anything."

In the little ensuing pause Boo rose and inverted the cocktail shaker hopefully. "Not a drop," she reported. "Mix some more, Jerry, why don't you?" n -

"If you and Parker would crack some more ice and squeeze some more oranges, I might."

"That sounds," said Boo, "like our cue to tiptoe out. Come on, Parker."

They disappeared into the serving pantry, whence issued thereafter the cadences of their voices and the sound of an ice pick in action, interspersed with telltale silences.

"You were just a little pointed about it," Gay observed.

"Why not? They know I want to be alone with you."

"Next time I come, you will be," she told him. "I decided that this afternoon. You don't need to ask anyone else—unless you want to."

"Not afraid of me any more?"

They both smiled.

"I almost believe you believed that," Gay said lightly.

She snapped her cigarette to the hearth across the room and sat erect. "We'll have to quit seeing each other in public altogether, Jerry. I got a break today that proves that."

Briefly she outlined her dialogue with her mother.

"I wonder why they're so opposed to me," mused Jerry at the end.

"They've heard things."

He made a swift martyred gesture with his hands.

"For that matter," Gay said, "I've heard things too. I'm always and forever hearing things. I heard something just now."

"Oh, that," shrugged Jerry.

He came and stood before her; stood for a wordless moment, looking down. Gay returned his gaze lazily, letting her head rest against the back of the divan so that her eyelids might droop as his did always. Under her dark lashes her eyes were cool and provocative, belying the excited hammering of her heart.

"Trying to hypnotize me, Jerry?" she queried.

For answer he reached down and pulled her to her feet in one sudden swoop. His arms went around her roughly,

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bending her pliant body. His mouth crushed hers. . . .

Gay had confided once to a girl intimate that she knew she didn't enjoy being kissed as much as did the rest of the world, "—because, darn it all, I keep thinking all the time!" She "kept thinking" now. She thought of the pair in the pantry, and hoped they would not happen in. She thought how far more slim to the clasp of her arms Jderry's shoulders were than—well, Alan Pomeroy's, for instance. She thought, "But I'm glad it's not Alan." She thought that for all his slimness he was very strong, strong enough to hold her painfully tight. She opened her eyes, and thought how odd and distorted faces looked at such close range, and shut her eyes hurriedly again. She thought, "I wonder if he loves me as much as he's pretending to?" She thought, "What about this dance hall girl? What about this dance hall girl? What—"

She had never been jealous. She had always been above jealousy, buoyed high above it by a majestic conviction that no one could take from her anything which she evinced the slightest inclination to keep. But now. . . . This was different. Jerry was different. She was not certain she could keep him. She was only certain about half the time that she even had him. Elusive, changeable, enigmatic Jerry. . . .

She was jealous now of the dance hall girl, but she said to herself earnestly, "It's not that; it's pride." Gay Leonard, famous beauty, beloved of many men—sharing this man's kisses with a cheap little thing from a Broadway foxtrot emporium! A line out of Parker Lane's jesting speech came back to her: "—where they rent you a girl for two bits a dance with the kiss in the dark thrown in—"

She unlocked her arms and slid her hands across Jerry's shoulders and down, until they lay flat against his chest. She pushed him away. She seated herself on the divan again, and searched fumblingly in a mangled paper packet for a cigarette. n -

He stood interrogating her with his eyes.

She found a cigarette and lit it, conscious that her hands were not as steady as she would have had them.

"What's the matter, sweet?" said Jerry.

"Nothing."

"Of course there's something. Tell me."

Gay thought, "Mustn't let him think I care! Just say something so he'll understand how I feel—" She thought this quite seriously, heedless of the contradiction in it.

She said to him, "I can't compete with dance hall petting. I wouldn't try."

"So that's it!"

"That's it, yes."

"Well," said Jerry, "if it will relieve your mind, there has been no 'dance hall petting,' as you call it. Ive never even kissed that girl. She's never let me."

This was the very worst thing he could have said under the circumstances, and he evidently saw his mistake, for he added instantly, "Fact is, I've never tried."

"Ask me to credit that!"

"I'm not asking you to credit it. It happens to be true—but of course, you can take it or leave it."

He turned away from her then and strolled to the Victrola, where he stood flipping over the pages of a book of records. Gay thought, "Now he's angry! Now I've annoyed him!" And, as always when the indifferent mood was on him, she became obsessed with a frantic desire to banish it, to make him smile again at her, and flatter her, and seem to love her.

She said softly, pleadingly, "Jerry—don't you love me?"

He faced her, still standing by the music box. "Of course I love you."

"More than anybody?"

"More than anybody. Oh, you know it, Gay!" he added impatiently. "So why do we have to spoil our afternoon by arguing—over such trivial things?" n -

"I want to be sure that they are trivial, that's all."

They looked at each other a long moment without speaking.

"Dolly Quinn," Gay said. "Is that her name?"

"Yes."

Although she knew better, although she had always known better, she persisted in this man-wearying feminine folly. "You don't really care about her, do you, Jerry? She doesn't mean anything to you—"

The doorbell rang commandingly.

"More people coming?" asked Gay.

"No," Jerry said, crossing toward the foyer. "That's my bootlegger, I think. I called him for some Scotch before you got here."

Gay could not see the door from where she sat, but she could see the reflection of it in the mirror on the foyer wall. By this mirror she saw the door open; saw the felt hat set slightly askew, the brown eyes, the grim, handsome, so familiar face of the intruder. . . .

She stifled an exclamation and got to her feet. Hide! That was her first thought. Hide somewhere.

"Why—good afternoon, sir—" Jerry was stammering.

His confusion seemed to drive her own away. She was self-possessed in a second. "I won't hide," she told herself. "How silly! He's spotted my hat and coat by this time, anyway."

She walked forward, hands on hips, and stood before the foyer. "'Lo, Dad," she said quite cheerfully.

At this juncture Boo emerged from the serving pantry, crying "Is that the Scotch?" Behind her was Parker with a dish towel tucked into his vest, bib fashion, and a pitcher and a bowl of ice in his hands.

Both stopped dead, sensing a situation without fully comprehending its significance.

"You see," smiled Gay to her father, "we were chaperoned."

"I see." n -

He picked up her coat from the chair where Jerry had laid it; held it wide. Gay hesitated, shrugged, and slipped her arms into it.

Mr. Leonard turned to Jerry. "While my daughter is putting on her hat," he said evenly, "I'd like to speak with you a moment, if I may."

Jerry inclined his head, and led the way past Boo and Parker into the serving pantry. Mr. Leonard followed. The door slammed after them.

"My God!" whispered Boo. "What's he going to do to him?"

"Just talk to him, probably," said Gay. She added mock-tragically, "It's what he's going to do to me!" To herself she was saying, "He can't do anything. No matter what he does, he can't stop me from seeing him."

"Is that your father?" Parker asked awedly.

Gay was powdering her nose. "Naturally. Who did it act like—a disinterested bystander?"

Boo sat down limply on the fireside bench. "You're so calm, Gay!" she marveled. "Compared with Jerry—why, he looked as if he expected to be shot at sunrise!"

"He was afraid for me," said Gay, "not for himself."

There was a pause. All eyes focused on the pantry door; all ears were strained. Gay caught the subdued rumble of her father's voice, firm, uninterrupted. . . .

"I wish I knew what he was saying."

"Considerable," from Parker.

"How did he find out you were here?" from Boo.

"That's what I can't understand to save me."

There was another pause.

"Tell Jerry," Gay directed, "that I'll telephone him as soon as I get a chance. And tell him in the meantime not to dare to call the house."

"He won't," said Parker. "He's no fool."

"He did this morning—"

The serving pantry door opened. First Mr. Leonard, then Jerry, came into the little corridor and thence into

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the living room. Mr. Leonard locked straight at Gay. Jerry looked at no one. He was terribly white, whiter than ever; the vertical lines in his cheeks dug deep as they did when he smiled, but he was not smiling.

He went at once to the outer door and stood with his—hand on the knob.

"Ready, Gay?" said Mr. Leonard.

"Umm," Gay answered, "quite." She wiggled five fingers at Parker and Boo in a little insouciant gesture. "'Bye, kids. See you at the Keeley cure."

To Jerry she said simply, conscious of the pressure of her father's hand on her elbow, "Goodbye."

"Goodbye," he echoed.

Then she was outside. d Trunks. Trunks in the bedroom, in the dressing room, everywhere. Trunks that yawned vertically, trunks that yawned horizontally, all sorts and sizes of trunks, half packed. In one, dresses of velvet and chiffon and metal cloth and lace; dancing dresses, flirting dresses. In another, sport frocks of flannel or silk or serge. A third contained hats, big black ones, little many-colored felt ones, tight turbans, on wadded tissue paper heads. A fourth held twenty pairs of shoes, Cinderella size, with parabolas three inches high below the insteps.

The chairs and tables in all the rooms were strewn with garments yet to be put in. Wardrobe-trunk drawers stuffed with pastel lingerie perched here and there. An evening wrap of ermine with an ostrich-feather lining swayed from a hanger hooked onto a wall candelabrum. A bathing suit, a tiny thing, black silk and one-piece, stretched itself out on the bed. The bag of golf sticks leaned beside the sitting room door, hooded and tagged with a tag that read, "Miss Gay Leonard, Royal Poinciana Hotel, Palm Beach, Florida."

Other tags bearing the same inscription in Mrs. Leonard's scratchy handwriting waited in a neat pile on the

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desk. And downstairs, in Mrs. Leonard's boudoir, there were still more tags ready for the morrow: "Mrs. Henry H. Leonard," and the same address.

It was eleven o'clock in the evening. Quiet had descended upon the household, after half a dozen of the most chaotic hours in all its history. From five to seven Mrs. Leonard had sobbed, Mr. Leonard had stormed, and Gay had sobbed and stormed alternately, matching hysteria with her mother and profanity with her father, defying, beseeching, protesting, vainly promising. At seven-fifteen dinner was served but not eaten except by Mr. Leonard, who was a big man with an appetite that triumphed over stress. At eight o'clock the trunks had arrived, bumping down from the storeroom. And thereafter Mr. Leonard had rattled the evening papers in his den, and Gay had sulked and smoked on the chaise longue in her sitting room, and Mrs. Leonard had commuted madly back and forth between floors, issuing breathless instructions to busy maids, grabbing articles up and laying them down, muttering distractedly, "Let me see—now let me think—"

At quarter of eleven she had decided that what packing there was still to do could be done in the morning. She had dismissed the maids, given Gay a stiff peck of a kiss and a wan look, and stumbled off to bed, suggesting to Mr. Leonard over the banister that he might do well to follow her example.

Gay was alone. She was still sulking. Like a small furious boy in yellow silk pajamas, with yellow cropped hair much rumpled, she stalked through her rooms, kicking things out of her way, and occasionally even going out of her way to kick things.

"I won't!" she said again and again. "Damned if I will!" But she knew that she would. She had no choice.

Unless—

She halted finally before the sitting room mantel and from the regiment of photographs there displayed, chose one; the photograph of a last-summer's swain about whom

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she had already forgotten almost everything. Without a glance at the physiognomy of this youth, she bore the picture to a chair and, sinking down, pried open the back of the frame.

It then appeared that the youth was not alone in his glory. He was, in fact, no more than a figurehead, a camouflage behind which Jerry Davis in sepia form was concealed from the eyes of the Enemy.

Gay took the likeness of Jerry in both hands and examined it at length. It was an attractive if rather stagy photograph, showing him seated on a window seat, his knees drawn up, his hands locked around them, his Grecian profile definite against the light. It was also a battleworn photograph, with a wide jagged scar across its middle. Months ago, for her mother's benefit, Gay had torn it in halves, crosswise. . . . Later she had retrieved the halves from the waste-basket and glued them tenderly together again.

She began to talk to the picture. "Know what they're doing to me, Jerry?" she asked it, and there were tears in her voice. "Dragging me down South—when I don't want to go—to get me away from you. And after that they're going to take me abroad, to keep me away from you. Till I get over it, they say! Little they know—"

She let the picture fall to her lap. She leaned back and closed her eyes, and the tears that her voice had threatened crept from under her lids and hung diamond-like on the dark curved lashes. Sentiment and self-pity assailed her, an overwhelming gust. "I can't go and leave him!" she whispered chokingly. "I love him so."

She stood up. Blindly, because everything was fluid through her tears, she made her way to the telephone. "I'll call him," she thought. "I'll just tell him—"

She was acting on impulse now, all caution thrown to the winds, all scruples lost.

Her voice faltered when she gave his number; she had to repeat it three times over. She dabbed at her eyes with

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a handkerchief and sat waiting, Interminably. Her li stirred, saying over soundlessly the things that she we say. "Jerry, I can't go. I can't. You love me, don't you, Jerry? More than anybody, you said. You said that. You love me enough to—to marry me, don't you? So nobody can take me away from you—ever—"

"They don't answer," rasped the operator. d Pride returned with the morning.

Gay left New York without a second attempt to get in touch with Jerry. She left thinking of him angrily, with the stinging anger women feel toward men for whose sake they have made themselves fools in their own eyes. "His dance hall girl can have him!" she raged to herself. "I don't care. I don't want him!"

But through all the first hour in the Pullman drawing room she wept dismally, dreadfully, and would not be consoled.

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/ch//"RISE, PLEASE!"

Dolly Quinn had a uniform. It was a bluish-gray uniform, consisting of brief skirt, tight basque bodice decorated with a double row of buttons, and little round pillbox hat, cocked over the eye, strapped under the chin, It made her look rather like a bellboy but quite adorable. She wore it six evenings a week.

The idea was originally Jerry's.

"I'm getting scared," he had said, "to make suggestions—you've knocked all I've made so far flat—but listen: why not usher in a theater? There's no bad job! I don't know what they pay, but the work is easy, the hours are short—home before midnight—just the thing for you! Does it appeal, or doesn't it?"

"It does," Dolly had answered dubiously, after reflection. "But I couldn't possibly manage it."

"Why couldn't you?"

"Well, what about matinées?"

Prolonged discussion.

"I'll see," Jerry had promised finally. "Maybe something can be done. A substitute or something. I'll find out."

He had been as good as his word. Not only had he ascertained that substitutes were in some cases permissible, but he had unearthed one. She was a black-eyed damsel named Ruby who worked at a hotel switchboard by night; she agreed willingly to take the place of Dolly Quinn on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.

They held their mutual job for many months, drawing

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each the magnificent sum of one dollar and ten cents performance. Six-sixty a week for Dolly Quinn e saved it all.

"When I get two hundred dollars," she told Jerry, "which will be in thirty weeks and two nights—I'll quit. But not before. There's no sense quitting too soon, and studying just for a little while, and then having to stop the classes and go back to work again. Is there?"

He acknowledged that there was not. "But I wish you'd let me help you," he said for the twentieth time. "Just a loan. Please, Dolly."

And for the twentieth time she responded, smiling gently, "You're dear to want to. But—I couldn't, Jerry."

No one was to help her. She would not accept Jerry's assistance, nor any man's; and her only woman friend capable of rendering it lay desperately ill, too ill to remember her. From one of her sister Amy's rambling misspelled letters she had culled the news that Mrs. Wendell had been thrown from her horse, and her skull fractured. She was not expected to live. Dolly shed tears over that letter—nor were they tears for art lessons lost. d The theater was the Gotham, around the corner from Broadway in the middle Forties, and the show was a happy compound of jazz and laughter and ladies with legs, entitled "Who's Your Boy-Friend?" It had opened in September. On the strength of a famous comedian, a rowdy little red-haired leading woman, a "naked" curtain, an unusually symmetrical chorus, a dancing team born without joints, a press agent born without conscience, and three song hits that you found yourself whistling as you shaved the next morning, it would run at least a year and probably longer.

Dolly Quinn was glad it was a musical comedy. She thought a play would have been intolerable to watch, night after night. Spoken lines became monotonous. The ges-

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tures and grimaces that went with the lines were a dreadful bore after the first week. But of the music and the dances and the color she never tired.

Ushering was fun.

She reached the theater every night at seven-thirty and hurried into her uniform and to her place on the orchestra floor, so as to be there when the doors opened. Then there was a wait. While she waited, she chatted with the other ushers, and teased the ticket taker about his rich widow, and anxiously asked Mrs. Donahue at the coat room window how her little boy was and what the doctor said this morning. . . .

When she took people down the aisle she almost ran because it was somewhat steep, and between eight-fifteen and eight-thirty she practically did run, because there were always more people, half a dozen more, clustered at the head of the aisle, looking as though they thought she ought to. She carried a stack of programs in the crook of her arm, and after the curtain rose, a flashlight in her hand, she said, "Center aisle, please," and "This way, please," and "Rise, please."

She accepted seat checks from brown horny hands, and pale shiny-tipped hands, and small shaky blue-veined hands, and hands heavy with rings, and gloved hands. She brushed against bare satin shoulders and big broadcloth arms. She heard a thousand voices. She caught a hundred odors with names. L'Origon. Benson and Hedges. Haig and Haig. Nuit de Noel. Beechnut. Melachrino. Black Narcissus. Colgate. Cut Plug. Harriet Hubbard Ayer.

Her feet kept time to the music, and she smiled softly and a little shyly at people, and almost invariably they smiled back. . . .

Sometimes she was advised in quick whispers by fellow ushers of the presence of celebrities in the house, "Harry Thaw down front. Third row, aisle, with the girl in the white wig." . . . "D'ja see Mae Murray? D'n'ja see

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her?" . . . "Know who that was you just took down? Oh, you sap—Babe Ruth!" . . .

It was rather fun.

From the other ushers she heard all the backstage gossip. Why the comedian's wife divorced him. What the redhead privately thought of the statuesque young man to whom she publicly made love for two hours and a half every evening. Which chorus girl it was who had the new pearls, and where she got them. How Fanchon La Belle happened to be leading the Home James number, when someone else could have done it so much better.

She kept a finger on the pulse of the show, and knew its best nights and its lamest ones. She learned things about the psychology of audiences. She picked up theatrical jargon and prattled it like a trouper bred in the bone. She came to feel that the show was her show; that she was part of it. "I feel as though, if it went on the road tomorrow, I'd be taken along," she confided to Jerry.

She spent weeks on a crayon sketch of the comedian, working on it in odd moments snatched from her crowded days, even sometimes getting up early to work on it for half an hour before she left for the store. When she had finished it she mailed it to him—but lacked the self-confidence to sign her name, and so never knew what he thought of it. d She made a friend.

It began on an evening in February. She was standing behind the wall that backed the last row of orchestra seats, with her arms crossed on its green plush top, watching the chorus do the rag-doll dance in Act One; and she became aware of a man who stood in similar attitude two or three yards away. He was a man of perhaps thirty-two or -three, with a big rangy frame covered with, rather than dressed in, some sort of clothes, and an ugly Billikin face. n -

"You know," Dolly said afterward in describing him to Jerry, "there are two uglys. One's an ugly you just can't stand and want to tie a mask on to—that's the homely-ugly. And then there's the kind that fascinates you so you get to thinking it's almost good looking—that's the lovely-ugly. That's what he is."

She surveyed him an instant, wondering how long he had been there. Then she moved toward him. "May I find you your seat?"

His face came around and down. Blue wise eyes—eyes that had seen all the things in the world and found most of them entertaining—bored into her eyes. He smiled. "I haven't one," he answered, and without a pause talked on: "She: 'What, no ticket?' He: 'No, no ticket.' She: 'How did you get in, sir?' He: 'I know the doorman. And what is vastly more, the doorman knows me.'"

All this in the undertone necessitated by the surroundings and with great good humor, the blue eyes twinkling nicely at Dolly.

Dolly twinkled back. "'He' wins," she said. "I guess I'll have to let you stay."

If he had exhibited the slightest interest in the show or any indication of a desire to return his attention to it, she would then have left him forthwith. But he was regarding her as though he found her the only thing in the playhouse worth looking at, and the temptation to continue their conversation was strong. She said dutifully, "Don't you want to sit down? I think there's a vacant seat in the last row, if you'd like it," and was gratified to hear him reply in the negative.

"I'm just waiting till the end of the act," he explained. "Then I'm going back to talk to—" He nodded toward the comedian, now capering in the center of the stage, and called him by name.

"Is he a friend of yours?" asked Dolly, impressed.

"I don't know as you'd call it that, quite. We don't

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exchange Christmas cards or anything. I've met him a couple of times—which fact he will of course have wiped from memory's slate ere this."

"Maybe he won't see you. He's supposed to be quite temperamental."

"He'll see me all right," laconically. "He'll see any newspaper man, any time. They all will."

"Oh, so you're a newspaper man!"

"But don't hold it against me, he begged hurriedly.

"I won't," Dolly assured him. "I like newspaper men. That is, I like the idea of them. I don't really know any."

"That," he said, "should be rectified. And will be. Permit me to present an humble one—Nick Standish, of the Star."

"I read it every day!" cried Dolly.

"Hurrah," said Standish gravely. "Well, now that is a coincidence, isn't it? We ought to be very good friends."

And they were.

He formed the habit of dropping into the theater once or twice a week to talk to her for ten minutes at a time. Presently they began to go out together.

The first of these tête-à-têtes took place one evening in April, when he presented himself at the Gotham just at the close of the performance and said without preamble, "C'mon and eat."

"I—"

"Certainly. Have to eat. Everybody ought to eat now and then. Keeps the jaws limber."

"I never do go out after the show," said Dolly hesitantly. "I have to get up at seven—"

"Might as well stay up," said Standish. "Get your bonnet. I'll wait here."

When she rejoined him dressed for the street, he demanded to be told where she wished to be taken. "Is it food you want? Or frivolity?"

"It's food you want—" n -

"But frivolity you want. I see it in each sapphire orb. Very well, small change. We'll frivol."

He had many names for her. "Small change," "urchin," "cub"—names of a different school indeed from that to which Jerry adhered.

"A night club," Nick ruminated aloud as they went through the lobby. "A night club that is giddy but not dressy, interesting but not extravagant. A night club where the three lowly five dollar bills that repose in my jeans at the moment will enable us to do more than pay the cover charge and walk out again—Eureka! I know the very place. Taxi!"

"The very place" was the Club Swanee River. . . . A long narrow room perched at the top of steep narrow stairs. A negro orchestra in overalls and gay gingham shirts, seated informally on what purported to be the bank of the river painted on the wall at their backs. Three other walls representing cotton fields in, as Nick put it, "full cotton." A dance floor not as large as half a tennis court, bordered by tiny tables with red plaid tablecloths. A cabaret consisting of a small vanilla darky who did the Charleston, a large chocolate darky who did the Charleston, a quartette of assorted darkies who sang Charleston Back to Charleston and a cafe au lait maiden who Charlestoned.

"Something," Nick declared, "has got to be done to check the spread of that thing. Four out of five have it. The fifth is taking lessons."

It developed that he did not dance at all. "Chiropodists' offices are jammed with the women who've tried to teach me," he said. So they remained for two hours at their table, talking, exchanging opinions and experiences, availing themselves happily of this first opportunity to give their friendship solid foundation.

Over a steaming gold Welsh rarebit Nick observed suddenly, "You're being very devilish, you know. Trotting out to night clubs with married men—" n -

Dolly dropped her fork and sat back, looking startled. "Who, you?"

"None other."

"Are you really?"

"I am really."

"But—why didn't you tell me, Nick?"

"Well, there's never been a logical opening, has there? Of course I could have said out of a clear sky, 'See here, urchin, I'm married.' But it would have sounded—vwell, you see yourself how it would have sounded. Like stopping a bowing acquaintance on the street and saying, 'Don't go to my house, I'm not home.' The acquaintance would then retort with pardonable acerbity, 'Who wants to go to your house, you fathead? I never thought of going there.'"

"Where's your wife?" interrogated Dolly, ignoring this. A wrinkle had appeared across the bridge of her short straight nose. That Nick was married meant nothing whatever to her personally; there was, as he well understood, no romantic sentiment in her regard for him. But that she should be gadding about New York in the wee hours with some other woman's husband was—was distinctly— "Oh, darn it!" wailed Dolly Quinn. "I don't like this! What would your wife think of me if she saw me right now? She'd think I was trying to vamp you away from her, wouldn't she? She'd think I was terrible!"

"No," said Nick thoughtfully. "No, she wouldn't. Long-suffering, perhaps. A glutton for punishment. But not terrible. You see," he elucidated, turning a paper folder of matches around and around with his thumbs, "we're separated. She—isn't fond of me."

There was a pause. Then he looked up and grinned into Dolly's sober, sorry eyes. "Strange though it may seem!"

"It does," she said simply, without the slightest trace of coquetry.

He thanked her with another smile. "She's living in Paris," he went on, the smile fading. "She's the Paris

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correspondent for a fashion magazine. Used to do a daily fashion column for the Star—that's how I first met her. Her name is Sybil Sande. Maybe you know her stuff. She's a smart girl. And—"

He broke off, to addabruptly, boyishly, "Like to see her picture?"

"I'd love to."

He carried it in the back of his watch. Dolly thought this touching, and as his big blunt fingers fumbled and picked at the case, she could have wept. "He's crazy about her," she told herself. "And he's such an old peach. Oh, it's a shame!"

"You can't tell much from it," Nick said, guiding the circle of snapshop across the tablecloth with his forefinger. "It's not very good. Taken three years ago, for one thing. She's really a whole lot better looking."

"She's beautiful," said Dolly.

The face was scarcely more than a dot with an aureole of pale sunlit hair. But it suggested beauty. And certainly the upper part of the body, bare-armed, in tight bathing suit, had irreproachable contour.

"That was taken," Nick was saying lightly, so lightly he failed to deceive, "the day we were married. We were married early one morning, and drove down to Long Beach for the day. Back at six P. M. That's the way newspaper people honeymoon."

He accepted the picture from Dolly and replaced it in his watch. "She hasn't made any attempt to divorce me," he stated, slipping the watch into his pocket. "She hasn't even mentioned it. I don't think she will unless she happens to want to marry again, which is doubtful. Or unless I ask her for a divorce, which is—" he hesitated, and his lips tightened, "inconceivable."

He seemed to ponder this. Then he straightened up as if a hand had slapped him between the shoulder blades. "So!" he grinned at Dolly. "We return to the point. You are out with a married man." n -

"I don't care," she said, "now. I'll go again, if you ask me."

He did ask her again from time to time. She went with him to supper after the show on occasional Saturday nights, when she could sleep late the next morning; to dinner between store hours and theater hours; and once or twice to the movies on Sunday afternoons. She found him a delightful companion. He appeared to find her as charming a one. They became more than mere friends. Confidants. Intimates in a platonic, rather daughter-and-young-father way.

Dolly read every newspaper story Nick wrote. Nick presented some sketches of Dolly's at the Star office and ached with her when the verdict was "promising, but crude—why doesn't she work at it?" He bought her books. She embroidered monograms laboriously on six handkerchiefs for his birthday. He showed her one casual "Hello Nick" letter from his wife. She told him about Jerry Davis and threatened to effect a meeting between them . . . but never did, being afraid in her subconscious mind that they would hurt her by not liking one another. . . . d She kept a diary. Not a line-a-day affair, nor even a page-a-day affair, but a diary consisting of a series of ten cent notebooks with stiff rust-colored covers, in which she wrote as much as she felt inclined to write, as often as she had time.

The notebooks reposed in the drawer of the cheap oak table in her little room at Mrs. Minafee's, and their covers were labeled neatly: "Dolly Quinn. Private." They were also numbered. She had begun the first on the day she reached New York. She was now approximately halfway through the fifth. The series, intended as a history of her rise in the world, and especially in the world of art, had become a naïve and altogether characteristic chron-

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icle of hopes and fears, of likes and dislikes, of little joys and little sorrows, of things seen and learned and wondered about, of people met.

Certain names appeared frequently. In a single swift rippling of the pages, the eye caught them again and again. Volumes One and Two featured Mrs. Wendell; Delos, the art instructor; Henrietta, who clerked beside her in the store; Mr. Bloom, the amorous floorwalker; Mrs. Minafee. Volume Three was conspicuous for its iterative Jerrys. Volumes Four and Five had many Nicks—and an average of three Jerrys to a page.

She was not in love with him. But he had made himself part of the things of her life that seemed to her most worth recording. Sundays, for example. All her Sundays she spent with him, save only the rare ones when he was out of town. And they were Sundays crammed with new sights and scenes and new activities; they had to be written up, and Jerry with them.

A few revealing entries may be quoted.

/fb// March—"We went to the Art Museum today. I've been wanting to go again, but didn't say so because I thought Jerry would be bored—but today he suggested it himself. And he knows a lot about art and artists, and what's good and what isn't. He's the queerest person anyway. He knows a lot about almost everything, and he's talented—he can draw better than I can, and he plays several musical instruments, and he writes beautiful poetry—yet he doesn't do anything! I was telling Nick about him the other night, and Nick said, 'I know a fellow just like that. He has great potentialities—and he sits on them like a hen on an artificial egg, very smug and very useless.'

"Only Jerry isn't smug."

April—"This morning it was lovely and springy and Jerry came about ten in his car and drove me almost to the end of Long Island, to the cutest inn for lunch. And then we came back to town and had tea at that little place in the Village that he likes so. And then we saw John Barrymore in a new

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picture, and after that went to a café on 45th Street, I forget the name of it, and I sat trying to draw John Barrymore's nose all over the menu cards.

"I think Jerry spends too much money on me. I told him so, but he just laughed and said he had plenty and I needn't worry. I said, 'Where do you get all your money anyway?' though of course it wasn't any of my business. He said, 'I make it,' and I said, 'How? You don't work,' and he said that other people worked for him. Then he laughed and said, 'Don't look so solemn, sweetheart, it's not rum-running or anything like that.' I tried to find out what it really is but he wouldn't tell me. He said I wouldn't understand. He treats me like a baby anyway, which is silly, because sometimes I feel loads older and more sensible than he is. He has two moods. One's kiddish, and one's as old as the hills. Liquor makes him kiddish. I guess that's why he drinks so much of it. He has more fun when he's kiddish, and I do too, but I wish to goodness he wouldn't drink so much—he'll kill himself."

April—"I let Jerry kiss me tonight when he brought me home, but I was sorry I did and I won't again. I don't like him that way, and there's just no sense. I told him he was only the second man who'd ever kissed me, and he said he didn't believe it, and I said, 'What do you mean?' and he said, 'I think I'm the first, you little precious thing.' So then I told him about Tom Beatty back in Seavale, but he seemed to think that didn't count."

May—"Jerry wanted to show me his apartment this afternoon, but I wouldn't go. He's asked me several times. I'd like to see it, but it doesn't seem the thing to do exactly. I haven't forgotten what Mrs. Wendell told me—though of course Jerry isn't a bit like that.

"We finally went swimming instead in the pool at the Hotel Shelton. I never was in a pool before and I loved it. All white tile and hollow sounding, and the greenest water.

"Jerry is terribly thin in a bathing suit."

June—I wonder why Jerry likes me? It seems funny. He's so rich and good looking—except not very well looking. The way women stare at him on the street and in restaurants and places, you'd think he could have his choice of almost any-

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body, and I guess he could. He tells me why he likes me but he gives the most senseless reasons. 'Because you're /i//fresh,'//i/ he said once, and another time he said, 'Because you're the only new sensation in New York.' (Imagine!) And once he said, 'Because you're a good little child about twelve years old and I can be a good little child about twelve years old when I'm with you.' I said he was the only good little child about twelve years old I'd ever heard of who carried a flask. And anyway, who wants to be a g.l.c.a.t.y.o.? I can't think of anything stupider." //fb/

One week-day evening in midsummer Dolly telephoned Jerry from the theater and in a voice high with suppressed excitement asked him if he were going to be at leisure around eleven o'clock. "I've something simply marvelous to tell you!" she sang.

"Tell me now."

"Uh-uh. I want to tell you in person."

"I'll be there at eleven, of course. But in the meantime I'm consumed with curiosity. Can't you tell me a little now, sugar?"

"W-ell," said Dolly cautiously, "I'll tell you this much: remember once you said I was one of the people things happen to? They're beginning!"

She met him ten minutes after the curtain fell. As she emerged through the swinging door into the lobby she spied him, a slim dapper figure, with hands clasped over the hook of a stick and head inclined a connoisseur's inch to the left as he scanned a picture of the Who's Your Boy-Friend? chorus.

He did not see Dolly until she was at his shoulder; then his panama hat came off with a flourish and tiny glints of light awoke under his sleepy eyelids. "Lovely," he murmured. "Ah, but you're lovely tonight."

She did in truth look extraordinarily well. Her cheeks were stained from within, a glorious wild-flower pink, and the pupils of her eyes were dilated to luminous black

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circles rimmed narrowly in blue. She was wearing a straight plain summer dress of old blue crêpe de chine with a collar that curled close to her throat, and a matching sport hat crushed low on her black hair. The costume was new. It had been purchased from the midsummer mark-downs, and home-cleaned, and home-fitted; but it gave a hint of what Clothes would one day do for Dolly Quinn.

"You take my breath away," said Jerry.

She sparkled at him. "Get it back, then! You'll need it in a minute—to gasp with. Come on, Jerry. Let's go."

"Where shall we go?"

"Anywhere. It doesn't matter. Got your car?"

He nodded, his eyes still fastened on her face.

"Then let's drive," said Dolly. "I'd rather, wouldn't you, as hot as it is?"

Jerry's car was a low and crouching giant thing of pale tan and silver. It was a thing to point out. Parker Lane had once called it, with reason, "the loudest roar in all the Roaring Forties;" and to denizens of the Forties it was familiar as the Astor facade is familiar, as the Times sign is familiar. You saw it night after night. Sometimes it was occupied only by the owner, who reclined beneath the wheel at the angle of a convalescent invalid and drooped a languid elbow over the side. Sometimes it held the owner and a scarlet-lipped, cloche-hatted playmate; sometimes a foursome with a party air about them; occasionally, in the dawn, an uproarious eight or nine who sat on laps and hung on running boards.

Dolly Quinn loved to ride in this car, and yet was never entirely comfortable when she did. It was such a conspicuous car, to begin with; it moved along a street like a passed plate down a pew, collecting eyes. And it was such a splendid car, long-nosed and glossy. To ride in it in anything less than a Paris frock made one feel shabby and out of place. . . .

But tonight she climbed in with no thought of its gran-

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deur, and fitting the nape of her neck to the curve of the seat-back, stretched out her small legs gratefully. "Ooh! This is going to feel good! I haven't been really cool since I can remember."

"Fierce weather," Jerry agreed, kicking the starter. "I should think you'd wilt in the store."

"I do. And the theater is just about as bad. Those uniforms!"

Jerry gave a single wrench of his arm, and the tan-and-silver monster stormed away from the curb . . . only to bring up sharply behind a blockade of taxis panting at the Broadway intersection.

"Tell me what you were going to tell me," he begged, while they waited.

Dolly nestled even lower in her seat and folded her arms across her chest. "Well, this Nick Standish I'm always talking about—"

The traffic ahead of them started forward. "Oh, let's wait," said Dolly. "Wait till we get where you can listen better."

Then, because Jerry made no move to put his car in gear and send it after the taxis into Broadway, she shot him an obliquely questioning glance. His face was set in stern lines. His eyes were very black and shiny, staring down into hers. He appeared not to notice the fretful yelps of the horns of machines behind them.

"You're not—" He covered Dolly's hand with one of his and squeezed it till she winced. "You're not going to marry him?"

For as long as it takes to snap fingers Dolly was rigid, blank. Then she relaxed, and laughter trilled from her throat. "Of course not! Why, you crazy, he's married already! I've told you that. And anyway—" She peered back over her shoulder, and changed her tone. "But do go on, Jerry. We're holding up at least ten cars, and they're furious."

Both were silent for many blocks thereafter. n -

"Whatever made you think of such a thing?" Dolly queried curiously at last.

"I don't know. My natural pessimism, I suppose. It would be—the very worst thing that could happen—to me."

He said this so low that Dolly fancied she must have misunderstood him. She looked up quickly, and finding his profile inscrutable and his eyes busily watchful of cops and cross streets, she was sure she had.

"No," she said easily, relieved, "no wedding bells. Nothing like that for years and years and years. It's—" She emitted a little half-rueful chuckle. "I was going to make it a great story, Jerry, but you spoiled it by thinking it was so much more important than it is! So I'll just tell you. The paper Nick Standish works for—that's the Star—held a contest to find five girls to send down to Atlantic City in September for that National Beauty Pageant they have. You know, where they choose a Miss America every year? Well, Nick persuaded me to enter, and I did, along with loads of others. And they picked out a Miss Greater New York and a Miss Manhattan and a Miss Bronx and a Miss Brooklyn and a Miss Coney Island, all to be sent down from here by the Star—and I'm the Miss Manhattan!" Dolly's voice became jubilant again. "There! What do you think of that?"

They had entered the Park by this time and were slipping along one of its cool, curved, rustic thoroughfares, It was dim in the Park after Broadway and the glare of Columbus Circle. Other cars stole by them, dark bulky ghosts with phosphorescent eyes. "Who-eee!" they sighed as they passed.

"I think it's—remarkable news," said Jerry Davis.

Dolly was too engrossed in her tale to analyze this answer or to note any lack in it. She hardly heard it. "I started to tell you when I first went into the thing," she resumed, "and then I thought I wouldn't till afterwards. There's something so conceited about entering a beauty

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contest—I thought you'd think I was an awful fool. I didn't have any idea I'd win. Honestly, Jerry, I didn't have any idea I had a chance of winning! It was all sort of a joke between Nick and me. And when they told me I'd been chosen—" she shook her head, smiling mistily at the windshield—"you could have floored me with your little finger. I can't quite believe it, even yet."

She turned sideways in her seat and drew her knees up, smoothing her brief skirt modestly over them. "And now!" she crowed. "Imagine! I get a week at Atlantic City, where I've never been, and stay at one of the very best hotels, and my expenses are all paid, and I get a lot of wonderful new clothes that I can keep afterward! And the store will give me time off on full—Jer-ry!"

He had stopped the car with a jerk that threw her against the windshield.

"I'm sorry," he said gruffly.

Dolly righted herself and sat very still, round alarmed eyes searching his face. "Jerry," she said, "I—are you angry? You are angry. Oh, why?—when I thought you'd be so glad for me!"

They were well into the Park now. Darkness lay over them. Darkness and quiet. Only the bright rim of a tall building, the marching words of an electric sign across the sky, the vague and distant surf-like monotone, betokened a city beyond these dim green woods.

Jerry slouched motionless at the wheel. His chin dug his chest, his unseeing eyes were fixed on the dashboard where a dozen little dials and disks winked, captive under glass. He still held the wheel with both hands; in the glow from the dashboard light his knuckles showed strained and yellow.

He spoke slowly. "Will you—do something for me, Dolly?"

"Of course, if I can."

"Will you give up this—this idea?"

"You mean not go?" n -

He nodded. "That's just what I mean."

"But Jerry, why?"

A carload of young people fled by, trailing a gay little pennant of song on the summer wind behind them.

"Why? repeated Dolly Quinn, when the last light note was lost. "When I want to go so terribly? Oh, Jerry, I can't see—"

Suddenly she stiffened. Her knees slid from the seat and her slippers hit the floor of the car with a thump. "I will go!" she cried indignantly. "What right have you to ask me not to go, I'd like to know? Of course I'm going!"

Still he sat without moving, without speaking. Still he did not look at her. But she looked at him . . . and the flare of her defiance flickered low and died.

"Why don't you want me to go, Jerry?" she asked him again.

"Because I love you," he answered. Wearily, almost.

An instant later he echoed himself in a voice as harsh as it had just been quiet. "Because I love you! Do you hear that?" He was clenching her arms now, and his eyes were blazing in his white, near face. "Because I want you all to myself! Because the very thought of thousands of people—men—gaping at you—" His voice failed, and he put his head down so that his face was hidden against her shoulder. He said chokingly, "Oh, little Dolly, little sweet—"

She felt unbearably sorry for him then. She felt so sorry for him that she said to herself, "I love him, I do love him"—being not the first to mistake the wish to love for its fulfillment.

She stroked his sleek head with her hands and gave it tiny pats, murmuring brokenly to him all the while. "Jerry, don't—don't, dear—I won't go—of course I won't if it's going to make you feel like this. Look up here! Look here at me. See—aren't you ashamed? You've made me cry!" n -

But when he did lift his head again she caught the heavy reek of alcohol; and it blew a chill and hardening breath upon her heart. And all at once the moment just gone was as though it never had been. "There! That's over!" she said, and she smiled a little. "Lend me your big hanky, Jerry."

He dried her tears himself, clumsily, as men do. He would have kissed her, but she turned her face from him.

"You don't care—at all?" he said.

"Not in the way you mean, Jerry."

His arm around her shoulders gripped her fiercely. "I'll make you care," he whispered, "some day. Wait and see."

He released her then, and the engine snorted under the sole of his shoe.

For some little time they rode without words. Jerry devoted himself to the wheel. Dolly watched the headlights that darted on before them, sucking trees, bushes, rocks, smooth black macadam into their golden funnel.

"There'll be pictures of me in the Star tomorrow," she ventured at last. "Lots of 'em. Different poses. Nick had me up there tonight before the show, and a photographer who works for the Star took them. And there'll be a story about me too. Nick wrote it."

It seemed to her that Jerry would never speak. She waited tensely, her eyes on the road, her ears straining. "If he makes any more fuss—" she thought. And, "I don't want to fight about it—"

But he said quite matter-of-factly, "When do you go to Atlantic City?"

And she replied just as matter-of-factly, "Day after Labor Day."

/fb// Then Fate, leaning back from her loom, holding her fingers a golden thread and a dark thread, mused, "To cross these might make a pretty pattern." . . . //fb/

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Gay looked up from her letter. "Irene's throwing a house party over Labor Day," she said.

"Is she?" inquired Mrs. Leonard. "In New York?"

"No, in Atlantic City—Ventnor, rather. They have a house there."

"I suppose you're going?"

"I suppose I am. Unless you're planning to keep me here on the wrong side of the ocean till I die."

"You know very well we have passage booked for the twenty-third," said Mrs. Leonard mildly.

She smoothed her left brow with her left forefinger—a, favorite trick of hers—and explored her daughter's face with a speculative eye. Presently she rose and went to stand beside her, one plump hand resting on her shoulder.

"Dear," she pleaded, "you're cured—aren't you? You've put that disreputable Davis out of your mind?"

"Don't be silly. Of course I am. And have."

Eight months away from New York had not changed Gay Leonard. She still said, "Don't be silly." She still lied.

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/ch//SIRENS AND SYCOPHANTS

The Labor Day house party "thrown" by Ted and Irene Matthews, those inveterate throwers of parties of all kinds, assembled .the Friday before Labor Day. It assembled, to be precise, all Friday long. Quite early in the morning the Matthews' Pierce Arrow, dispatched to the station for the first guests, returned full of luggage, and the Ford truck dispatched with it for the luggage returned full of guests—a transposition typical of the spirit of the affair. Quite late in the afternoon the last pair of motorists appeared, having been arrested for speeding. And in the interim car after car, sedan after roadster after limousine, halted under the porte-cochère and dumped jaunty gentlemen and silken scented girls on to the wide veranda.

It was a busy day for Mrs. Matthews' maids, who toiled upstairs with suitcases, unpacked, pressed gowns, ran errands. It was a busy day for Mrs. Matthews' chef, who prepared luncheon for nine and dinner for twenty-two. It was a busy day for Mrs. Matthews' husband, who, aided by the butler, mixed many rounds of tan and yellow drinks. But for Mrs. Matthews it was not a busy day. No day was. A more casual lady, a more irresponsible hostess, never lived.

When the vanguard of her visitors swarmed into her home she was nowhere in sight. "I'm not up!" her blithe voice informed them from the hidden head of the stairs. "Isn't that scandalous? But I'll get up—since it's you." When Gay Leonard and Alan Pomeroy arrived by motor about two, they passed her a block from her own street,

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going rapidly the other way in Benny Henley's racing car. She blew them a kiss and was back in an hour, unabashed and unapologetic. She met no guests at the door unless she chanced to be near it as they entered; but no guests, knowing Irene, expected her to. They went cheerfully around looking for her, and if necessary shouting for her, and when they found her, were compensated, because she was so palpably glad to see them.

Having disposed of the amenities, each guest proceeded at once, straight as a homing bird, to the bar in the basement. There he or she drank and was toasted, amid the loudest acclaim—a custom hard on the earlier arrivals, some of whom, having downed one highball in honor of every person who came after, found themselves rather full of highballs by half past six o'clock.

At seven the migration to upper regions to dress for dinner began. Girls went up by two and threes, prattling in the voluble yet somehow detached fashion of girls when they have men on their minds. Men sauntered up in a leisurely way a little later, blowing great clouds of smoke. Doors opened and banged. Water buzzed remotely into bathtubs. Damsels caught traversing hallways in negligées uttered squeaks of synthetic modesty and fled. Boys unable to locate the rooms assigned to them roamed to and fro, beating upon all doors and retorting impudently to the cries thus elicited from within. A dozen different voices paged the hostess: "Rene! Oh, Rene! Lend me your curling iron? I forgot mine and my ends are all straight. . . . "Say, old thing, sorry to bother you, but where'd my suitcase go to, d'you know?" . . . "Can one of the maids help me a minute, honey?" . . . "Irene? Station L O S T, Windy Grant announcing. Have I a berth hereabouts, or did I just dream I was invited?" d By seven-thirty everyone was upstairs and in place and comparatively quiet. Then for half an hour or more noth-

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ing was to be seen of the house party, nothing was to be heard but the soft purr or the rough resonance of voices, muffled by the closed white doors. d "Starting off all right," Irene remarked.

"Yeah," said her husband.

He sounded somewhat strangled, and Irene, lipstick in hand, glanced back at him over one round bare shoulder. He was tying his tie, chin tilted ceilmgward. He stood before the chiffonier "in that hideous stage of masculine adornment that immediately precedes the climb into the trousers. It is a stage all wives know, a stage during which they are irresistibly moved to give vent to any connubial irritation, on any score, that may be rankling in their bosoms. Ted's trousers, which lay like a mourning band across the rose satin bedspread, would be donned in just a minute. So would the coat and vest that reposed beside them. In the meantime, from the knees up, he was all shapeless shirt; and below the knees he appeared as the young man appears in the garter advertisements.

"You're a sight," said Irene crisply.

She turned back to her own mirror, and while inducing the lipstick to stick out its vivid tongue, said further, "You made those drinks too strong, Ted! What were you trying to do—put everybody to bed for the week end?"

"Nobody's lit."

"Pierce is."

"Pierce always is."

It was not the habit of Mrs. Matthews to concede Mr. Matthews the last word in any debate; but he had it in this one. She remained mute, absorbed in the vital business of transforming her rather bloodless mouth into a gay little scarlet butterfly-on-the-wing.

Women said—charitably, for they said it among themselves—that Irene Matthews did more with what Nature

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had allowed her than any other woman alive. She was not beautiful; except for her limpid green eyes, she had not a single beautiful feature. But when she was groomed and coiffed and tinted, she gave an effect of beauty so good as to deceive half the people she met.

Her hair, born an unjnteresting mouse brown, had been dyed to the bright gleam of a new penny. Her scant lashes were mascaroed until they seemed twice their thickness. She applied make-up of all kinds with a liberal hand and had the wit then to rub most of it off again; the result was a skin you like to look at. Because her nose was too large and she knew it, you seldom saw her profile; she presented her full face unwaveringly to any vis-à-vis. She affected extreme gowns and very small hats, worn low and crooked, with long things trailing from the brims, and she carried a walking stick whenever possible. Nothing flattered her more than to be mistaken for an actress. She often was.

She was twenty-six years old; and during the mad days of 1918, when she had been very young and sentimental and very much thrilled about war and all thereunto appertaining, she had married an infantry captain. It turned out afterwards that he was only Ted Matthews, who looked a little pudgy in civilian clothes and whom she didn't know at all. For the first year or two her attitude toward him was reproachful. "You fooled me, deliberately," her eyes seemed to say. Later she concluded in her nonchalant fashion that it didn't much matter who one's husband was as long as he possessed unlimited means and a broad, broad mind.

Ted was the orphaned only son of approximately ten million dollars. He had a house in the East Sixties. He had a mansion at Miami. He had this "cottage" at Ventnor, a place at Southampton, and another in the Adirondacks which Irene hated and refused to inhabit because one didn't dress up enough there. He had five automobiles and a yacht and a private car. He had everything im-

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aginable except a job and children—which is to say, he had everything he wanted except children.

As to his broadmindedness, there was some question. Certain it was that he interfered not at all in Irene's numerous little love affairs; but the public was unable to decide whether this was because he was amazingly generous or merely incredibly blind.

Nobody disliked Ted Matthews. On the other hand, nobody liked him well. Had it not been for his wife and his money, it is doubtful if many people would have sought his society or cared particularly whether or not they ever saw him again. He was a good-natured and quite intolerable bore. He drank a great deal, and it made him talkative—unfortunately, for he had nothing to say. He was fond of bridge, played it atrociously, but fancied he played it well. This was one of half a dozen hallucinations about himself which he cherished. Others were that he was significant, that he was witty, that he had the makings of a champion golfer, that his wife admired him. He had several favorite expressions, among them "By the Lord Harrt" and "Yes-sir-ee!" And he had several parlor tricks. Five, in round numbers. One was a sleight-of-hand performance with a fifty cent piece. The other four were card tricks which he executed gravely on all occasions, standing with eyes squeezed shut while his victim, apathetic but obedient, chose "any card, just any card at all."

He said now, giving his tie a final east-and-west tweak, "Everybody's here who's coming, aren't they?"

"I think so," said Irene. "I never know."

She was "doing" her lashes with a tiny blacking brush, holding her mouth open a trifle because she had somewhere read that if you did you were not so apt to get the brush in your eye. She thought, for the hundredth time, how strange this was, and wondered if it could be true, and if so, why. She even gazed quizzically at the brush for an instant, as though she contemplated asking it.

"Gay's looking great, isn't she?" Ted observed. n -

"Isn't she?" Irene echoed warmly.

"Yes-sir-ee!"

"And poor Alan," Irene went on, rubbing the brush on the ebony cake vigorously, "is sunk without a bubble. I never saw a boy so smitten. He's worse than he was before she went away, I do believe."

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder," Ted said owlishly.

Silence for a moment. Then, "Ted?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I'll ask those two to stay on here after the rest leave. Stay through next week. They could, as well as mot. Alan's on his vacation anyhow."

"Trying to make a match of it?"

"Of course not. Not," said Irene, "that I wouldn't if I could. I'd like to see Gay marry Alan. I adore her—and he's precious!" d Alan Pomeroy had just finished shaving, and was engaged in drying his razor on an embroidered linen towel (which got cut slightly). He whistled as his fingers moved, a gentle whistle like a long sigh syncopated; somehow the pursing of his lips made his gray eyes look very round and ingenuous and young. His hair was wet from his shower, but he had not yet attacked it with brushes and comb; it lay in tight ruddy kinks all over his head. He would presently swear at these kinks. He always did.

He was imposing, standing there, his long straight legs in evening trousers planted wide apart, his bare shoulders, huge and compact and bronzed with summer swims, bulging from the armholes of a tight white undershirt. He was superb, He reminded you of things. Life guards. Left tackles. Stokers of coal in mammoth furnaces. Builders of nations. Discoverers of continents. The glistening, rippling shoulders of the galley slaves of old. . . .

Alan tucked his razor into its velvet-lined casket and strolled into the adjoining room. Here, across one of the

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twin beds, slept Pierce Brown, his roommate for the week end. Pierce slept efficiently but not attractively, on his back with his mouth open. He snored.

"Hey!" said Alan, and shook him. "Come to!"

When after some three minutes of this Pierce had neither come to nor promised by so much as the bat of an eyelash to do so in due time, Alan lifted him up bodily, bore him into the bathroom, deposited him smartly in the tub, and turned on the shower.

Pierce came to, and was much offended. He said, "Damn it all, you ash, I'm not tight, I'm just tired." Even after his benefactor had returned to the bedroom he was to be heard plaintively, almost tearfully, protesting.

Alan whistled as he finished dressing. A whole repertoire of mellow tunes. When I'm By Your Side as accompaniment to the insertion of shirt studs. Tell Me What I Want to Be Told while putting on the shirt. I Love My Girl during the combat with the collar. He was happy. Everything combined to make him happy. There was this vacation; three weeks in which to play, and sleep late, and forget the advertising business. There was this house party; four days of ragtime rollicking. There was Gay. Right here, under this same roof, where he could see her and touch her and listen to the silver song of her voice.

"If I yelled 'Gay!' right now," he said to himself, "she'd hear me. She's that near." This thought elated him addly. She had been so far away, so long. . . .

Alan Pomeroy had a whole heart to give to Gay. No fragments worth mentioning had been chipped off and lost to the lesser loves of the average gentleman's 'teens and early twenties. In college they had called him a woman-hater. The epithet was figuratively but not literally applicable. Alan never hated women; he simply preferred men, just as he preferred outdoors to indoors, pipes to cigarettes, old clothes to new. He was essentially a man's man . . . until he met Gay. After that he was Gay's man, if she wanted him. n -

He had loved her rather terribly and painfully for two years; but it seemed to him now that until a week ago, when she returned from her long stay in Europe, he had not known at all what love was. In a week the most astounding change had taken place; in an instant, really, for his memory dated it as simultaneous with his new first sight of her.

He had met her at the boat. He had stood on the pier, jostled by officials and photographers and reporters and families and other stupid meaningless people. And she had come smiling down the gangplank to him. Like a light. Like a flower. Like the essence of a dream. Like Spring.

He had chortled, holding her hands, "Gee, Gay! Gee, I'm glad to see you!" He recalled that now angrily. He, who would have spoken with the tongues of angels, had found no words but those trite words, the very words in which the shopkeeper beside him was greeting his beefy red buyer. . . .

Later he had said, "I'd forgotten—" And stopped.

"Hmm?" Her silver voice.

"Nothing. Just—I guess I'd almost forgotten how beautiful you are."

His love for her was unaccountably different from that day. It was greater. It was stronger, more importunate; different altogether. She had always been to him a thing that he worshiped and yearned for hopelessly. Now she had become a thing that he must have.

Driving down here to the Matthews' a few hours ago in his roadster, he had sought to tell her something of this. He had peered at her as she reclined low in the seat beside him, one sculptured leg dangling from the bent knee of the other, her figure provocative in thin black chiffon, and tendrils of her yellow hair curled up by the breeze on the sides of her tight black turban; and unpremeditatedly he had begun to voice the things that burned in his mind. n -

She had cut him off with a little scream: "Watch the road, Alan!"

A minute afterwards, when he had dodged the telegraph pole responsible for her fright, she murmured, "Sorry to interrupt, darling. But death is so permanent!" She lit a cigarette for herself and one for him with the dashboard lighter, and added, settling back, "Besides, it's just as well. I love to be made love to, but not at high noon on a state road. Save it till we get to the shore, Alan. Then I'll listen. Starlight, and the sound of surf—oh, then I'll lap it up!"

He had not enjoyed her flippancy; had been somewhat wounded by it. But he soothed himself with the reflection that flippancy was ever Gay's "line," that it didn't mean anything in particular, and that she had the right idea anyhow. Starlight, and the sound of surf. . . .

From the spot where he stood now, fumbling with his tie, he could by the mere half turn of his head catch a glimpse of the ocean. A step to the window, and he could see acres and acres of ruffled turquoise blue, stretching to a horizon where sailed a pigmy ship with funnels like three cigarette stubs smoking. He could close his eyes and still smell the salt of the ocean, feel the cool, hear the dull drone of its depth and the spanking splash of its shallowness up the sand.

Surf. And there would be starlight soon.

Alan untied his tie and tied it again. He thought over all that he would say to Gay when there was starlight, and how he would say it. He held a little rehearsal . . . until his sense of humor rescued him and his whisperings died in a snort.

"Alan," suggested Alan, "shut your mouth."

He took two strides away from the mirror, then wheeled and added ferociously, "Or I'll sock it!"

"Who's this you're gonna sock?" called Pierce through the open bathroom doorway.

"An idiot not far from here," said Alan amiably. n -

Gay's room was the best in the house. Inevitably. She was the sort of person to whom the best rooms, the best theater seats, the most advantageous restaurant tables, always are given. Hers was the cream of life by natural prerogative; she accepted it calmly, as if life were nothing but cream.

She shared the room with Jane McClure, her closest girl friend—except for Irene, almost her sole girl friend. As a rule, women over sixty and under ten were the only ones who could make themselves care for Gay. Irene was an exception because she had an almost masculine type of mind; she appreciated beauty as a man does, and was neither jealous of it nor afraid of it. Jane was an exception because she was shrewd. She had long ago decided that to be Gay's intimate was safer than to be Gay's foe. She was nearly as pretty as Gay and equally and she played in the same playground; hence it had had to be either one thing or the other.

They kept each other's secrets and eschewed each other's suitors and got along very nicely. There had been, to be sure, a few regrettable episodes—notably the episode of the blond young Englishman, discovered by Jane only to discover Gay (after which they "didn't speak" for months). But usually their relations were of the most amicable; and they missed each other badly when they were not. Unbelievable though it may seem, exceedingly gorgeous young ladies are often lonesome, especially prior to five in the afternoon.

Jane was very dark, with long hair which she bound in bands around her sleek smail head, and eyes of jet set rather wide apart. She used no rouge, but bore down heavily with a lipstick, so that her mouth resembled a poppy petal in snow. Vivacity was Item One of her credo. She held that a girl was a kind of glorified clown in the circus of the universe, whose mission was to entertain. Accordingly, she entertained; and only Gay and a few others were aware that this exuberance of spirits was not

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a part of Jane, but a thing she slung on and wore like a child's toy drum.

She was utterly without it now. She achieved her evening toilet in gestures incomparably limp and lackadaisical, appearing throughout the process to be on the verge of a complete collapse. Once, semi-clothed, she flung herself flat on the day bed and lay there, her hands hanging like dead hands over the sides. "Nothing," she said in answer to Gay's solicitous inquiry. "Just recharging batteries, that's all."

The room was balmy with the scent of sachet and of perfume and of the corsage bouquet, gift of Windy Grant to Jane, waiting in a box on one of the window sills. Lacy things and chiffon things—all the gossamer armor of these warriors of the heart—lay strewn around. The dinner gown straight from the Rue de la Paix with which Gay would shortly adorn herself spilled a green-and-silver waterfall over the foot of a bed. And Gay in a skimpy silver slip sat on the bed's edge, pulling stockings he breaths of mist well over her knees and securing them with wreaths of satin rosebuds.

"You'd better get moving," she advised. "I hear people starting down already."

"That isn't people," Jane responded drowsily. "That's Helen Havemeyer, who's heard that the early bird catches the worm."

"Worms are men?"

"Men," corrected Jane, "are worms."

She rose a moment later and, sighing, stumbled over to the dressing table. She began to brush her hair in long clinging strokes. Gay thought, watching her, "I believe I'll let mine grow this fall." This was the unfailing reaction of all bobbed heads to a display of Jane's abundant tresses.

"Tell me some more," directed Jane.

"I've told you everything I can think of."

"The whole story? What about the heart interest?" n -

"There wasn't any worth mentioning."

"Do you mean to say," Jane scoffed, "that you were three months in Palm Beach and five abroad and didn't fall in love once?"

"Absolutely."

Jane shook her head. "It wouldn't be you."

"It was, though."

Gay drew the green-and-silver dress over her head with care, and emerged to perceive Jane's eyes trained sharply and sagaciously upon her. She raised interrogative brows. "Hmm?"

"What about Jerry Davis?" Jane wanted to know.

"Well? What about him?"

"Seen him since you've been back?"

"No. He was away somewhere until last night. I talked to him this morning, though, on the phone before I left town."

"What'd he have to say?"

"Nothing special," Gay equivocated.

She fell silent then, while her whole conversation with Jerry went through her mind. He had said the conventional things: hel-lo there, and this was a pleasure, and when did she get back, and had she had a wonderful time? He had said, "I'm sorry I couldn't answer those two letters of yours, but I didn't want to risk getting you into any more trouble with your family." He had said, "I hope I'm going to see you soon?" and to the news that she was just leaving for Atlantic City he had drawled, "Oh, along with the rest of the beauties!" She had not understood this, and he explained briefly that a beauty contest began there on Tuesday. To which she retorted, "Well, that lets me out! I'll be leaving for New York again Tuesday morning."

They had talked about her trip, and about a young couple she had run across in Paris who knew Jerry. And finally she had put the question that had been in her thoughts for eight long months: "How's your little dance

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hall girl? Are you still so devoted to her?" She had asked it lightly, laughingly—holding her breath—hoping to hear him say, "For heaven's sake, I'd forgotten all about her!"

He had said instead, "She's very well, thank you." And then, rather irritably, "She isn't really a dance hall girl, you know, Gay. She played a one-night stand on that, only. Into the puzzling, disconcerting memory of this, Jane's voice intruded. "Come back! Answer me!"

Gay turned to her blankly. "What did you say?"

"I said," said Jane, "Do you still love Jerry?"

"I, began Gay.

She stood motionless, staring at nothing. Then her mouth puckered, and she bit her lip to stay its sudden trembling. "Oh, Jane, she almost sobbed, "I do! That's the hell of it!" d Dinner. . . .

The big table looked like a table in a room where wedding gifts are displayed, so freighted it was with glistening silver and delicate china and glass. Candlelight beamed softly over it, and a low unbroken hedge of roses bisected it down the middle. Around its sides there was a pattern, repeated, repeated again; the chalky shield of a dress shirt next the colored loop of a bodice. Eleven times this double pattern was repeated, with variations only in the hue of the loop and in the degree of the forward bulge of the shield.

Irene sat at the head of the table, exotic and arresting in a burnt orange gown. On her right sat Benny Henley, latest of her flames: a good-looking youth with wet brown hair still furrowed from the teeth of the comb, and brown eyes which he removed from Irene's face only to seem to ask of those about him, "Isn't she lovely? Isn't she bright? Wasn't what she just said clever?" . . . Beyond Benny

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was Helen Havemeyer, whose pearls were real but whose were excessive; and beyond her, spectacled solemn John Filer, the sort of person whom hostesses always seat beside the Helen Havemeyers of their parties, on the birds-of-a-feather, misfits-together plan.

Next to John, and as oblivious of him as though he were made of wax, Jane McClure, wearing geranium satin and all the pep she could command. Then curly-haired Windy Grant, whose lest year's careless letters to a Broadway chorus girl had lately cost his father fifteen thousand, out of court. Then Evelyn Blair, petite and blond, who called everybody "Dar-r-ling, and Bunny Hopkins, a large and loquacious Princeton, sophomore, with whom she held hands under the table between courses.

Beyond the sophomore sat Helen Drummond, who had smocks of six colors and a studio where, when nothing more diverting offered itself, she painted. (She had done the place cards for Irene: ladies with voluminous pastel skirts, blowing forever to the left.) Beside this occasional artist was Jock Hamill of the matchless nose and the crooked, whimsical smile. Next to Jock, Ann Breckenridge, divorced at nineteen and fond of talking about it. Then Ted, the host, around the table corner from Ann. Then a big girl with muscles and a sunburned, scaly nose, whose named—Hazel Taylor—was engraved on the golf trophies of many country clubs, but as yet on the heart of no young man.

Alan Pomeroy sat next to Hazel, and Gay, a cigarette holder studded with diamonds between her lips, sat next to him. On Gay's right was Peter Newton, who also loved her. Then Barbara Johns (Bobbie if you'd known her five minutes) who had lapis lazuli eyes, and tawny hair, and a father with a railroad, and a very good time indeed wherever she went. Then Pierce Brown, sober now; just one who laughed when others said things. Then Mrs. Jock Hamill, the adorable Cecily, bride of half a year; Dutch Webber, pioneer of the Great Wheelbarrow Move-

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ment, whereby the seniors of Dartmouth were spared the indignity of proceeding on foot to their classes; Hope Glenn, whose first novel, Midnight Sons, had gone into its eighth edition for no comprehensible reason; and Tom Sinclair, with the jagged shrapnel scar across his cheek—Tom, whom war had made magnificant and peace good for nothing. Then the end of the table, and Irene again. It was a noisy and confused and boisterous gathering. People shrieked across the festal board. People leaned to shriek to people five places down. Snatches of conversation rose shrill and clear for an instant, then were drowned in the din of other snatches:

"The last thing he said to me was, 'I certainly do admire a girl who likes to see the speedometer go up,' and I said, 'You can let it go up till the blame thing busts, for all I care,' and the next I knew I was lying in a swamp and the little birds were singing, 'Tweet-tweet!' . . ."

" . . . and if he so much as smiles at any other girl she develops a terrible headache all of a sudden and has to be taken right straight home . . ."

" . . . strained his eyes watching taxi meters . . ."

" . . . so I walked up on the green and looked all around, and the caddy looked all around, and no ball, and by the Lord Harry, what do you think? I just happened to glance into the cup . . ."

"You know Frank. You met him at Ann's that time. Oh, you knew! The one who doesn't drink."

" . . . says she's going to take a correspondence course in sex appeal, don't you love that . . ."

" . . . crazy goofer carried twelve pints of Scotch from Miami to New York in a cardboard carton wrapped up with white tissue paper and tied with pink ribbons and tagged, 'Happy Birthday to Little Junior from Papa' . . ."

"Dar-r-ling, I didn't! I never said such a thing! It was you who said you were conceited, don't you remember, and all I said was, 'Well, you ought to know' . . ." n -

" . . . queered herself at the first prom she ever went to by telling a roomful how she'd stayed at the Psi U house at Princeton! . . ."

" . . . I'm doing a new novel now, you know, and I haven't time for liquor or love or anything . . ."

" . . . not a man in town who didn't ask her to marry him, and not a man who isn't glad now she said no . . ."

" . . . danced three whole dances holding a five dollar bill behind her back as a bribe to the stags, but nobody took him. As Beany said to me, 'There are worse things than poverty' . . ."

And so on and so on, for an hour. d The most popular room in the Matthews house was the playroom in the basement. An enormous room, this, occupying almost the whole cellar space of the great building. Its color scheme was black and orange; its keynote, informality. The walls, orange above the black lacquered wainscoting, were covered with amateur sketches in crayon, and scribblings of verse and names—a panoramic record of unnumbered parties. Here someone had executed a three-foot conception of hggs and Maggie, rather good; there a boy (he must have been tall) had written a poem to Irene; over there a game of tick-tack-two had been played, with victory to the x side. One saw girls' heads in profusion, shapely legs kicking, a Toonerville trolley, black cats with preposterous whiskers, bottles tipped perpetually toward goblets, toasts in round young handwriting . . . and not infrequently, faint smudges of erasure, where bibulous merrymakers had scrawled things they later had decided weren't so funny after all. . . .

The playroom had a hardwood floor, kept slippery for dancing, and dotted with a dozen small Chinese rugs easy to kick aside. There was a Victrola on a stand with a round black column of records towering beside it, and a radio, and a player piano, and a billiard table. One end

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of the room held a gaping stone fireplace, and two divans burdened with many cushions faced it, cater-cornered. Across the other end was the bar, complete in every detail, even to the polished brass foot rail and the ancient and honorable beer signs tacked up behind.

On this first evening of the Labor Day house party, the playroom was barer than usual. Divans and chairs had been pushed to the wall. Card tables had been folded up and put away. The rugs and the billiard table had been removed altogether. There was left a spacious oblong of highly polished floor, surrounded by a frame of furniture.

The crowd was not simply dancing tonight, but having a Dance. Which is different.

Imported bartenders with roached hair and rosy moon faces presided in back of the long marble slab. Imported musicians (the Seven Fiddlesticks, late of the Club Deauville, New York) sat around the piano, blowing Blues and beating time with seven right feet. At the end of each number they chorused, "That'll be all!" and drank seven long cold highballs. The twenty imported guests were augmented by some thirty local friends of the Matthews'. Considering the fact that Irene neglected to introduce anyone at all, the two groups mingled really rather well.

The lights were dim; they shed indeed scarcely any light at all, but painted big gilt polka dots at intervals around the walls. The music was barbaric, African. The sea air stealing in through high, discreetly shuttered windows became at once sophisticated air, acquainted with smoke, with alcohol, with powder and the bottled ghosts of blossoms.

Things happened. Flirtations began; and ended. Kisses were exchanged in corners. Eyes met unknown eyes through the swimming gloom and said, "I want to meet you." Couples quarreled because one or the other had danced too long with, or seemed too charmed by, some third person. A twenty-year-old matron from Ventnor

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suddenly threw a glass of liquor full into the face of her young husband. A tow-headed boy with bloodshot eyes invited Windy Grant to finish a dispute over a cut-in "like men, by God!" and tore his coat off . . . only to replace it sheepishly at the urgent behest of his host. The drummer of the orchestra succumbed at last to eight or ten fingers of rye, and slid from his chair, hitting the drum one final splendid crash. Bobbie Johns disappeared with somebody and returned somewhat later triumphantly wearing a new jeweled fraternity pin. . . .

Alen Pomeroy said te Gay, "Let's go outdoors a little while, shall we?" And Gay answered promptly, "I should say not! I wouldn't leave this party for anything!" d At two o'clock the lights went up, the orchestra went out for air, and many caterers served a buffet supper. There was a frantic scramble for places and partners. Girls sat down on divans to "hold" them. Men seized the girls of their choice by the wrists to hold them. Girls and men with plates in their hands dashed about in search of points of vantage and companions of congeniality. Groups congregated on the stairs, in the first floor rooms, on the veranda, on the lawn—everywhere.

Gay and Alan and Irene and Benny Henley betook themselves to an automobile parked behind the house and there supped, without interruption. "If anyone comes butting in," Irene said, "we'll simply start the motor and drive off."

The automobile was a roadster. Benny lolled under the wheel, his plate precariously balanced upon it. Irene was next him, in the middle, and Gay at the end. Alan sat on the floor of the car, half in it and half out, his head resting against Gay's knee and his feet braced on the running board.

"Gosh, he sighed, during a pause. "Listen to 'at ole sea!" n -

"Umm," said Gay, "I love it." She nudged Irene. "Rene, say thank you! We're complimenting your ocean."

Without haste Irene terminated the kiss in which she and Benny had been easually indulging. "Then," she said in the tone of one resuming an ancient argument, "why not stay? Benny, listen: what would you do? I've spent the entire evening tryng to persuade these two to stay on here a few days after the rest of you leave—and have I succeeded? I have not."

"Try to persuade me," put in Benny, "and see what happens."

"I'd stay," said Alan. "I'd stay in a minute if Gay would, you know that. I'm crazy to."

"So'm I," said Gay. "I want to stay like the devil. But I just can't. I've got to get back." She thought again of Jerry Davis and continued with more firmness, "I've just got to get back, that's all. You're terribly sweet, Rene, but—ask me again some time."

It was later, when their repast was finished and their cigarettes aglow in the darkness, that a car shot past them on the gravel drive, so close its hub caps almost elicked with theirs, so fast it startled them all.

"Judas," exclaimed Alan. "What was that?"

"Kirk," said Irene succinctly.

Kirk was her brother. Kirk Nelson, esquire, aged eighteen. He attended Andover, had a precocious penchant for wine and rakish ladies, and enjoyed the distinction of being the only thing in existence about which Irene had ever been known to worry.

"How is Kirk, anyway?" Gay asked, watching the taillight of his car sail like a thrown red ball toward the garage.

"Worse and worse."

Gay smiled. "He's a cute kid, though. He intrigues me. Where's he been since we came, anyway?"

"God knows," said Irene piously. "He ducked out. My crowd is too old and too slow for little Kirk. All but

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you, Gay. He adores you, of course. Has since he was fourteen. Never shall I forget the day he met you! It's written in red letters in my memory as being the first day in all his life he ever brushed his hair without being told."

"There!" crowed Gay. "Who says I haven't done some good in the world!"

Kirk's car was in the garage now. They could see him climbing out of it, over the side. Then he switched off the lights.

"Kid him," Irene said on a sudden inspiration, "when he gets here, about his chauffeur's job."

"His chauffeur's job?"

Irene nodded, her eyes on the approaching lank figure. "It's this Beauty Pageant," she explained in a hurried undertone. "Each girl in the thing has a car and a driver at her disposal, day and night, while she's here. People around Atlantic City volunteer. Kirk volunteered this year—wouldn't you know he would?—which means he'll spend his waking hours next week driving some—Sh-h! Here he is."

There he was in truth, six slender feet of him, impeccably attired, and topped by a comely dark head. He arrived with his hands in his trouser pockets, his shoulders rounded a little, the head, which was without a hat, thrust forward. He said, "Hello, customers," to the foursome in a tired, bored, man-of-the-world voice; and then with a note of genuine boy gusto, "Well, if it isn't the Gay! Herself, not a lithograph!" He took her extended hand and wrung it. "Hello there, good-looking, how's your angina pectoris?"

"Fine. And yours?"

"Middlin', middlin'."

"I've been looking for you all day," Gay went on. "Where've you been?"

"Where'd you look?"

"Oh, up and down the Boardwalk and in and out of bars." n -

Kirk wagged his head gravely. "Should have tried the police station."

"We've been hearing things about you, old man," said Benny Henley.

"I should say we have! Where's your uniform, Kirk? And your leather puttees?"

Kirk's face was bland. "Have they made me a second lieutenant?" he queried with interest.

"I hear," Gay said severely, passing over this, "I hear on good authority that you're going to act as charioteer to a Venus from Idaho or somewhere—"

If his audience had expected a "rise" from Kirk, they were doomed to disappointment. He grinned, quite unembarrassed. "Say, how's that strike you? I catch fun!"

"I'm jealous," Gay pouted.

"Cheerio, my dear," said Irene, "they're nothing to get jealous about, I assure you."

"Who aren't?" Kirk, belligerent.

"These alleged beauties. I looked them over last year at one of the parades, and when I got home I said to Ted, 'Do you know who I am? I'm Helen of Troy.'"

"You're demented," said Kirk indignantly. "Why, some of 'em are the meringue! You ought to see—wait."

He reached in a side coat pocket and brought out a thin magazine folded in the middle. Standing on the running board, his feet in line with Alan's but pointed inversely, he leaned and turned on the dashboard light. "There!" he said, spreading out the magazine across Gay's lap and Irene's. "Take a squint at those, will you please."

The heads of Gay and Irene and Benny bent forward obediently.

"Boardwalk Illustrated News," murmured Irene. "Look, they're all in here—"

A page speckled heavily with small oval rotogravure pictures; each picture a girl; each girl a bathing girl in a one-piece suit, with a lettered ribbon slung from shoulder to opposite hip. n -

"Which is your girl, Kirk?" Gay inquired. "The one you're going to buggy-ride around?"

"I don't know yet," said Kirk. "They haven't notified me. But I know which I hope."

"Which? Show us."

"This one, I'll bet money," Benny said, pointing to a fluffy blonde.

"Or this one," Irene added, indicating a Castilian brunette.

"Miss Detroit isn't bad," observed Gay.

"How's Miss Topsfield, Massachusetts?" demanded Alan from the floor where he sat with his back turned.

"Miss wha-at?"

"Well, I was born there," Alan said defensively.

"Which it is you like, Kirk?" Gay reiterated. "Come on, show us."

Kirk leaned again, and his finger hovered over the spotted page. "I like this one—and this one—and this little honey over here. Any one of those three can dig for my gold, any time."

"This one's the best," Benny said, as man to man. "Miss Manhattan."

"Umm," agreed Gay.

Her eyes fell from the picture to the two lines of script below it, and she read them aloud. "Miss Manhattan, Dolly Quinn—Dolly Quinn!"

"Do you know her?"

Gay's yellow head moved in negation. "No. I don't know her. I—remember having heard about her, that's all."

So well did she remember that she could almost hear again the bantering, teasing voice of Parker Lane. "Brunette," he had said. "Black hair, and blue eyes, and awful good." . . .

She stared at the: picture. Brunette. Black hair. Eyes probably blue, although it was hard to tell. Pretty certainly. A face and form that Parker Lane would be sure

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to call "awful good." Dolly. Dolly Quinn. From New York.

New York was a very vast place, of course—but did it, could it, contain more than one little brunette Dolly Quinn?

There were other considerations. Jerry's Dolly Quinn was an ex-dance-hall girl, a cheap sort of girl—"the sort of girl exactly," Gay told herself, "who'd enter a contest like this." And Jerry over the telephone had said, "Atlantic City, eh? Along with the rest of the beauties!" His first, his immediate, thought. . . .

Gay sat back and drew deep on her cigarette. "I'd love to see this Beauty Pageant," she remarked slowly. "I imagine it would be—interesting."

"If you'd stay—" Irene began again wearily.

In the end, Gay stayed, and Alan with her.

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/ch//AMERICAN BEAUTY

The parlor car squeaked like cheap new shoes, and shuddered down its length. It was hard to hold your balance going along the aisle; you had to grab the backs of the chairs to steady yourself. . . . In the little square wash room with the red-brown woodwork and the mirrors and the shiny nickel basins, it was harder still. Everything swayed. The green curtains that shrouded the door swayed. The great tear of water you drew in one basin slid jelly-like from side to side. The triangular towels with the blue belts vibrated on their lofty iron rack. Everything kept time to the tune of the train, to the thunderous drum of its wheels.

"We'll be there soon," remarked Mrs. Minafee.

"Yes," said Dolly. "In about fifteen minutes, Nick said. Oh shoot!—how do your work this soap jigger, Minnie?"

Mrs. Minafee demonstrated. Importantly. Mrs. Minafee did all things importantly. She was a plump, shapeless person, made of pillows; a florid and shortwinded person, whose body belonged to ease but whose spirit, lodged in that body like wheels in a pudding, drove her on a lifelong round of busyness.

She sat down now on the single chair and regarded Dolly's back with bright pleased eyes. Her expression was one of pride, possessive pride. Even maternal pride. At the same time she looked a trifle awed. Dolly Quinn as one of her boarders had never awed Mrs. Minafee; but Dolly Quinn as Miss Manhattan, prize beauty, bewitchingly garbed and on her way to receive the adulation of

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myriads—well, there was a glamour strange and new about this Dolly. Only by reminding herself of her own promotion from the rank of landlady to that of beauty's chaperon did Mrs. Minafee conquer an impulse toward actual humility.

Sitting forward in her chair, one pulpy elbou'resting on the ledge beside her, she optically itemized Dolly's attire and gloated over it. The tan kid shoes with the big bronze buckles. The chiffon arrow-heeled hose. The tan gown. A simple gown, subtly striking; part of an en—semble. A tan cloth coat lined with the silk of the dress, collared and cuffed widely in summer ermine, went with it. And a most becoming tan beret, with an odd wee bronze ornament.

A certain wardrobe trunk in the baggage car contained, Mrs. Minafee knew, many other garments and accessories, equally exquisite. The woman who did fashions for the Star had helped Dolly select them; and the Star had payed the breath-taking bills. . . .

"Grand!" thought Mrs. Minafee ecstatically.

Dolly reached for a towel and dried her hands, holding them carefully at arms' length. She turned to a mirror, and seeing her chaperon's reflected eyes upon her, smiled dazzingly. Then Mrs. Minafee thought, "She will, she'll be the prettiest thing there." Mr. Standish, the fellow from the Star, thought so too.

"But I won't tell her," Mrs. Minafee determined. "She's going to get spoiled enough these next few days, if what he says about the fuss they make over them is true."

She spoke aloud: "Fix your name-tape, dearie. Or whatever you call that thing."

Dolly confronted her, fingers fidgeting worriedly at the white satin gold-lettered ribbon across her chest. "Isn't it all right?"

It was quite all right. But Mrs. Minafee wanted something to do, some part in the preparation of this delicacy for the imminent feast of eyes. "Could be better," she

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said critically. "Come here, I'll fix it for you. You want to be sure every letter shows, you know, so folks can read who you are."

"Nick says there'll be a mob at the station—" began Dolly, but stopped as the green curtains yawned to admit one of her competitors; name unknown, label Miss Bronx.

Miss Bronx was sociable. She had been sociable throughout the trip, in a superior, professional-to-amateur sort of way—for this was the second Atlantic City pageant to which she had lent her rather metallic pulchritude.

"Well," she said, "we're almost there."

"Almost."

"Suppose you're getting all nervoused up?"

"No," said Dolly firmly, "not a bit."

Miss Bronx whipped out a pocket comb and raked it gingerly through her russet marcel. "If I had long hair like you," she remarked, "I'd wear it down my back in corkscrew curls. All the girls do at the Pageant who have long hair. Most of 'em anyway."

"I think that's silly," said Dolly, "when you're grown up."

"Looks good, though."

"Straighten the seam of your stocking, dearie," Mrs. Minafee directed. "No, the other one."

"We got a swell manager," continued Miss Bronx. "Standish, he's good. He'll see we get lots of publicity. The one we had the last Pageant I was to—say, he was the bunk. Cock-eyed drunk all the time he was down here. I guess they fired him off the Star when he got back."

She pawed in a brocaded hand bag and brought forth a lipstick. "Got to put this on easy," she observed. "The Judges aren't so hot for the make-up."

"Will the judges be at the station?" Dolly asked with swift eagerness.

"Don't suppose so. But if I wear red lips now I got to stick to 'em all week, that's the thing." Miss Bronx

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smirked knowingly. "Why all the worry about the judges?"

"I just want to see them, that's all."

"You mean you want 'em to see you!"

"No," said Dolly, "I want to see them. Some of them are famous artists and I—" She hesitated. "I just am sort of curious to see them."

"Well, you'll see 'em plenty," predicted Miss Bronx, patting her pointed chin with a grayish-pink powder pad. "You'll be sick of the sight of 'em Thursday, after you've stood for I don't know how long on the stage up at the high school while they buzz around you like a flock of gnats with notebooks in their hands. Whew, boy! And if you get picked for the semi-finals on Friday—" Here Miss Bronx shot a glance at Dolly via the mirror. "Only fifteen are picked, you know—"

"I won't be," Said Dolly agreeably. "Come on, Minnie. I'm ready now."

In the passageway outside the door she leaned against the wall and looked up at Mrs. Minafee with solemn sapphire eyes. "Minnie," she said, "did you hear me tell her I wasn't nervous?"

"Sure did, dearie."

"Feel my hands."

Mrs. Minafee clasped the little hands with both of hers. They were ice cold. d She stepped down on to the porter's yellow box, and then on to the platform, and for an instant stood stock-still, fighting off an insane desire to dive back into the train again. So many people! "Too many," she muttered rather indignantly to Nick, who paused at her side.

The station yard had been roped off. Outside the ropes, herded like animals, straining and pushing and stretching their necks, the people waited. Thousands of them. A dense human thicket, blocks in area. . . . Inside the

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ropes there were more people. People wearing badges of green and white and blue, seurrying distractedly about. Musicians in dark uniforms, playing ragtime. Policemen on foot and on horse. Photographers. Reporters. Chaperons. Girls, girls, girls. . . .

Nick's fingers gave her elbow a quick encouraging pressure. "Now, urchin," he said, "up and at 'em! Listen, see the bleachers over there?"

The bleachers stood across the station yard, facing the platform; a temporary wooden structure, four tiers high.

"Make for that," Nick went on. "The whole bunch has to pose there for the camera men. Smile your sweetest." He squeezed her elbow again. "You look like a million," he declared, and hastened off to succor some other of his charges.

"Minnie—"

"I'm here, dearie."

They crossed the platform side by side. "My goodness," said Mrs. Minafee en route, "I wish they'd stop firing off that cannon! I've near jumped out of my skin five times already—"

Her voice trailed off as a short, stout, brown young man in white knickers and a white sweater tattooed with a big red C came up to them.

"Hello there, Miss Manhattan!" he cried, thrusting out his hand. "Been looking all over for you. Began to be afraid you hadn't come. I'm your escort. Frazer is the name. Sid Frazer, very much at your service."

Dolly liked him at once; his undergraduate manner and his expansive smile. "I'm glad you found us," she said. "We were feeling terribly lost."

They were now in the midst of the crowd that thronged the charmed inner circle. People were brushing against them in mad rushes to and fro. Girls and their chaperons were eyeing Dolly sharply from all sides. Twice she was stopped and drawn aside to pose alone for cameras. Several men and one girl tagged with blue press badges ques-

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tioned her briefly, and two of them asked for interviews later. A shrill boy voice from somewhere called, "Oh you Miss Manhattan!" Approvingly. Most approvingly.

Before ever she reached the bleachers her stage fright had left her, and she sparked with excitement and delight. This was fun! . . . Under the tan beret her eyes, flashing blue fire, darted here and there and everywhere, restless as little searchlights. Whenever they caught the eyes of other white-ribboned girls, Dolly's mouth curved in a radiant, intimate smile. "Isn't this fun?" it said, as plain as speech.

"You're just a kid, do you know it?" Frazer whispered gleefully in her ear.

"I can't help it, I'm—"

"Don't try to help it!" he exploded aloud. "It's great!" He added, lips to her ear again, "Most of them try to look blah, you know, as if they were used to this. You just keep on looking like Santy Clause has come—and maybe he'll slip something awfully nice in your stocking before the week's out, you never can tell."

Her other ear prickled with the voice of Minnie, importantly answering a reporter: "Just nineteen. Nineteen last month. . . . Yes, this is her first Beauty Pageant . . . chosen out of twenty-seven hundred!" . . . And then, suspiciously, "What newspaper you from?"

Already Mrs. Minafee was learning.

Sixty-odd girls stood in self-conscious lines along the wooden bleachers, while twenty cameras glared at them with black glassy eyes. Dolly stood in the front row, by command; a photographer had placed her. On her left was Miss Chicago, a statuesque, long-curled brunette smelling violently of lilacs. On her right, Titian little Miss Birmingham, who returned her smile and said conversationally, "Ah nevah was so thrilled in all mah life, how 'bout yew?"

The instant the photography was over, Frazer and Minnie reclaimed her and hustled her toward the parking

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space at the left. Frazer's car was easily identified. "Miss Manhattan" in large blue letters pasted across the top of its windshield. "Miss Manhattan" in even bigger letters on bunting bound around its back. "Miss Manhattan" on sizable stickers all over its long gray sides. . . .

"Ooh," Dolly said, "you'll just never get them off again!"

Frazer grinned cheerfully, asked why he should care, and opened two doors. "All aboard, ladies! You in the back, Mra. Chaperon, if you don't mind. And you—" to Dolly "—beside me. I put the top down so they could see you better," he informed her, climbing in himself.

The gray car went through the station yard at a snail's pace, crying a reiterated, guttural, "Make wa-a-ay! Make wa-a-ay!" with its horn. At the other side, bisecting the mass of tight-packed humanity, a lane had been formed with ropes. There was barely room enough to drive through. The people were so close that Dolly could have touched them; only they weren't people, she thought hazily. They were just eyes, and voices, and hands that clapped. A small sound at first, like rain on a tin roof . . . raining harder . . . finally a tremendous sound that filled her ears, that filled her heart and choked her suddenly. . . .

She was bowing and smiling, right and left. She was kissing her fingers. She was tearing the roses Jerry had brought to the train from their stems, and throwing them. She was on her feet, clutching the top of the windshield, because far off and long ago Frazer's voice had said, "Better stand up—"

It was all over presently. She was seated again, and the narrow noisy lane had evolved into a business street, gala with flags. She relaxed in her corner. "Lordy!" she sighed, fanning her face with a limp pink hand. "I—why, I felt like—like a prima donna!"

Frazer beamed down at her. "You'll get used to that," he prophesied. "Why, say, you ain't seen /i//nothin'//i/ yet!" n -

He proved right. She did indeed accustom herself, speedily, to crowds, to storms of applause, to necks that craned and eyes that goggled, everywhere she went. . . .

People spoke to her in the elevators. People stopped her in the lobby to shake her hand. People stared at her in the dining room until it seemed to her that if she chanced to upset her glass or drop a crumb on her chin, she would wilt from shame. People clustered around her car and cheered her when she entered it or left it. People snapped her with kodaks, begged for her autograph, followed her, feted her, flattered her. . . . As is the strange way of Atlantic City people at the strange time of the Beauty Pageant.

"It'll go to the child's head," wailed Mrs. Minafee. "It'll be her everlasting ruination."

But Dolly giggled to Nick on the second day, "Isn't it funny what a ribbon will do? I left mine off this morning and went walking on the Boardwalk—and not one of these people glanced at me!" d It was glorious, even if it wasn't real. There were things about it Dolly knew she never would forget. Never.

Her room, for instance. A hotel room as big as Mrs. Minafee's big dining room, overlooking Boardwalk, beach and sea. A bed like a soft warm snowdrift; and another for Minnie. A glittering white bath with endless steamy water. A telephone that could get you anything at all, any time—a meal, a maid, a woman to massage your face, a man to press your dresses, anything. Dolly would fain have had more time to spend in this room. "It's much too lovely to leave so much," she said wistfully, every time they left it.

The Million Dollar Pier on Tuesday night. The giant ballroom with its bulb-spangled ceiling, its fish swimming silvery-green behind glass in the wall at one end, its,elaborate decorations, its two orchestras, its amber rink of floor. The clamorous, countless folk who filled the bal-

-

conies and boxes and the roomy space below the balconies. The stage with the black velvet back-drop and the baskets of American beauty roses at the corners. The man with the megaphone who introduced the candidates, one by one. "Miss M'nhatt'n! . . ." She wore pale apricot chiffon spattered with brilliants, and like the others, held in her hand a single rose with a very long stem. When her name was called she came out on the stage alone and stood for a moment while the spotlight lay upon her and the audience accorded her such an ovation as the most beloved of actresses might not scorn. Then she descended the steps to the stately blue-uniformed guardsman who waited for her, and leaning on his arm, slowly circled the ballroom floor, still in the spotlight, still to a tumult of hands and feet that drowned out the band's measured music. . . . Later there was dancing. The American Beauty Ball. But Nick bore down upon her after only one fox trot and led her, reluctant, away. "American beauty sleep," he said, "is more important."

The Boardwalk on Wednesday afternoon. Miles and miles of stands to right and left. And not a seat empty. Watchers knotted thick behind the stands that faced the ocean; hanging from the windows of buildings; huddled on roofs. Peanuts, popcorn, balloons, flags, bands, tin whistles, grinding cameras. Herself in an afternoon gown the color of her eyes and a huge blue picture hat tied under one ear with velvet ribbons, being propelled along in a wicker rolling chair, bowing from side to side, smiling till her face ached, throwing a thousand kisses, high and low.

The Garden Pier Theater that evening. A policeman had to ride on the running board to clear passage for the gray car through the crush that waited outside. The stage door. The dressing room, redolent of dead grease-paint. The bare murky wings. "I don't feel right!" Dolly confided to Minnie. "I ought to be out in the aisles, slamming the seats down!" . . . A long wait. Then a quick trip

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across the stage, a halt to be greeted by bearded King Neptune and his son, and another halt to curtsey to the banks of blurred white faces, to the chaos of the fluttering white hands. . . .

Things like that. d "I'm a little bit scared this morning," said Dolly on Thursday.

She sat beside Sid Frazer in the fleet gray car, one hand securing her wrap close around her, the other holding a silk bag in which were comb and brush and powder case. She was bareheaded; her hair swept in loose black waves from a central part to two heavy braids that lay on her chest. She wore white hose and white kid pumps, and under the coat, a white and shapely one-piece bathing suit.

She twisted around to repeat her observation to Mrs. Minafee in the tonneau. "I'm scared, Minnie."

"Why?" inquired Frazer. "After what you've been through this ought not to bother you."

"Afraid you won't get in the last fifteen?" yelled Mrs. Minafee against the wind.

"She will, all right," said Frazer.

"Don't be too sure," retorted Mrs. Minafee, who herself was as sure as she was of dust to dust, but who would not for the world have confessed it in Dolly's hearing. "Lot of mighty pretty girls in this thing."

"There certainly are," Dolly agreed earnestly. "But that's not it. It's that I'm scared—Oh, I don't know. All those judges—"

"You said you wanted to see them."

"I do. I'm dying to. But I wish I could just hide somewhere and peek out at them—Is this the high school, Sid?"

"This is it," said Frazer, braking to a standstill. "The fellows at the door will tell you where to go when you get inside. The auditorium. I've got to park this boat.

-

See you anon." He patted Dolly's back as she left the ear. "Best o' luck, old kid!"

"I'll need it, smiled Dolly over her shoulder.

The auditorium was a spacious place with a balcony around three sides and a broad, brightly lighted stage. The general public had been barred, and only the first fifteen or twenty rows of seats on the main floor were occupied—by candidates, matrons, members of the press. It was early; the stage was empty, and nothing was happening. Some of the candidates had not yet appeared, and those who were present sat swathed in their coats, looking overheated and apprehensive. There was a subdued murmur of conversation, punctured by an occasional treble giggle. Footsteps rat-tatted continually in the aisles.

Dolly and Mrs. Minafee seated themselves at the end of a row five rows back from the stage. There they were joined at once by Nick Standish. "Good morning!" he said. "How's the future Miss America this morning?"

"Sh!" frowned Dolly, looking guiltily around. "Somebody'll think we really think so."

"Well, I do."

"Well, I don't."

"Me either," declared Minnie, nudging Nick to silence him.

Nick laughed, and chucked the scandalized lady under the lower of her chins. "Oh, Min!" he sighed reproachfully.

Mrs. Minafee said, bristling, that her name was Mrs. Minafee.

"Don't apologize!" cried Nick with a gracious gesture. "I should love you no matter what it was."

He took a seat ahead of theirs and sat sideways. "Did you get those clippings, small change?"

"I certainly did," Dolly answered. "They were wonderful, Nick. You do write the nicest things about me!"

"Easy," said Nick. "Listen! I want to ask you some-

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thing, before I forget it. What time tonight will you probably eat your dinner?"

"Why—about seven or seven-thirty, I suppose."

"In the dining room at your own hotel?"

"Yes. Why, Nick?"

"A young gentleman was interested."

"What young gentleman?"

"All I know about him," Nick said, "is that he drives a car for one of your worthy opponents in This Great Cause. I know that because he had on an escort's badge. Furthermore he is dark and seemly, and he drifted into the press headquarters last night hollering, 'Is Miss Manhattan's manager around here any place?' I was, and acknowledged it. He wanted to know at which hotel you were stopping, and if you dined downstairs, and what time. Said his sister had a guest who was very keen to find out. I said, 'Why blame it on the guest?' with one of my flashes of uncanny intuition, but I told him. Told him correctly, it appears. And he went on his way rejoicing.

"So," concluded Nick, "look for him tonight. He'll be there, or I'm a toe dancer."

He dragged out his watch and scowled at it, then raked the auditorium with impatient eyes. "Say, let's have some action here! Wonder what's holding things up?"

"The judges haven't come yet, have they?"

"Sure they have. Half an hour ago. There they are, right in front of you."

He indicated a line of masculine heads and shoulders in the first row of seats and, upon demand, named them off. The names were familiar and some of them were great, so that Dolly, wide-eyed, caught her breath a little. Fifteen judges, all told. Illustrators, cartoonists, painters of magazine covers. . . .

"But they look just like other people!" she marveled. "At least, from the back they do."

From the front they did also. She discovered that a

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little later, when her turn came to stand before them on the stage.

The candidates went up in groups of ten or a dozen at a time. There was a New York group; a New England, a Middle Atlantic, a Western and a Southern group. Dolly's division was summoned first. In the midst of what seemed to her a painful, a deadly hush, they mounted the steps to the platform and filed into the wings to shed their wraps.

Two minutes of intensive prinking. Two minutes of low, impassioned argument: "You go first!" . . . "No, you!" . . . "Well, somebody's got to!" . . . "Why not Miss Bronx, she's done this before" . . .

Then they filed back.

Each girl was arrayed in a fitted, knitted bathing suit, long stockings and high-heeled slippers, and each wore her ever-present white satin ribbon, slung from her shoulder to her hip. There were black suits and white suits and yellow and blue and red. 'There were white legs and black legs and tan legs. There were curls and bobs and braids and locks flowing free. The heels of twenty-four marching slippers exclaimed in unison, loud on the bare floor. Around and around and around the stage the twelve girls marched, while the judges stood along the edge and watched them.

Left, right, left, right, left, right. Turn. Not sharply as a soldier turns, but evenly, to make a rounded corner. Left, right, left, right, left, right. Turn. Past the judges now, toward the wing, and past the judges again. Past them a dozen, fifteen times.

"Stand still, please," said a man's voice at last.

The marchers stopped in their tracks, in a line across the stage. Out of this line the judges would select three girls, eliminating the rest; and they went about the business busily. They prowled from corner to corner. They squinted from right and from left. Their eyes, professional, opaquely impersonal, moved up and down and over

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each candidate. They had pads of paper, and made notations.

"Now turn to face the audience, please."

The line about-faced. The judges made more notations.

Dolly Quinn stood with her small feet tucked snugly together and her hands at her sides. She inspected the judges as narrowly as they inspected her, and in her interest in them, forgot herself, so that without knowing it she became the least prim, least stilted figure in the line. . . . They fascinated her, those men of palette and pencil. She was absorbed in a kind of hero-worship, born of her seething desire to be what they were, to do what they did, successfully, as they did it. . . .

The voice of the master of ceremonies roused her at last. "You may go back to your seats now. We'll have the New England division."

She said to Minnie and Nick, "How long was I up there?"

"'Bout twenty minutes, half an hour."

Dolly sank into her seat with a tiny gasp. It was an astonished gasp, but Nick took it for one of immense relief.

"Bad as that?" he queried. "Wait till tomorrow morning. That's the real grind. You'll be up there for two or three hours."

/i//"I'//i/ll be up there?"

"That's what I said."

"I—I'm not chosen?" stammered Dolly. "Oh, Nick, I couldn't be! Why, I was so excited about all those artists I forgot to even try to look pretty!"

"We won't know definitely till later," Nick said. "But all I've got to say is, if you're not chosen, your precious artists have astigmatisms." d Late that afternoon, when Dolly was resting in her room before dinner, Nick called her on the telephone. "Your artists," he said, "have not astigmatisms!"

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/ch//STRONG ARM OF THE WRONG YOUNG MAN

"She's lovely," said Irene decidedly.

Gay nodded. "Umm. She is—rather."

"Yes-sir-ee!" vociferated Ted.

"She's lovelier close up than at a distance," Irene went on. "Don't you think? Gorgeous skin. And did you ever see such eyes? They look like the pictures of Miss Annie Whosis after using two jars of our celebrated lash-grower."

Alan lit a cigarette and waved the match to extinguish it. "Of course," he observed, "I'd have to be sitting with my hack to this vision."

"Turn around," said Gay. "She doesn't in the least object to being stared at, or she'd hardly have entered a Beauty Pageant."

Alan smiled across the table. "I'm reasonably well satisfied with the scenery in front of me, honey, thanks just the same."

"Do you suppose," said Irene, "that that grotesque pink object with her is her mother?"

"Not so loud!" advised Ted hurriedly.

"Nonsense, they can't hear me."

Gay pushed back her chair suddenly and rose. "Pardon me just a minute. I'm—I want to speak to her."

Before Alan and Ted could also rise, before Irene could utter more than a bewildered "What on earth" she was gone.

They watched her traverse the carpeted central aisle and pause at the table directly across from theirs, where

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Miss Manhattan and her fat companion dined. She stood for half a minute with her fingertips resting on the table's edge, saying something. . . . They could judge by the expression of Miss Manhattan's lifted face that it was something gracious and affable. While they still watched, she drew out one of the two vacant chairs at the other table and slid her lavender chiffon slenderness into it.

Irene was the first of the forsaken three to make comment. "But what for?" she queried blankly.

"Search me!" said Alan. He snapped the ashes from his cigarette thoughtfully with a little finger as thick as Irene's thumb. "I'm not surprised, though, are you? I sort of expected she'd do that. You know how she's been all week about this girl."

"I know," Irene agreed with feeling. "I never saw anything to equal it! Of all the whims of all the guests I ever entertained in my life, it's the most fantastic. Would go to the fool parades. Would attend that pointless affair at the Garden Pier last night. Would come here to dinner this evening—and all because she's heard some scandal or something about this Miss Manhattan. I said to her, 'My heavens, Gay, if what you want is a long look at a Woman With a Past, we'll take you around to Evelyn Nesbit's café. Or look at /i//me,'//i/ I said!"

"Haw, chuckled Ted. "That's a good one."

"Well, if I can't claim more of a past than that bright-eyed innocent over there—"

"But you're about ten years older."

Irene twinkled at Alan. "Husbands! They will remind you."

There was a silence then, while all three glanced again at the table across the aisle. Gay sat so that they could not see her face, but only her clipped chrysanthemum head and the rouged rim of a flat, small ear. Her shoulders, curves of molded cream, were upraised by the propping of her elbows on the table, and her head was inclined toward

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her hearers. Both of them eyed her with interest. Misg Manhattan smiled. Deliciously.

"What is this scandal Gay's heard, anyway?" Ted asked.

"I don't know. Do you, Alan?"

"No idea."

"She won't say," Irene continued. "All I can get out of her is that some friends of hers met this girl some time ago—'under very peculiar circumstances,' she said—and the tales they told about her have made Gay curious—"

A waiter appeared at Alan's elbow. "The lady at the other table wishes some of your cigarettes, if you please, sir."

Alan sent his full case over.

"Anyway," said Ted, "Miss Manhattan doesn't smoke."

"Either that or she doesn't lend 'em," contributed his wife.

Alan was twisted around, once more surveying the opposite table. He turned back. "Lord, she's got wonderful hair!"

"Hasn't she?" Irene assented. "It's that blue-black you read about. I love it. I'd dye mine that, but you don't get the same effect."

Alan looked at her. "I meant Gay's, of course," he said simply. d The first words Gay spoke to Dolly Quinn were, "How do you do! You'll forgive the informality of this, won't you? You see, I feel that we ought to be friends, because, unless'm very much mistaken, you're a friend of a good friend of mine. Jerry Davis?"

And Dolly answered enthusiastically, "Oh, of course! I know him well. I'm so glad you came over. Won't you sit down? This is my chaperon, Mrs. Minafee."

"How do you do, Mrs. Minafee?"

Gay sat down. Her warm smiling eyes reverted to Dolly. They seemed to gaze direct into Dolly's eyes;

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actually they took in every feature of her face, every item of her grooming, everything about her. In an instant Gay's mind, reaching out grimly through the smile, had grappled a score of impressions. She knew that Dolly Quinn used no lipstick and no rouge. She knew approximately what her gown had cost. She knew that her hands looked astonishingly well bred, that the fingers were long and tapering and artistic. She saw that the whites of Dolly Quinn's eyes were the clear milky white of a baby's. She saw that the black hair was finger-waved, which meant it had a natural tendency to curl.

"Pretty, she thought, "if you like that angel-face type. Probably hagn't a brain in her head."

She put her elbows on the table and balanced her chin on her fists. There were four diamond bracelets around her left forearm. Childishly, she wanted Dolly Quinn to see them, to be impressed and envious.

"Please don't let me interrupt your dinner," she said in her liquid voice.

"Oh, you're not. We've just ordered."

The two girls exchanged another sunny smile. Gay noted the single dimple and the even, faultless teeth.

She bit her lip nervously. Now that she was here, she did not know quite how to go about the accomplishment of the purpose for which she had come. Beforehand, only the problem of meeting Dolly Quinn had perplexed her; she had fancied that the rest would be quite simple.

"I hesitated a little about coming over," she said tentatively, "because I wasn't altogether sure you were the Dolly Quinn I've heard Jerry speak of. But I thought you must be. He's talked about you to me, you see, and described you."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes. In the most glowing terms!"

Flattery, she decided, was her cue. Flattery in the name of Jerry. That was the way to find out. The girl was certain to be subject to it; and if it were quoted to

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Jerry afterwards, it would not sound as if she, Gay, cared. . . .

"He thinks you'll win this beauty contest in a walk," she added.

Dolly laughed. "He wouldn't think so if he was down here. He hasn't seen the other girls."

"I rather expected he would be down here—to cheer you on?"

Dolly shook her head, still smiling. "No. He's in New York."

At this point the chaperon made her début to the conversation. "He wanted to come," she asserted, cracking a hard-shelled roll, "but I told him no, I thought it would look kind of queer."

Gay's eyes shifted to the chubby, munching face. "Oh, I don't see why," she remonstrated mildly.

"Well, you know how t'is. If she had a man tagging 'round after her these days, and he wasn't her escort or her manager or anything like that, folks might talk."

Gay's voice assumed a light, jesting note. "But there's where a chaperon is useful! Couldn't you have kept him from tagging around, Mrs.—ah—Minafee?"

"Not him, I couldn't," said Mrs. Minafee shortly.

"Perhaps," ventured Gay, "people would have thought him her fiancé."

Mrs. Minafee, chewing briskly, said nothing. Her little pill eyes told nothing.

Dolly Quinn did not speak either, but she flushed ever so faintly.

Gay sent the waiter to Alan for cigarettes.

"You haven't told us your name," said Dolly, while he was gone.

"Haven't I really? Oh, I'm sorry. Gay Leonard."

It was patent from Dolly's countenance that the name conveyed nothing to her, that she had never heard it before, and that the fact disturbed her. "She thinks'll be hurt," Gay thought, scanning her, "if she lets on

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that Jerry hasn't mentioned me to her. As though he would!"

The waiter returned with the cigarette case. Gay offered it to Mrs. Minafee, who wagged her head dourly, and then to Dolly, who smiled, "No, thank you."

She lit her own cigarette and blew out a yard of thin drifting gray. "I haven't seen Jerry for ages," she remarked. "I've been away for eight months, and last week, as soon as I got back, I came down here. I called him up on the phone just to tell him who I was, and sure enough he'd almost forgotten my name!"

"I can't imagine that," protested Dolly.

"It's perfectly natural. Men do forget the girls with whom they've never been anything but just good friends—don't you think so?" Gay paused long enough to let that make its impression, but not long enough for either listener to reply to it. Her voice glided on: "I mean, Jerry and I are rather like—brother and sister. We rarely think about one another when we're apart, and then when we come together again we have a high old time renewing our friendship—telling each other all about the things we've done, and the people we're in love with—"

She smiled kindly, even fondly, at Dolly. "I'll hear all about you, my dear, next time I see him! In fact, I heard quite a lot the other day over the phone."

"For instance, what?" asked Dolly, dimpling in response.

It was a chance, but Gay took it. "Oh—I gathered that he's very much in love with you, for instance."

"He just thinks he is," said Dolly Quinn.

She said it, not coyly, so that one could persuade oneself she lied or exaggerated; but quietly, impersonally, as a plain statement of fact, so that one had no choice but to believe her. She might have said in the same way, "He thinks he is ill," or "He thinks he will buy a new car." She was merely a friend of Jerry's, discussing a passing notion of his with another friend who had won her con-

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fidence. . . . But if to infuriate Gay had been her aim and intention, she could not have met with more complete success.

Gay hated Dolly Quinn quite suddenly and quite insanely. Kage boiled in her. A shade less of civilization, and she would have torn that blue-black hair with her fingers, scratched with her nails that pretty face and those wide, fringed eyes. . . .

Outwardly, however, she was tranquil. Her smile never wavered. Her voice was if anything more syrupy than it had been. "You're too modest," she said. "Jerry wouldn't think himself in love if he were not. He's been in love often enough in the course of his life to know, by this time."

As she spoke she examined the other girl closely. There was no slightest change in Dolly's eyes nor in the soft set of her mouth. The thrust had not hurt her at all; she might not even had heard it.

"I don't believe," Gay remarked slowly, "you're in love with him. You're not. Are you."

"I—well, no," said Dolly Quinn. "I just like him—awfully well. And I'm sorry for him, she added.

Gay's lashes curled back on her lids in open incredulity. "Sorry for him?" Then she laughed, a brief and brittle little laugh of scorn. "Oh, my dear!"

Again Dolly Quinn flushed, faintly, uncomfortably. "I know that sounds funny, coming from me," she said, in humble accord with all that Gay's laugh implied. "But I can't help it. I do feel that way. He's so—weak. No backbone and no ambition. And he drinks such a terrible lot. I think it's a shame."

Gay lit a fresh cigarette from: the butt of its predecessor. "Why don't you marry him," she said, "and reform him?"

After the manner of things sweet for over long, her voice was becoming acid. She knew it, but did not care. She knew that Dolly caught the inimical note, but she did not care about that either—now. She had learned what

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she had come to learn; she need no longer be benevolent, nor even courteous; and if she could wound this girl whom Jerry Davis loved, so much the better. What did it matter if he learned of it? What did anything matter now, in this moment, except that the wind be somehow taken from those shining sails?

"Or perhaps he hasn't asked you to marry him," she said.

Here Mrs. Minafee's butter knife clattered loudly, ominously, on her plate.

Gay had forgotten the presence of a third party; at the reminding sound she turned to her. Mrs. Minafee was sitting bolt upright. Her pink face had a mottled,—purplish look, and her eyes were blistering. She was obviously about to say something, and a panic that she would say it at the top of her lungs, for the benefit of Alan and the Matthews' and the whole dining room, assailed Gay. . . . She would have risen and left; but fear of being pursued across the aisle to her own table by shouted invectives kept her frozen in her seat.

"If it's any—" began Mrs. Minafee stridently.

"Minnie," Dolly Quinn pleaded, and laid a hand on her arm.

Mrs. Minafee began again in a tone mercifully lowered. "If it's any of your business," she said to Gay, "which I doubt, he has asked Dolly to marry him. He asked her the night before she came down here; and he asked her twice before that, and all three times she's said no, flat. He says he won't take no for an answer, but I for one hope and pray to the good Lord she keeps on saying no, because she's too good for the likes of him and," wound up Mrs. Minafee, short of breath and glowering at her adversary, "I don't care who hears me say it!"

"That's quite obvious," Gay retorted urbanely.

She shut Alan's cigarette case with a click and holding it in her fingers, stood up. She ignored Mrs. Minafee. Her scarlet mouth curved amusedly at Dolly, and her eyes

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swept over Dolly's person in a glance that ridiculed every detail. "I agree with you," she murmured. "I'm sorry for him too. After one matrimonial experience with a girl of your class, he really ought to know better."

Upon which, sauntering liltingly, arrogantly as a mannequin, she returned to her table and her dinner. d "Don't think. Don't let yourself think." Her mind ticked the warning, clock fashion. "Not now. Not yet."

She dropped into the chair Alan held for her and laid the long stripe of her napkin over her lap. "Well," she said, "did you miss me?"

Of course. Yes-sir-ee! Alan had been on the point of going over there after her. . . . She found herself inspecting each of them as he or she spoke with a queer, intense concentration. Noticing things. Ted's month, thin and puckery, like an old scar. Irene's trick of raising one brow a fraction higher than its twin when she talked. Alan's ears that always appeared to be listening harder than anyone else's ears, and his smile that cracked the varnish of his sunburn whitely, gleamingly. Things she had noticed a hundred times before, but never with such clarity.

Irene was leaning forward confidentially, demanding, "For pity's sake tell us about it! What did you say to her? Why did you go? We couldn't figure it out."

Fusillade of eyes. Bluish eyes, starred agate eyes, gray eyes, all trained on her. She saw that to the trio she seemed composed and normal, as if nothing had happened. She read that in their eyes. It was very singular. Didn't they know, couldn't they guess, that behind her mask of smile and sparkle, she died a little? . . .

"There's nothing to tell," she said.

Over to the left, just a few yards off, that girl and her revolting chaperon sat. Without looking their way—not for worlds would she have looked their way—she could

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feel them. She was horribly aware of them. Sitting there with their heads together, gaping at her, whispering about her. They would tell hum, of course. Dolly Quinn would tell him, and laugh. They would laugh together. At her. Because she had been careless, because she had lost control of herself, given herself away. . . . That Dolly Quinn. Big-eyed and soft-voiced. "He just thinks he is." Serene. Sure. So damned sure. . . .

"Cigarette, please, Alan."

"You have 'em in your hand, honey."

"Oh, of course! What's wrong with me tonight? You can give me a light, though."

Irene was still asking questions. "What's she like, Gay?"

Gay ignited her cigarette from the match in Alan's fingers, and blew out the flame. "Fffh!" she blew, and then replied, "As you'd expect. Beautiful and dumb. And inferior."

"What did she say?"

Gay considered, pecking at her lobster cocktail. "Oh—nothing that would interest you. We talked about these people I know who know her."

"Still," Irene puzzled, "I don't see why you were so keen to go over there."

"I don't either. Just one of my silly ideas."

Her mind was full of things she might have said to Dolly Quinn. Cutting, lashing things she might have said. Why hadn't they occurred to her in-time? It would ease her sense of ignominious, intolerable defeat, if she had said them. . . .

She became very merry. She talked a great deal and feverishly fast. She laughed at everything and nothing. She flirted violently with Alan, and even with Ted. There was a kind of desperate recklessness in her gayety; there was a challenge. "See?" it cried to Dolly Quinn. "I don't care! I'm happy! Don't for one instant imagine you have hurt me. Watch. See how easily I hold these

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men? I could take him from you as easily, if I wanted to."

And all the while the whole strength of her mind braced itself against the door of realization, until not only mind but body felt bruised and strained with the effort. "Don't think about it yet! Thank about something else!" Irene. Ted. Alan. The commotion in the dining room. The diners round about. The waiter who looked like Hamlet. The cigarette girl's carved ankles. The food. Things to say. Things said. Anything. . . .

So through the endless, meaningless meal she postponed the facing of the fact that Jerry Davis, never so loved as now, was lost to her. d It was late when they finished dinner. Night had spread a plum-colored canopy over the world, and nailed it with silver stars. The ocean slept, breathing long sibilant breaths. "Sh-h-h-h!" it sighed. And then sucked its breath in deep and sighed again. "Sh-h-h-h!"

They stood on the pavement beside the hotel, waiting for the chauffeur to bring the car to the curb. Gay stood with her arms folded over her breast, hugging her white wrap about her. Its immense ruff collar arched high at the back of her spruce yellow head.

"You look," said Alan, "like a calla lily."

The air was softly cool. She turned her face toward the sea, toward the little fan of the wind. Her lips tasted salt.

"Rene."

"Yes, dear?"

"I don't want to go to the dog-gone party."

"Nor I. But we promised Norma. She's counting on us."

"I'll get tight," Gay threatened rebelliously.

They all smiled indulgent smiles. "You mustn't," Irene said. "Not at Norma's. Her mother and father are visit-

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ing her. They're good scouts—but not that good. Of course you wouldn't anyway," she supplemented.

"But I would! I feel exactly like it!" Noting the quizzical shafts of all their eyes, Gay halted uncertainly. "Or something rash," she went on. "This is the kind of a night when something rash just has to be done."

"It's a great night, all right," Ted affirmed, sniffing.

"Wonderful." Softly, with his glance on Gay, Alan quoted her: "'Starlight, and the sound of surf.'"

She thought, "He loves me, poor Alan. And I love Jerry. And Jerry loves that little moron—"

She laughed aloud, suddenly and sharply.

"I was thinking of a nursery rhyme," she said, when interrogated. "You know, the one that goes, 'The farmer takes his wife, the wife takes the child, the child takes the nurse—' Or didn't the child take the nurse? The child took somebody. And it wasn't the same person who took the child, that's the point."

"Gay," said Irene sadly, "you're gibbering."

"I know it. I'll stop."

The limousine purred up to the curb. The chauffeur held open the tonneau door. Irene got in. Gay got in . . . and immediately backed out again.

"You go on," she begged. "I'll take a rolling chair. I've got a rotten headache, and I think that might help. You tell Norma I'll be there pretty soon."

"I'm going with you," said Alan matter-of-factly.

After some argument, a wail from Irene to the effect that "of course you two scamps will never show up," and a solemn vow by Alan that they positively would, the limousine containing Mr. and Mrs. Matthews only pulled away. d The Boardwalk was crowded at first. Their rolling chair moved through a maze of pedestrians and other rolling chairs, dodging and zigzagging, like a big carpet

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sweeper in an over-furnished room. People almost brushed against them. Children shot across their path in uproarious pursuit of other children. Newsboys screamed in their ears: "Pepper! AllaboutaPageant! Fifteen Beauties Picked Today! Gitapepper!" . . . They rode in a flood of calcium radiance. On their right were the spangled shops, drawn up in a close line, and the lofty hotels with the windows now dark, now light, like squares in a giant's cross-word puzzle. To their left the piers laid lavalières of jewels on the black velvet bosom of the sea.

"Pretty, isn't it?"

"Umm," said Gay.

She sat cuddled in her wrap, the collar so arranged that only the top of her head, her moody dark eyes and a white V of face were visible. "Little Eskimo!" grinned Alan. And then, sobering, "How's the headache?"

"Fierce."

"I'm so sorry. I wish you could give it to me."

She smiled wanly, not answering.

The crowd thinned as they went along. Somewhat beyond the Ambassador there were stretches of Boardwalk whereon they passed no one at all. The lights were occasional here. Confusion was a memory. Nothing disturbed the stillness save the drone of their wheels, the measured shuffle of their attendant's feet, the sad and sleepy whimper of the ocean.

"I didn't want you to come with me," Gay said abruptly.

"Why not, honey?"

"Because I want to cry, and if I do you'll ask mo why—"

"No, I won't."

"And," continued Gay in the same very tiny voice, "I don't know why myself. I only know I feel like crying my eyes out."

Alan slipped his arm around her, and drew her head down until it lay against his shoulder. "Go ahead and cry," he whispered, infinitely tender. "Cry all you like,

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if it'll help. I won't say a word." He bent his bared head over hers, and she could feel his cheek against her hair. "I'm so sorry, little dearest. So terribly sorry. Isn't there anything I can do?"

"No. Nothing. Just hold me."

A minute afterwards she jerked up her head and faced him, dry-eyed. "I can't cry," she said. "I want to but I can't. I—it's down too deep."

"Just rest, then. Put your head back here, and rest."

So they rode on. Steadily. Slowly. Starlight over them, and the grieving sea in their ears. . . . d She thought, "He's gone. He's gone. The only thing in all my life I ever really wanted. Oh, Jerry, why? What did I ever do?"

She thought, "Jerry. Darling. I'm prettier than she is, I'm cleverer than she is. Don't you know it? You've just forgotten. When you see me again, you'll remember, you'll see—"

She thought stormily, "It was on his account I was away so long. And then he—he—But he cared, when I went. He did care. That last afternoon. 'Better than anyone,' he said. If I hadn't gone—Oh, it's not fair! It's not!"

She thought, "Funny I can't cry, when I've lost him."

Her recollection began to give her pictures of him. Pictures of moods and moments, disconnected, like snippings from a dozen different cinema reels, all with the same star. Jerry standing on a curbing, signaling a taxi with his cane. Jerry lounging sideways in his chair at a bridge table, squinting though the smoke of the cigarette in his lips, picking up his thirteen cards one by one "for lock." Jerry at the Club Lido, slim and distinguished in dinner clothes, smiling above another girl's head at her as he danced by. Jerry as he looked one day when he said, "The 'you' in all the love songs that are sung means you, to me." Little moments, singled out for some in-

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comprehensible lover's reason, and treasured in her mind these many months.

She recalled the day she first met him. A year ago last May, it was, at Lucia Lowden's wedding reception. She had been a bridesmaid in a bouffant Nile-green gown and a picture hat to match. She had stood for hours in the receiving line, mouthing names, taking hands passed to her by the bridesmaid on her left, passing them on to the bridesmaid on her right, wondering how long this would last. . . . Suddenly she had taken a hand that seemed not to want to let hers go. Dark eyes had laughed into her surprised eyes, and a low, intimate voice had drawled, "I love your little name. I've been saying it over to myself ever since I found out what it was—Gay." He had spoken it like an endearment.

Later, dancing with her, he had said whimsically, "Help me not to fall in love with you, won't you please? I'd really so much rather not."

She thought, "Well, he has his wish now."

She thought, "And there just isn't anything left for me. There just isn't—anything—left."

All these things she thought while she rode through the starlight, with Alan's arm holding her close, with Alan's heart drumming a quick muffled meter under her heedless head. d "We're about there, honey."

She sat up and stared around her, frowning. "Oh, Lord. So we are." She turned to him beseechingly. "I just can't go to that party, Alan! Don't make me."

The ghost of a grin stirred Alan's lips. The implica tion that he could make Gay do anything she did not wish to do was complimentary, but ludicrous.

"Of course not, baby," he said. "We won't go in till you feel like it. Isn't the headache any better?"

"It isn't so much headache," declared Gay, "as it's

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blues." She reflected tardily that Alan must be perplexed and speculating, and that it might be well to make some sort of explanation. "Everything's a mess lately," she told him. "In the first place, Dad is having financial troubles. I don't know how serious they'll prove to be but of course they worry me. He looks ten years older than he did when Mother and I sailed for Europe. And then there are other things—"

She broke off. "Let's go down and sit on the beach, shall we? I'm tired of riding."

They dismissed the rolling chair and descended the nearest flight of steps to the sand.

"You can't walk in this," said Alan. "Bad for the slippers."

He stooped and picked her up, and carried her along as if she were no heavier than her clothes. "You're so little," he murmured.

"I'm not."

"Yes you are. Just a gadget."

"I'm not as little as Dolly Quinn," Gay said unguardedly.

"Who—oh, you mean that Miss Manhattan."

"Yes."

"What made you think of her?"

"I don't know. Just popped into my head."

She was borne along for several yards more. "Where are you taking me, Alan?" she demanded at last. "Didn't you hear me say I was tired of riding? Let me down."

He put her down carefully, and seated himself in the yielding sand beside her. "The idea to begin with," he said, "was to get away from the steps. But you're so sweet to hold—I'd have carried you clear to Chesapeake Bay if you hadn't reminded me."

He drew her into the curve of his arm again, and she relaxed in it, scarcely aware. It was just an arm. Comfortable, cozy, but impersonal as a cushion stuffed with cotton. n -

"The sea is so quiet," she said.

"Isn't it?"

They were silent a moment, hearkening to the lisp of languid waves upon the shore.

"It's recovered its equanimity," commented Alan, "after the jolt Jane and Windy handed it."

Gay smiled slightly. The midnight wade of Jane McClure and Windy Grant, hand in hand and wearing evening clothes, straight into the ocean and further in, until it licked Jane's throat, had been a headline feature of the late house party.

"That was mad, wasn't it?" she mused.

"A trifle, yes."

They were speaking in voices instinctively hushed, apropriate to the stillness around them; their sentences were hardly more than sighs on the wind. Both looked toward the water, quiescent as a gray mirror in the grayer shadows. . . . Alan's cheek was very near Gay's temple. His free hand held one of hers, and latticed her fingers with his fingers. Once he lifted the hand and pressed his mouth to its palm. "I could eat it!" he said.

(Once Jerry Davis, saluting her in just such fashion, had crooned, "This little hand—like a pink petal, holding the glistening dew of all my happiness—")

She took the hand from Alan gently and locked it with its mate around the chiffon peak of her knees.

"Cigarette, please, Alan."

He chuckled, burrowing obediently in a side pocket. "The old cry!" There was a pause while a match flared in his cupped hands, and he bent his head. A snapshot of his illumined profile, strong, ruddy, with the eyelid lowered under the thick brow and the cheek taut to pull the smoke, remained sharply in Gay's mind for seconds after it merged with the gloom again.

"I fully expect," he resumed, "that when you and I die, and are sizzling side by side in one of the Stygian

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skillets, you'll turn to me and says 'Cigarette, please, Alan.'"

"Then do be buried with a carton in each hand."

For some time thereafter they smoked wordlessly, seeping themselves in the dim dreamy peace of the night. A billion stars brooded over them, like a field of wild flowers inverted. A new moon made a slim pale comma in the sky. Beneath them the sand was feather-soft, and faintly warm with the remembered kiss of sunshine. Gay sank her hand into it, sifted it lazily through her fingers. "Sh-h-h-h! whispered the dark sea. "Sh-h-h-h!" A ceaseless lullaby that soothed the senses, that drugged and dulled the pain of the mind. "Sh-h-h-h!"

"I feel better," she said presently.

His encircling arm tightened. "I'm so glad."

He smelled nicely of tobacco and cleanliness and the out of doors. He was very big indeed; good to lean against. She had a sudden cognizance of the pleasant strength of his arm, a sudden conviction that when he took it away, she would know agony again. His arm was a fortress built between her and a world gone utterly wrong; its curve was a haven in which she cowered and was safe for a little while.

"Don't take it away," she breathed. "I need it—awfully."

Her head drooped toward him, and nestled in the hollow below his shoulder. She heard his heart. Like a muted gong, it was. Or no, like a tennis ball racketed fast, time and time and time again, against a wall. Vaguely she heard his voice. It was saying things. Husky, inarticulate things. Things about his love for her. Poor Alan. Oh, poor, poor Alan. To be hurt as she was hurt. . . .

"—and you'd never listen," he was saying. "Well, now you've got to listen! Whether you give a damn about me or not. Oh, Gay—darling—couldn't you love me just a little bit? I'm not much. I'm not brilliant

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like Tim, or lousy rich like Wyman, or a knockout for looks like some of 'em—I don't bat very high any way you look at it—but listen: nobody ever will love you like I do. Nobody could! And I'd try so, work so hard, to make you happy. You don't know! Because you're—why, Gay, you're just simply everything, that's all. Everything there is in the world, to me. If I can't have you there won't be anything. Not one single thing—"

Almost her own very words, she reflected pityingly.

He talked on. She lay motionless against his heart, thinking hard. Why not? Well, why not? It made no difference to her now. Jerry was gone. Whether to accept or refuse another man was a question relatively unimportant, like whether to put on a blue gown or a yellow one. It mattered little one way or the other. . . . While to Alan it mattered tremendously, made all the difference in the world. There was a line of verse. What was it? Something of Millay's, liked and memorized long ago:

/poi// You might as well be calling yours What never will be his And one of us be happy; There's few enough as is. //poi/

She had a swift vivid vision of Jerry Davis, opening a stiff white envelope, drawing out a second envelope, thumbing the slip of tissue paper from the engraved folder. "Mr. and Mrs. Henry Harbison Leonard have the honor of announcing the marriage of their daughter . . ." The slip of tissue paper fluttering to the floor. . . .

She lifted her lips to Alan, and gave him glory. d The receiver stood on the little table beside the hall telephone. Irene, approaching it at the suggestion of Norma Benedict's butler, eyed it resignedly, and sighed. She picked it up and said "Hello" in a tone at once goodnatured and plaintive. n -

"Yes," she continued in like tone, "this is Rene. Where under the sun have you been? . . . I know, but it's after eleven! You promised faithfully' . . . Of course it's nothing in my life, but Norma . . . I know, but you see Norma . . . What?"

With this ejaculation, Irene's expression, attitude, voice and manner underwent an astonishing metamorphosis. She had been standing up; now she sat down as if a scythe had unexpectedly mowed her limbs from under her. Receiver glued to her ear, she listened as a radio fan listens to what he hopes is China; with the same attention, with the same ecstatic and enraptured mein. "My dear!" she squealed. And then, "Tonight?" And then, "Oh, my dear!"

After a minute she got to her feet again. "Of course!" she crowed happily. "Try to do it without me! What? . . . No, I don't . . . Yes, I suppose it will, at this hour. You won't put it off till morning? . . . That's the spirit! Tell him I agree with him! A fickle jade like, you, there's no telling . . . Yes, playing bridge. I'll get him and be right over . . . Oh, I'll make up some excuse . . . No, not a soul but Ted, I swear it . . . Listen: tell Hanks to get out some of that champagne . . . 'Course you're forgiven! . . . All right, dear. See you in a few minutes."

Mrs. Matthews hung up the receiver and beaming, went with all speed to collect her husband, her coat and her car.

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/ch//CONSOLATION

Friday at midnight. . . .

The walls of the cabaret were lined with pleated silk, and the silk was pinned at intervals with lights like dull gold brooches. From fifty ash-trays on fifty jumbled tables thin smoke strings twisted up, to mingle and form a diaphanous parasol close under the ceiling. There was a disk of sheeny hardwood whereon patent leather shoes were as magnets to little burnished slippers. There was a cluster of musicians who cried through their horns for cottonfields and kisses and the moon.

At a table in the corner near the musicians Nick Standish was entertaining in honor of Dolly Quinn.

"While the Pageant is on," he had said all week, "you're to be a good infant and get to bed early. Then as soon ag it's over I'll stage a big blowout for you."

"Whether I win or not?" Dolly had demanded.

"Whether you win or not."

This was the blowout. The participants numbered fourteen. Five were newspaper men and girls who had covered the Pageant—strangers to Nick until four days ago, but buddies now. A sixth was a young woman who managed publicity for one of the Boardwalk hotels. Sid Frazer was present with a tilt-nosed, frilly blonde who said "ay-yah" for yes and "uh-uh" for no and "poor li'l me" for herself. There was Mrs. Minafee, of course; and a vaudeville actor whom Nick had known in France; and two varsity-esque boys who had not been invited to the party, but had come from an adjoining table for the os-

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tensible purpose of getting "good ole Sid," and remained to vie for Dolly's smiles and her foxtrots.

This heterogeneous assortment of total and practical strangers proved congenial beyond the most optimistic expectations of the host. Everyone seemed to like everyone else. Everyone seemed to find what everyone else said amusing, and to be inspired to reciprocal sallies. Talk crisscrossed cheerfully over the table, through the smoke that overhung it and between the two stately silver cups—Dolly's trophies—that graced its center. Libations were poured out of bottles that said "Ginger ale" and contained ginger ale, and out of bottles that said "Ginger ale" and lied.

Dolly sat beside Nick at the head of the table, wearing the most effective of her new evening dresses, a white chiffon velvet, soft and pearly. She was very merry, with the strung, half giddy merriment of almost complete exhaustion. It had been a terrific day. Again and again as she danced and laughed and chattered, her mind went over its events and she thought, "A wonder I'm not just worn out," unaware that she was.

The final judging had taken place in the morning, and had been a day's work in itself. From eleven o'clock until almost two the fifteen girls still in the running had passed in review before the art jury. They had been measured, and their measurements recorded in a notebook for the jury to consult. They had been inspected all at a time, a few at a time, one at a time; standing, walking, sitting; full face, profile, three-quarters. Their hands, fingers, arms, legs, feet and even ears had been examined. "Hold your arm out," Dolly was told. "Lay your badge back over your shoulder. Pin up those braids, please, so we can see your neck line. Face this way. Walk over there. Let's have your hand." . . . All morning it had been like that, with occasional brief rests.

At the end each judge had written the names of two girls on a slip of paper, folding the paper so that none

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but himself might know how he had voted. Then a member of the Pageant committee had collected the votes and deposited them in a golden apple the size of a basketball, and sealed the apple.

In the afternoon, the final parade; Dolly's third long trip down the tumultuous human lane of the Boardwalk. She rode this time on a float built to represent a Hudson River ferry boat, with painted water all around her and a clever papier mâché representation of a section of the Manhattan sky-line looming at her back. The parade had been a tremendous thing, twelve sections long, and therefore halt and slow. Not for three hours after she left her hotel room had she returned to it, to fling herself down for a wholly insufficient half-hour's nap before dinner.

In the evening the greatest crowd of all that week of crowds had pushed and fought and bribed its way into the Million Dollar Pier, to clog the ballroom, to freckle it with faces and rock it with ear-splitting hubbub. . . . Thrice Dolly Quinn walked out alone onto the bright small stage. Once as a unit of a farewell procession of all the sixty-odd candidates. Once to receive one of the silver loving cups awarded the fifteen from among whom the winner was chosen. A third time to accept another prize cup, because her float in the afternoon's parade had been deemed of all the beauties' floats the most effective.

After that she had gone upstairs to the flag-draped box where Mrs. Minafee awaited her; and there, sitting brilliant-eyed and tense, her palms damp and her breath quickdrawn between her parted lips, she had watched the last of the series of glamorous, romantic, quite absurd gestures that is the Beauty Pageant.

First had come the judges in evening clothes, bowing solemnly, filing solemnly around the stand that held the fateful golden apple, solemnly ascertaining that the seal was still intact. Then had followed Miss Atlantic City, with a golden hatchet to chop the apple open. Rap!

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Crack! CRASH! in the dead stillness. A wait during which the merest whisper would, surely have been audible in that vast hall. Then the voice of the announcer: "The two names having the most votes—"

Neither of the names was Dolly's.

The keenness of her disappointment had surprised and angered her; she had tried to argue with it. "Silly! You knew you wouldn't win, you knew all along!" Nevertheless the little stabbing ache persisted and she realized sorrily how sanguine of victory she had allowed herself to become. The reiterated prophecies of Nick and Sid Frazer, the applause that swelled in volume for her, certain lines of newpaper type, certain comments overheard—with these materials she had unconsciously built up a tower of hope in her heart. And now it had toppled. She sat rigid, watching the stage where the judges decided between the two names not hers. She kept her azure eyes very wide open and did not blink, for fear the foolish tears that itched behind the lids might spill.

But when at last the winner was led out upon the stage, into the glare and the pandemonium, Dolly thought, "She is beautiful."

And while the winner knelt at the feet of King Neptune, and was crowned with a diamond diadem and draped with a royal robe of red velvet and ermine and given a jeweled scepter to hold, Dolly whacked her pink palms together vigorously . . . and almost meant it. . . . d The cabaret was full of a topaz glow, a sort of vague indoor moonlight peculiar to cabarets and cathedrals. The jazz band sobbed the saga of a faithless brownskin gal. "An' after all he done, that's how she done him." . . . The dance floor held a seething freight of bundles tied with arms, inside a hoop of tables half deserted.

Nick and Dolly sat at the end of their table, surrounded by empty chairs. At the other end the vaudeville actor told jokes to Mrs. Minafee and wished, no doubt, that his

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paying listeners might learn to laugh as she laughed. Midway of the table, O'Brien of the Buffalo Tribune leaned on his elbows and broke matches into tiny pieces, moodily, and snapped the pieces here and there with his thumb. The rest of the party had been sucked into the maelstrom on the floor.

"You're a peach," said Nick, "to sit this out. I've been wanting a quiet word with you ever since—all evening." His eyes probed Dolly's. "How you feeling?"

"Full of pep."

"Enjoying yourself?"

She smiled. "Oh, so much, Nick!"

"You're a game little kid," he said, patting her hand.

"Pooh," said Dolly.

"But you are. That was mighty tough. You should have had—well, second place anyway. Everybody thought so. If the crowd had made the choice instead of a bunch of paint-daubed pinheads—"

"But Nick," cried Dolly, appalled by this blasphemy, "they know. That's their business."

"So I'm told." He took a swallow from his highball glass and continued, "I've a hunch perhaps your size was against you. Your measurements were pretty close to perfect, proportionately—but there isn't a whole lot of you, you know."

"I know. And my eyes are too far apart, and my—"

"They're not."

"Yes they are, Nick." She meditated an instant in silence, and then began to meditate aloud. "Of course I'd adore to have won. Oh, wouldn't I! She'll be in the movies. And—have you noticed all those different things in shop windows on the Boardwalk, marked 'To be presented to Miss America'? They've been there all week. She'll get scads of stuff. I'm greedy," Dolly put in parenthetically. "I love things." Then her thoughts veered. "Nick, did you see her when she left the Pier? Oh, you should've! In a mammoth big white car, all birthday/peh/

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cake looking and trimmed with real roses, and four motorcycle cops in snow-white uniforms, two whizzing along in front to clear the way, and two in the rear—Il'll never forget it."

"Speaking of judges," muttered Nick, looking past her, "here comes Uling."

"Coming here?"

"Yup."

Now Brooks Uling was a man between thirty-five and forty; a jolly-faced, scant-haired, medium-sized man with a small black mustache in two sections; a man who enjoyed cigars, needle showers, "Bugs" Baer, prize fights and pre-war stuff, and meals in his shirt sleeves and soup with cracker islands when Mrs. Brooks Uling was away. In short, he was a mere man . . . until you came to his fingers.

Then he was a genius.

He drew illustrations. Girls so real that you thought you might find them almost any day, but so exquisite that you never quite did. Boys that every fraternity on any given campus would have rushed. Parties you yearned to join. Groups you'd like to ask out to the house for the week end. Faces you showed to friends you wanted to flatter, demanding, "Who's this a picture of? No, hold it off a little. You! Exactly!" . . . Brooks Uling; the name scrawled in the corners of the illustrations for the story you read first, out of the whole magazine, because you said to yourself at sight, "Here, this looks good."

It was of the name and the illustrations that Dolly Quinn was thinking when the artist reached her table. Which was unfortunate. Had she concentrated on the warm blue eyes and the mere-man-to-pretty-girl smile, she might have kept her poise fairly well. As it was, she blushed, swallowed, thought, "He came to speak to me"—and pushed her chair back and stood up, politely if mistakenly.

At once there was a question of just when to sit down

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again; it preoccupied her all through the greetings and the introduction of Nick to Mr. Uling (by Nick, perforce). Mr. Uling solved it finally by grasping her chair and insinuating it gently under her.

"This is no time to talk business," he said, seating himself beside her. "But it's the only time I have. I'm going back to New York in the morning. So if Mr. Standish will pardon us—no, no, stay where you are, old man—"

Then it seemed to Dolly that the tables and the dancers and the silken walls and the band, and even Nick, all faded away and were not; and only the physiognomy of the famous one was left to her eyes, and only his voice to her consciousness.

He said, "For a starter, Miss Manhattan, what's your name?"

She told him. It was the first time she had spoken, save for a "Good evening" that had been a failure from the standpoint of articulation; somehow now the accustomed syllables of "Dolly Quinn" made her feel more assured. "It's really Dorothy," she added in a burst of confidence, "but nobody's called me that since I was little."

She perceived his smile then, and how natural it was; unassumed and unassuming.

"Well," he said, "and what does Miss Dolly, née Dorothy, Quinn do with herself all day long in Manhattan? You don't mind these questions? They aren't prompted by idle curiosity, I assure you."

"Of course I don't mind. Why, I'm a sales girl at Gibson Brothers."

He glanced down. "With those hands?"

The unmistakable tribute thrilled Dolly, but troubled her. She felt that whatever she did with the hands—after that—might be construed as an effort to show them off. Even leaving them there on the table seemed a conceited thing to do. She put them in her lap.

"Now why," he said, laughing. n -

So she laughed also, and put them back.

"Ever do any posing?" he asked next.

"Why—no, I never have."

"Like to try it?"

"Oh, I'd love to!"

"Understand," said Uling carefully, "I can't promise to use you. Good looks don't always make a good model, you know. I'll have to try you out, see if you take to it. I think you will. I've been watching you these last few days. You're very graceful. You fall naturally into graceful attitudes, you have style, you do lovely things with your hands—except when you hide them away," he smiled.

With a pencil supplied by Nick, who had not since the age of eighteen been anywhere without one, Uling wrote his address on the corner of a menu card. "Here," he said, tearing it off. "Come Monday, can you? Monday afternoon. And we'll see."

Dolly's fingers curled over the bit of cardboard, but her expression was woebegone. "I have to be back at the store Monday. I'll lose my job if I'm not. They gave me a week to come down here—they'd never stand for my taking Monday too. Oh," she wailed, "I don't see how I'd have time to pose for you, Mr. Uling, even if you found that I'd do. I work every week day, and of course you don't work on Sundays."

"That's simple," said Uling. "If you suit me, you can safely give up the store job altogether. I'll use you whenever I can and send you to some of the other artists—you'll find plenty of work if you're good at it. The standard rate is three dollars for half a day, but most of us pay five. You'll pick up a lot of photographic posing too. The question is, about this try-out. I wouldn't want you to quit your job till we're sure. Let's see. When will you be back in New York? I could see you tomorrow afternoon."

"I wasn't going back till Sunday night—" Dolly's voice

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held a note of wistfulness. "Oh, but I will!" she added quickly. "Of course I will. I'll go back first thing in the morning."

"I hate to spoil your holiday," Uling said doubtfully.

"I don't care."

"Holiday against a new job—it's a gamble, you know."

"Well, I'm a gambler."

"Atta girl!" Nick ejaculated suddenly.

On a rancorous minor the jazz band concluded its denunciation of the bad dark lady, and the dancers untangled and scattered toward their tables, squeezing hip-first between the backs of chairs. Uling rose. "Then," he said, "I'll expect you tomorrow, shall I? About two?"

"I'll be there," promised Dolly.

"Bring an afternoon dress." His eyes drifted over her. "That's another thing in your favor. Your Pageant trousseau. Clothes count a lot. Well—" He bobbed his head in a friendly way. "Au revoir."

He went back to his own table across the room. Dolly, her body flaccid against the chair back, watched him go. Nick watched Dolly with pleased, congratulatory eyes.

"Nick Standish," she said solemnly, still watching, "if I—oh, who cares about being Miss America!" d It was while they rolled toward New York on a morning train that Mrs. Minafee made the odd discovery. Odd, that is, to Dolly's way of thinking. Mrs. Minafee herself was not at all puzzled and only mildly interested.

She had been perusing a newspaper, and she lowered it to say to Dolly, "What was the name of that yellowhaired hussy at dinner the other night, do you recall?"

"Gay Leonard."

"I thought so." Mrs. Minafee shook and biffed and folded the newspaper, and passed it over. "Read that," she commanded, supplementing through tightened lips, "And I hope he beats her!" n -

Dolly read:

/fb//

NEW YORK COUPLE ELOPE TO MARYLAND

---

Miss Gay Leonard Weds Son of Julian M. Pomeroy

---

Special to the New York Star

Elkton, Md., September 11.—Miss Gay Leonard, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Harbison Leonard of — East 63rd Street, New York, and Alan Pomeroy, son of Julian M. Pomeroy, head of the Pomeroy Advertising Agency, were married early this morning by the Rev. Dr. William P. Kane, after motoring here from Ventnor, New Jersey. Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Matthews of New York, Southampton and Ventnor, and Jacques Vallois, a chauffeur, were the only witnesses.

Mr. Pomeroy is a graduate of Yale, class of 1924. He isa member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and was prominent in university athletics. During the World War he served with the Royal Flying Corps.

Mrs. Pomeroy attended Miss Madison's School on the Hudson.

Following an automobile honeymoon the couple will live in New York, where Mr. Pomeroy is in business with his father. //fb/

"September eleventh," murmured Dolly. "This is the twelfth. Then it was the very next morning—"

Mrs. Minafee nodded. "You see," she said, "you were 'way off. Remember you said she must be in love with Mr. Jerry Davis herself? 'Nobody would've been so disagreeable just for no reason, Minnie,' you said. And all the time she was about to get married to this other fella."

But Dolly, remembering the cruel little voice, remembering the brown eyes that had hated her, remembering many, many things, wondered. . . . n -

Brooks Uling's studio was not the artist's studio of film and fiction. It was a work room, not a show room; an airy place with cream-like walls and worn bare floor and big skylight. The furnishings consisted of a drawing table, two plain tables, an easel, a sofa, a pier glass, a bookcase stuffed with miscellaneous clutter, and several chairs. There were mirrors on the wall, two of them, and three framed original drawings by Uling, and an unforgettable, unforgotten war poster with his signature. Innumerable other originals, pictures that had embellished scores of stories now dead, leaned in a corner, a great dusty stack.

Adjoining the studio there was a dressing room, a bath and a kitchenette. The suite (which Uling used only as a shop, having his home elsewhere) was the topmost of the five suites into which a brownstone house in the West Sixties had disintegrated. There was no elevator. One toiled up endless stairs and arrived panting and wobble-kneed, and one's opening remark was apt to be, "Whew!"

This was Dolly's opening remark.

"Some climb, isn't it?" agreed Uling.

He was standing in the open door at the head of the stairway, shoulder against the frame. He wore a blue smock and had a pipe in his mouth. When Dolly came within two steps of him he swooped down and relieved her of her suitcase.

"Well!" he said. "Models bring their costumes in hatboxes usually. Sometimes in pill-boxes."

Dolly, one small paw flat against her heaving chest, explained in a series of gasps that she had been unable to decide which frock to bring and hence had brought three "so you can choose."

She was grateful to the stairs. They justified a breathlessness which she felt certain would have been hers in this moment anyway, climb or no climb.

Uling shooed her into the studio. "Sit down," he suggested, indicating the sofa. "I always have to allow peo-

-

ple a couple of minutes to get their wind back. How are you today?"

"Just fine, thank you."

"I'm glad you came."

"Did you think I wouldn't?"

He shook his head, smiling. "No. But I'll bet you hated to leave the shore, didn't you?"

"Not so much."

"I'll take a look at the dresses," said Uling.

He opened the suitcase and took them out one by one, holding each up on two fingers hooked into its neck and appraising it, back and front. "They did you rather well, didn't they? These are all good." He laid one over a chair. "This, I think."

"Shall I put it on now?" asked Dolly, removing her eyes with reluctance from the easel, where reposed a half finished drawing of a most ornamental young man talking excitedly into a telephone.

"Wait a while. No hurry."

She sat still, sending little fascinated glances here and there about the room; and in her enthusiasm she grew unafraid.

Uling stood with an elbow on the mantel nearby, smoking and scrutinizing her.

"Oh, I remember that!" she exclaimed. "In the Saturday Evening Post, wasn't it?"

His eyes followed the line of hers to one of the framed originals on the wall. "I'm flattered," he said. "That was about a year ago."

"I love it. I have it at home. I cut it out, so I could sort of study it."

The drawing in question depicted a kiss by firelight. Uling grinned. "To get some pointers?"

"Yes," said Dolly gravely, not thinking of the kiss at all. "Then there's another I liked specially," she went on. "You had it in something a couple of months ago—I forget which magazine, but it was just one figure, a girl,

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sitting in a big chair with her feet stretched out and her head back, blowing smoke rings. Don't you know the one I mean? She had light hair, and she was sitting—"

"Show me," Uling interrupted. "How was she sitting?"

Dolly, eager to recall the picture to his mind, slipped into the pose of the picture girl without hesitation. "Like me And she had one hand in back of her head, like this—"

"Hm," said Uling approvingly.

"Remember it?"

"Yes, I think I do. In fact I believe it's kicking around somewhere." He strolled over to the stack of originals in the corner, and presently pulled one out. "Here you are."

Dolly took the picture in reverent hands. "That's it. Oh, it's beautiful—"

"Take it home when you go."

Incredulous eyes flashed up at him. "You mean—to keep?"

"Certainly to keep. I'll sign it for you. And now," said Uling, cutting off Dolly's rapturous attempts to thank him, "what do you say we get busy? If you'll change into the other dress—there's the dressing room, through that door."

The dressing room was small, and glad with chintz. There were chintz curtains at the two windows, and a chintz couch, and a dressing table in a full chintz petticoat. Invisible hairpins on the dressing table, and a film of powder, an ash tray full of short bent cigarette ends dyed with lipstick, a paper folder of matches marked "Texas Guinan's Three Hundred Club," an ivory brush and a comb to which clung threads of yellow hair that reminded Dolly again, fleetingly, of Gay Leonard. . . . She removed her hat, gathered her gown up into a boa of silken folds around her shoulders and backed out of it; then, in her pink slip, sat down at the dressing table to repair the damage done to her coiffure. She worked hur-

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riedly, with fingers that had begun to shake a little. "I wasn't scared out there," she mused, "except just at first. And now I'm paralyzed!" "No you're not!" she contradicted sternly aloud, frowning at her reflection. This debate between nerves and will continued until she had finished dressing.

When she was quite ready she stood for an instant with her hot face bent into her palms. Her lipsstirred. "God," she whispered, "it's a funny thing to pray about—but please, You help me to do this—"

Uling was seated on the sofa, a sheaf of long narrow papers, galley proofs, in his hands. As she came from the dressing room he eyed her up and down, and nodded. "Good," he said. "Have a chair, Miss Quinn. I'll explain what we're about."

"Here's a story," he began, tapping the proofs with the stem of his pipe, "called Paint. It's the story of a little actress, Just a young thing, playing a small part in a show on Broadway. A maid's part, or the equivalent. But she's tremendously ambitious. Determined to get to the top in the show business. There's a lad who is crazy to marry her, but she won't listen to him. 'Wedded to her art'—that idea. Do you follow me? Now, the scene I'm going to illustrate is one where he begs her to marry him, and she says no and gives her reasons. The caption for the picture will be a line of hers—" He consulted the proofs. "This: She says, 'I want to be great. I want to be famous. I want to hear people say, "There she goes."'"

Uling paused and looked at Dolly. "Put yourself in that girl's place. Can you understand at all how she feels?"

"I can, yes."

From the stand beside his drawing table Uling took a sheet of paper smudged with black. "Briefly, here's what's done: I make this rough draft first—see, it's just a scrawl—showing the relative positions of the figures. Then I get

-

in models, one at a time unless the figures are clinched, dancing or kissing or something like that, in which case, of course, I take them together. After I have the figures drawn I put in the background, furniture and soon. Now! Look at this rough draft a minute." He hung over her, pointing with a pencil. "Here's the man, you see. He's standing, leaning against the edge of a table, looking down at the girl. And here she is, sitting on a divan a few feet away, making her speech."

Uling went back to the sofa and seated himself. "I'll show you my idea," he said. "In the first place, she wouldn't be leaning back. She's too much in earnest, too intent, for that. She'd be sitting forward—see, like this—"

He struck an attitude so incongruously feminine that he would have been comical under other circumstances. "Knees crossed," he continued. "Hands so—or no, better this way. Chin up, but not too much. Eyes radiant, full of her dream. 'I want to be great, I want to be famous—' See what I mean?"

"I think so, Mr. Uling."

"Suppose you sit here and try it."

Dolly tried it.

"That's pretty good," said Uling, planted in front of her. "Let the shoulders drop an inch or so. Relax. Don't think about Dolly Quinn, child. Think about the girl in the story. You're that girl, and nobody's watching you but the boy who loves you—you want really to feel this—"

His wheedling voice talked on, while Dolly strove to loosen the thousand small tight knots into which her muscles seemed tied.

"Can I stand up," she asked timidly, "and sit down all over again? I think that might help."

"Certainly. Walk around. Take a few deep breaths." He was smiling reassuringly. "Don't look so worried, Miss Quinn. You'll have it in no time." n -

"I hope so."

"I know so. Just as soon as you stop trying too hard. You know when you showed me how the girl was posed in that old drawing? You were lovely. Perfectly natural. But now you're saying to yourself, 'Oh dear, maybe I won't suit him'—"

Dolly giggled guiltily, and at once felt better.

She went back to the sofa.

"Better!" said Uling, promptly and emphatically. "Much better! Smoothe your dress—too many folds in the front. Chin a little higher—no, no, not too—there. Hands are fine." He paced about before her. "Try crossing your knees the other way, left over the right. Now slide that right foot out farther, toward me. That's it. Body just a shade more forward—tha-a-at's it! Great! Hang on to that, can you? As long as you can. And don't move—"

He dropped on to the stool before his drawing table and began to make marks on a big blank white rectangle. And his eyes swung toward her, toward the board, toward her again—back and forth and back and forth, like twin blue pendulums.

"When you get tired, sing out," he directed.

She sat like a statue. "Oh, just to watch him!" she thought. That swift, skillful hand. Those miraculous strokes. Her own silhouette in miniature, emanating from a pencil point. Twice he frowned and erased, and she thought with amazement, "Why, even he does!"

She tired very quickly, but, loath to interrupt him, bore increasing misery in Spartan silence until she could bear it no longer.

Then she said, "I'm a little tired now—but if you'd rather not stop yet, I can wait—"

He stopped instantly, adjuring her not to forget the pose.

"Oh, I won't!"

. . . It was later in the afternoon, when she had

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156 Little Sms

relaxed the pose and resumed it again half a dozen times, that Uling queried, "D'you like it at the store?"

"Not specially."

"Then," he said, "I wouldn't bother going back there, if I were you." . . .

-

/ch//HONEYMOON'S END

Mr. and Mrs. Alan Pomeroy returned to New York on the first day of October and pending the establishment of what the bride's mother was pleased to refer to as a "dear little nest of their own," stayed with the Leonards. Three feverish weeks. A mad kaleidoscope of parties, presents, callers, congratulations, conferences. A nightmare of excelsior, tissue paper, doorbells, telephone bells, flowers, voices, kisses. A meaninglessness.

Incidents, just a few, stood out sharply for Gay.

There was that first difficult hour with her parents. They were glad; they kept saying they were glad and proud and happy, smiling with honest fondness upon Alan. Yet her father cleared his throat noticeably often, and her mother cried a little, bleakly. "Not to have been with you—" she sighed several times. And once, "Oh, but I always planned such a beautiful big wedding—"

There was the peculiar penetration in the brown, shell-rimmed eyes of Alan's friend Steve Harker when he said, "He's the salt of the earth, Gay. And don't you ever forget it."

There was the sixteen-year-old boy, someone's visiting cousin, who addressed her politely as "Ma'am" at the Tom Hinchley's dance.

There was the evening when her father told her, very simply and unemotionally, that the Street, that Indian giver, had taken back his fortune. Practically all of it. He had lost a quarter-million early in the summer, and in a desperate effort to recoup, had thrown away the rest.

-

The house would have to be sold, of course, and the cars. Perhaps now that she was fixed they would leave New York, her mother and he. He didn't know yet. It all depended. He had heard of something in Chicago . . . a chance to begin again . . .

There was the big package from Tiffany's containing a silver cocktail set, tray and shaker and twelve goblets. "Mr. Jerome Davis," said the card. Gay was alone when she opened it. She tore the card into very wee pieces, and when she showed the gift to Alan later, said, "From a girl I went to school with. Isn't it stunning?" d Alan's father was a gruff bass voice encased in two hundred and forty pounds of dynamic clay. He had a quantity of very white hair which his fingers kept in perpetual revolt, a red face with tiny threadlike redder veins on the cheek bones, and a guffaw that seemed to quiver walls and windows. He was a widower. He was a business wizard. And he was a darling.

Gay liked him immensely, not the least of her reasons being the indisputable fact that he was delighted with her. She was, he maintained, precisely the sort of daughter he'd always wanted. Pretty as a picture, and sweet, and "normal, thank God!" (This to the derogation of his other daughter-by-marriage, who ran an antique shop off Washington Square and, although she was Mrs. Julian M. Pomeroy, Junior, and had been for three or four years, persisted in calling herself Naomi Nardin—and looking it.)

Gay had a trick of treating older people, when she liked them, as if they were her contemporaries. "It must be bad enough to be old," she opined, "without everyone's rubbing it in all the time." . . . She flattered Mr. Pomeroy, and cried him down whenever he spoke of himself as aged. She called him by his two first initials, criticized his cravats, scolded him, bossed him, made much of him. To

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this treatment he responded with all the verve of a sixty year old gentleman whose spirit is still sixteen. He became at once fond father, fatuous admirer and willing slave. d "You won't need to look for a place to live," Pomeroy père had informed them on their first day back. "I've got your home all picked out for you. Ready in two or three weeks now."

He was gleefully mysterious about it. He would answer no questions, not a one. They were to wait, and in due time they would see. . . .

They waited with impatience and some trepidation for eighteen days. "Suppose it isn't what we want?" Gay demanded every day of Alan. Every day she said, "Oh, he ought to consult us! How does he know what part of town I want to live in, or what kind of apartment I have in mind?" Every day she threatened to tell him that he was awfully, awfully kind, but honestly, they'd rather find a place for themselves. . . . Possibly she would have done so had not Alan insisted that thus to spoil his cherished surprise would almost break the heart of Pomeroy père.

On the afternoon of the nineteenth day suspense abruptly ended. Mr. Pomeroy appeared in his car at the Leonard residence, gathered up Gay and Alan and Mrs. Leonard, and drove them direct to a lofty building on East Fifty-seventh Street.

"All out!" he boomed.

They got out, and stood on the sidewalk, gazing with satisfaction at the buff stone facade, at the Florentine lobby glowing softly behind the plate glass doors.

"Like the looks of it?" asked Mr. Pomeroy. "Think you'd like to live here?"

They did.

"Think you'd like to live up high?" n -

Excited as a small boy circus-bound, and chuckling to himself, Mr. Pomeroy led them inside. Past a doorman who saluted deferentially, past the two elevators he led them, and down a corridor to a third elevator marked "Private."

"In we go!" cried Mr. Pomeroy.

In they went, and were lifted fifteen stories.

At approximately the sixth story, Mr. Pomeroy's secret exploded from him; he was altogether incapable of containing it an instant longer. "It's not an apartment!" he roared joyously. "It's a bungalow! Up on the roof! A pent-house—that's what they call 'em. Wait'll you see—"

A delightful one-story house, crouching under the clouds. A house of open fireplaces and arched doorways, of rough painted plaster walls and mossy carpets, of built-in bookcases and gentle golden lights, of artistry, of atmosphere. A house with French windows that sipped in the winds of summer and held the winter cold at bay behind the thick silk draperies. A house with French doors that opened on to a grass-plotted lawn, with flower beds and a sun dial and little brick paths. . . . A high stone wall ran around the outside edge. You almost fancied, when you went to peek over the wall that you would see adjoining lawns and neighbors' houses. But you didn't. You saw the huddled city, miles below, and the ragged blue skein of the East River.

There were eight rooms. A living room, a dining room, a model kitchen, three bedrooms and two baths. For more than a month decorators—and Naomi Nardin—had been at work on these eight rooms; they were as complete as rooms yet lacking occupants could be. There were books in the bookcases. There were satin spreads on the beds, and monogrammed toilet articles on the dressing tables. Even such details as Victrola needles, ash trays, cooking utensils, bath salts, bedside thermos bottles and attractive camouflage for the telephones had not been overlooked.

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Clocks told the correct time, and flowers freshly cut were everywhere.

Mr. Pomeroy had leased the bungalow for five years. The furniture and fittings and a check to cover the rent during that period were his gifts to his son and daughter-in-law. d Gay had intended to leave her third-floor sitting room at her father's house precisely as it was; a sort of Trophy Room to which she might return, to sit alone sometimes and just remember. But the impending sale of the house nullified that plan. It was necessary either to move or to dispose of everything she owned; and in the bungalow there was no place to put the souvenirs of the gone, precious years. . . . She spent a sentimental morning destroying them.

Photographs, first. She emptied the frames along the mantel (some of them held two, three, four young men, layer upon layer) and piled the pictures on the floor beside the fireplace. From a closet shelf she lifted down a cardboard suit-box full of other pictures, and dumped them with the rest. Then, seated Turk-fashion on a cushion at the edge of the hearth, she began the holocaust.

The top of the pile was out of the bottom of the box. These were old pictures. She turned them over one by one, smiling pensively. Her earliest beaux. What children they seemed! Incredible that this stripling with the scrubby pompadour had once been the idol of her dreams, or that that freckled adolescent with the class seal pinned to his coat lapel had once made her cry for hours and hours because he asked another girl to a dance! . . . All sorts of pictures. Snapshots. Pingpongs. A photograph of a youth she had detested, with a beard and spectacles drawn with malicious crayon on the face. And the very picture of Chris Leland that, together with an alarm clock and a middy tie, she had hysterically carried

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162 Little Stns

to safety the night her dormitory at school burned down. . . Names, episodes she had not thought of in years came back to her. Each successive pair of pictured eyes was like a tiny pair of tongs that bit into the dust of seasons past and gave her something.

The pile shrank. The flames in the fireplace leaped and crackled, gloating over their feast. The paper faces gradually matured. Lotharios of year before last, of last year, looked up at her, making her vaguely sad. She could so well remember little things about these men. This man's gait. That man's voice. A third man's favorite bit of slang.

Here was her first picture of Alan, taken at college. She tossed it aside to keep. Here was a crew in ita slender trough, oars in the water, faces frowning into the sun that beat upon the coxswain's bent back. Punk Wyman had been captain and stroke of that crew. She remembered the proprietary rapture (she had believed it love) that had glowed in her one June afternoon of a great race; the little secret surge of pride when somebody behind her on the observation train whispered to somebody else, "That's Wyman's girl." . . . Here was Harry Douglas, a young medical student to whom she had once been engaged between Christmas and Easter. Funny Harry—so extremely professional, so far more professional than in all his life to come he would be again! He had regarded her as though through an invisible microscope, and tried to force her to wear overshoes when it rained. And she had always suspected him of recording the beats of her heart while he kissed her. . . .

It was somehow hard to lay these pictures on the fire; it was like cremating things not yet quite dead, burying things that still breathed faintly. . . . To destroy the picture of Jerry Davis was, she told herself tremulously, impossible. She cut out the head of that photograph with fingernail scissors and slipped it down the neck of her gown. n -

Letters next. The big cedar chest under the windows held the accumulation of almost a decade. She dragged the chest on its casters to the hearth and kneeling beside it, her gaudy hair hiding her cheeks, delved in.

There were countless letters. Fat letters and thin. Special deliveries. Letters bearing the postmarks of fifty cities, twenty college towns, a dozen summer resorts. Yellowed war-time notes with Y. M. C. A. triangles in the upper left hand corners. Several prehistoric billets-doux in a copybook handwriting, with the stamps stuck on upside down. (Stamps upside down had meant something tender, she could not now recall just what.)

She read a few letters chosen at random, but discovered that reading them invariably engendered a desire to preserve them, and so flung the remainder to the flames without a glance inside their envelopes. Telegrams, of which there were many, she did read. Some of them made her smile, some made her sigh, others annoyed her because, explore her memory though she would, she failed to interpret them. "Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love," said one, over the signature "Bob." Which Bob? And when, and why? . . . Another said, "Gave the big clown your message stop he denies all knowledge stop are you sure it wasn't something you ate." Signed "Hub." Hubbard Johnson, of course, but what under the sun. . . .

Beneath all the letters, at the bottom of the chest, she found several layers of what may be generally described as gimcracks. A black wig that once had covered her blondness in a Japanese play; two swimming medals won by an admirer; a broken vanity case; a leather cardcase that had held a dance order, with the seal of a boys' preparatory school on the cover; souvenir badges dangling little tin footballs; prom programs; suede-bound Commencement programs. Such things she dug out by handfuls, filling her lap. There was a fraternity pin, gold, with pearls. There was a small round white felt hat with the

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numerals 1925 embroidered on it in red. There was a mateless bathing shoe, an empty tarnished flask, a pale blue satin domino. . . . Where she had worn the domino, how long ago, she did not know, but for an instant color swirled in her mind, and a wistful dance tune she thought she had forgotten, Coral Sea, throbbed in her ears. . . .

Suddenly she was crying. Crying miserably, with the blue domino hung by its little string on a finger of one of the hands that shielded her face. Crying because a sense of the ineffable dearness and the terrible impermanence of youth had overwhelmed her . . . because she felt old, and utterly, irrevocably finished.

She bowed her forehead to her bent knees and rested it there, and the festive small treasures spilled off the sides of her lap to the floor. "Oh," she whispered, "Jerry—I wouldn't care—I wouldn't mind—if it were you—" d Life in the bungalow under the clouds slid smoothly for Gay Pomeroy. She had no duties whatever, no responsibilities save those of a hostess, which she accepted with complete unconcern. She always seemed, in fact, less a hostess than a guest in her own home—a rather difhicult guest of whom everyone must be thoughtful, whom everyone must humor and divert and entertain.

She was from the beginning the helpless sort of young matron that very spoiled maidens frequently become. There were things which, it developed, she just simply couldn't do. Rising at eight-thirty to breakfast with Alan was one of them. Being ready to go anywhere on time was another. Balancing her check book was a third. Sewing, putting things away, remembering to replace the cap on the tooth-paste tube and to have the oil changed in the automobile—anything that was even momentarily bothersome—belonged in the list of performances of which she professed herself incapable. "I just simply can't, Alan," she would say, appealingly and a little aggrievedly, as

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though to imply that he really was expecting much too much.

Fortunately for connubial peace, her inefficiency amused Alan rather than irritated him. He thought it charming; he even boasted about it. "This little wife of mine," he would announce with pride, "couldn't boil an egg without a cook book." Or, grinning broadly, "The Pomeroy family mending is done with safety pins."

Fortunately for domestic comfort, there was their excellent servant, the tobacco-colored Leo, who could do anything and, because of an atavistic attachment to his master and a secret sympathy for him, willingly did.

Gay's days were useless days, all more or less alike. At eight-forty-five every morning she awoke partially for half a minute, conscious that Alan had leaned down and kissed her goodbye while she slept; through a drowsy haze she glimpsed his big business-suited back tiptoeing out of the room. She would mumble "'Bye," and turn over, nuzzling her face into the pillows. . . .

This was the prologue. The day proper was inaugurated at eleven or twelve with coffee and the incomparable first cigarette, and by a telephone conversation with one or another of her feminine acquaintances: "How about this afternoon? Let's go places and do things and see people." Sometimes they went shopping. Sometimes to a matinée or a movie, followed by tea in some murmurous, aureate downtown tea room. Sometimes four of them played bridge, with pauses for gossip every little while and a great swishing of mesh bags and exchanging of moneys at the end.

Saturday afternoons during the autumn were exceptions; those she spent sitting, fur-bundled, in a seat near a forty yard line, wishing that Alan would not bellow "Get 'im!" and "Come on-n-n!" and "Hold 'em!" quite so deafeningly, and now and then telling him so.

In the evenings there was laughter, there was bubbly talk, there were pretty poisons, iced, in tall glasses, there

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were pilgrimages into the flaming canyon of Broadway, there were plaintive orchestras for Gay's spike heels to twinkle to, and men to pay her compliments, low-spoken. . . . Evenings when, dragging Alan, she joined the restless young married set of which Irene Matthews was ringleader, and with them hunted thrills and made furious war upon the common enemy, Ennui. d All her quarrels with Alan concerned the evenings. In other matters he was tractable, indulging her vagaries smilingly, without protest; but on the subject of evenings he displayed an unexpected obstinacy and a decided mind of his own. There were three major quarrels that recurred again and again.

One was the conflict between Gay's insatiable appetite for gayety and Alan's longing for occasional solitude and rest.

"Good Lord!" he would grumble. "Can't we stay at home just once?"

"We stayed at home last night."

"Yes—and twenty people piled in and stuck around till four A. M.! Nice peaceful evening that was!"

"I couldn't help it."

"You invited them."

"I only invited Irene and Ted and the Sullys. The others just came."

"Well, I tell you, honey." Thus Alan, very earnestly. "This has got to stop. I'm not fooling. It has, really. It's all very well for you—you can loll in bed all day—but I have to be on the job every morning at nine sharp, and if you think I do any good around there on three or four hours' sleep per night—"

"What difference does it make? You work for your father. He wouldn't fire you if you never went near the office at all. Look at Julian."

"Yes! Look at him!" n -

"Well, look at him! He gets away with it, doesn't he?"

Heated discussion for some minutes of the defections and short-comings of Alan's older brother, to whom life was a string of holidays starred with pay-days.

Then Alan: "Well, anyway. That's neither here nor there. The point is, about this party tonight. I'd go if I could, to please you, but honestly, sweetheart, I can't. I'd fail sound asleep at the wheel driving down there. I—oh, hell, Gay, don't you care enough about me to give up just one par—"

"Don't you care enough about me to want me to have a good time? I didn't marry you to stay around this house and twirl my thumbs—"

"If you can name me five nights since we got back to New York that you've stayed around—"

Presently, from this quarrel, they would proceed into the second quarrel, which had to do with the restless young married set aforementioned.

This set styled itself simply "The Crowd," and it was forever convening somewhere, going somewhere, or just dropping in somewhere. These things it did nightly, knowing no repose. It was a tight little clique of congenial spirits, a sort of club, whose habit it was to blackball unanimously everyone else in the world.

It had not blackballed the young Pomeroys. On the contrary, it had elected them enthusiastically, as being fun to go out with, and at their secluded, sky's-the-limit home, no end of fun to drop in on.

Club members in good standing numbered fourteen. Seven couples. "Seven shining examples," Alan said bitterly, "of what a mess you can make of marriage if you put your mind to it." None of them seemed to have found marital felicity. None appeared to prefer the companionship of his or her mate to that of anyone else, nor even to enjoy it half so much. At a gathering of the Crowd it would have been possible for an outsider to guess who was married to whom only by the amount of distance that

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separated wife from husband. If at one end of the house a vivacious young woman whispered to a masculine vis-à-vis, and if at the furthermost other end of the house a tall young man looked softly down into a dancing partner's eyes, then quite probably the tall young man and the vivacious young woman bore the same last name, dwelt at the same address, had come to the party together and would, when nothing more stimulating offered itself, find one another and go home together.

Alan liked the Crowd as individuals; but though he was by no means a prude, he hated the things the Crowd did. He hated its light amours, its careless kisses, its excessive drinking, its ultra-modern, what-if-we-are-married code. He hated the twitting that fell to the lot of any man attentive to his own wife. He hated the derisive term "jell-o" bestowed by the Crowd on any husband betraying the smallest sign of jealousy over his wife, whatever the incitement, or even of interest in her whereabouts. He hated the way in which inter-family flirtations were taken for granted; encouraged, moreover, by hostesses who paired off the participants, and by the rest, who left them severely alone. He hated the gallantry that the women expected of him; and the devotion the men, one or two men in particular, accorded Gay, openly, as if she were no one's property.

He was quite human. Up to a certain point he rejoiced in Gay's conquests; he considered the admiration of men for Alan Pomeroy's wife a tribute to Alan Pomeroy—until it became too obvious and too intense; then immediately he viewed it as an insult. He felt an enormous superiority over all men in the world to whom Gay was not married, but unless they kept quite aloof from her, worshipers afar off, they filled him with a wild insensate fury. He was like a collector who exhibits his choicest bit, saying, "There! You may look, but you may not touch"—and is outraged if his audience fails to heed his warning. n -

This was the third bone of contention. Compared with this quarrel, the recriminations over whether or not they should go out of an evening, and whether they should play with the Crowd or with the less riotous friends that Alan preferred, were as nothing.

He would say, "I want you to quit flirting with Kent."

"Don't be silly. I wasn't flirting with him."

"But you were! The whole darn evening. That's one trouble with you, honey—you simply do not know how to talk to any man living the way you would—well, to another girl. You have to lift your eyelashes that slow, provocative way you have, and purse up your mouth, and do all your other stunts—"

"What's the harm in that, for heaven's sake?"

"No harm—except that you give these fellows a wrong impression. You make them think they're getting away big—that you've tumbled for them—and that makes a sap out of me. If you have the slightest regard for my feelings, Gay, you'll cut it out."

"You have no right to raise such a fuss over anything so absolutely trivial—"

And so on, and so on.

Gay privately rather enjoyed these tiffs, whether or not she emerged victorious. 'They gave her the only excuse she had for being angry with Alan, for feeling abused, for saying to herself, "Jerry would never have acted like this," "Jerry would never have spoken like that to me." . . . d She regretted having married Alan every day she lived. This was not because he was Alan, but paradoxically because he was not Jerry. She had been insane to marry any man not Jerry, so long as there was a chance. . . .

It seemed to her now that she had abandoned hope too easily. After all, the girl might have been lying. After all, Jerry wasn't dead. She had behaved as if he were

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dead; lost irretrievably. She had given up too easily and too soon, and for this she perversely held Alan accountable. If Alan hadn't been there, just at the psychological moment . . . if Alan hadn't worked on her sympathies . . . if, if, if.

Her pride would not permit her to let anyone guess that she was unhappy. Too many women, she knew, would have been glad of it. Instead she allowed them to her, to think her in all things most fortunate; and dramatizing herself to herself, seeing herself as a lovely, tragic figure who laughed while her hurt heart wept, she frivoled the days and the tinsel nights away.

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/ch//OR LEAVE IT ALONE

The taxicab driver's ears were cold, and his nose was cold, and his hands were very cold and stiff, and he wished that the lady for whom his fare had waited so long would come, he wished to cripes she would. . . .

The fare, a young and raccoon-coated one, slumped in a corner of the cab with his collar high and his hat brim low and his feet on the let-down spring seat. He smoked incessant cigarettes. At intervals of a minute or two he consulted his wrist watch, and from its dial his eyes repeatedly lifted to the building before which his cab was parked. This was a slim five-story building, fronted with enormous oblong sheets of leaded glass; a studio apartment building. He glared at it. He thought, "Oh, come on, sugar! Tell him you've got to catch a train. Tell him anything." And, "Damn it all, what's keeping her? Six-twenty-five. She told me six!" And, "Br-r-r, it's cold! Why didn't I bring that pint along?"

He slid the frosted front pane open an inch or so and said on a cloudy white breath to the taxicab driver, "Blow your horn."

The taxicab driver obeyed with considerable gusto.

The lady behind the fifth floor studio windows heard the horn. She thought, "I s'pose that's Jerry." But she did not speak nor stir. Not the least bit.

A calcium sun made high day in the center of the studio, while its edges were vague with shadows. You would scarcely have noticed the walls or the things along the walls; your eyes would have swept past these shadowed

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things—paintings, gorgeous tapestries, squat fat couches, crowded bookshelves—past these, straight to the man-made sunshine and the living picture of a picture in the making it revealed.

You would have seen a small, exquisite girl perched atop a tall stool on a model stand, wearing a Spanish shawl and a rose in her hair. And you would have seen a blond young man standing before an easel with a palette on his forearm and a brush in his thin, long fingers.

The blond young man was thirty-three years old and one inch over six feet tall, and at least once a week someone asked him why he didn't use himself as his man model. The query had neither the wit nor the originality which each of its proponents ascribed to it, and it is repeated here only that you may guess how very, how faultlessly splendid to look at the young man was. . . . He wore a loose silk shirt, open at the throat, and a pair of black velvet trousers; and as though he had glanced into a mirror then and found himself quite too perfect, he wore also a dust-colored, paint-smeared, entirely hideous smock, with all the buttons missing and the sleeves rolled up, and the pockets stuffed with miscellany.

He painted one of the scarlet flowers of the model's Spanish shawl, and as he painted he had many thoughts. He thought that he had done nice work that winter afternoon; that the picture was coming along; that it ought to be finished tomorrow. He thought that this was a rare find of Uling's, this blue-eyed child. Intelligent. Sympatico. She seemed to throw her whole soul into helping him.

He thought that she was very beautiful, and that her mouth was beautiful, and suddenly he decided he would like to kiss that mouth. But he didn't. He had a professional motto; one a friend of his, a theatrical producer, once had given him. Never make love to the good workers. He remembered that motto now. And he remembered certain incidents out of his checkered past that

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had proved to him how very sage it was. And so he didn't.

Instead he said, laying his palette and brushes down, "Thanks, dear. That'll be all, for now." d In the course of that single December day, Dolly Quinn had made twenty-five dollars.

This was nice. This was so nice as to be almost unbelievable. In the dropping elevator, behind the black boy's back, she applied her gloved right hand to her sleeved left arm and gravely and severely pinched herself. . . .

And the nicest thing about it was that, although she had never before made as much as twenty-five dollars in seven hours, she could with confidence look forward to repeating the achievement, even to bettering it, in future. For a professional model's income is a matter of keeping busy; and as her aptitude increased and her reputation spread, keeping busy was more and more easy for Dolly Quinn.

At first it had not been so easy; not even with the aid of Brooks Uling. He had given her work, according to his promise, as often as possible. He had sent her to artists friends of his who had also employed her. Still there had fallen hours, whole days, of irksome idleness.

So she had gone the rounds. She had applied at the studios of dozens of other artists, great and lowly, leaving her name and her telephone number and the memory of her grace behind her. She had scattered glossy-print likenesses of herself, with full data written on the reverse sides, through the casting offices of scores of commercial photographers. She had secured appointments. And reappointments.

Her days were now quite crowded with appointments, and with rushes all over the city to keep them. Ten o'clock of a morning might find her somewhere in the

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Fifties, being camera-shot for a soap or shoe or candy or curler ad. Eleven-thirty might see her thirty blocks away, sitting for an illustration. At two she might pose in a loft in the Village, at four in a large, luxurious suite in the Hotel des Artistes. Life for her had become an alternation of extremest opposites; a hustle, a scramble, a climbing in and out of taxicabs, a running up and down stairs—and in between, a rigid staying still.

Nor were her evenings as they had been.

On the Saturday night of the week before she went to Atlantic City, she conducted her last play-goers to their seats in the pit of the Gotham Theater. In more than forty weeks as an usher she had earned and saved well over two hundred dollars. She could quit now, and attend evening classes in art uninterruptedly for some time to come. So she calculated, with no intimation of the opulence then on its way to her.

After her return from the Pageant, she postponed the resumption of study a week or so longer, while she summoned up sufficient courage to tell Brooks Uling what she desired to do, and ask his advice. This indeed required courage, "because," Dolly told Jerry, "he'll want to see some of my work, sure as Fate, and if he should say it wasn't any good and there wasn't any use for me to go on, I'd die!"

But he said nothing of the kind.

At first, when she brought him the sketches," he said nothing at all. He simply looked at them, and looked and looked, and said nothing. . . . After æons of time he met Dolly's frightened eyes, and smiled a little. "You have," he said simply. "You've got the stuff. These are quite wonderful." And then, in a voice of alarm, "Don't—why, my dear child, why should you cry?"

Later he said much more. All that afternoon, while he drew her, he talked. About lines. About curves. About "blocking in a head" and "constructing a body."

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About his own artistic apprenticeship. About Hard Work, and what she must do, and how she must feel.

Ever since then she had been going to the Art Students' League five evenings weekly, and working harder than she had ever worked, and better. And glorying in it. . . .

A full life, taken all in all. A breathless life, and colorful. A life so new, so little related to the old era of time clocks and sales slips, of theater ticket stubs and paper drinking cups, that sometimes Dolly thought bewilderedly, "That must have been somebody else!" But she knew it had not been anyone else. Every time she passed the huge gray hunk of Gibson Brothers' store, she knew, by the queer sense of guilt, the playing hooky feeling she had. And whenever she saw "Gotham Theater" on a billboard or in a newspaper, she knew, by the way the letters seemed to nod and say hello to her. d "Are you mad at me, Jerry?"

"Furious."

"I couldn't help it, honestly. I thought sure I'd be through at six, but Mr. Elliott kept right on working. You know he paints by artificial light anyway—he's noted for those artificial light effects—"

"Where to?" interrupted the taxicab driver.

There was a slight delay. Jerry pondered, shook his head, removed his arm from Dolly's shoulders, about which he had tucked it cozily the instant he reëntered the cab with her, and began to root through his various pockets. "Where's that confounded card?"

"What card?"

"Card to—here it is."

He read an address to the driver. "And step on it! I need what they have there," he added as the cab lurched forward.

"Is that the place where you go through the kitchen?" asked Dolly. n -

"No. New place."

She sighed. "If I haven't a bowing acquaintance with every bootlegger in New York before long, it won't be your fault!"

"I do my best," said Jerry modestly.

He slipped his arm around her again and his face pressed hers. "Your cheek's so warm, little pretty," he murmured. His lips strayed over her petal skin, touched her lashes and the tip of her ear, found her lips . . . clung. . . .

Somewhat later he said, settling back, "Now then. Tell me what you did all day?"

"I made twenty-five dollars!"

"You didn't!"

She nodded against his fur lapel. "I did, Jerry. Ten this morning, and fifteen this afternoon." Her eyes, upturned, begged his appreciation. "Isn't that a lot for me, and aren't you glad?"

"Of course. I think it's great. How'd you do it?"

She began the detailed résumé upon which he always insisted. "Well, this morning the Underwood Studio called me, and I went up there—I was there all morning. You have to wait so long at those places, you know. There's always a mob of models, men and girls, and you stand around and stand around. Finally they got to me about eleven-thirty. I posed for three pictures—photographic illustrations—they're going to be used with a magazine story. One of them was of me all alone, sitting with my chin in my hand looking out of a window at the moon. And one was a party, eight of us at a dinner table. And in the third the handsome hero was kissing me over some banisters—What's the matter, Jerry?"

Jerry's encircling arm had stiffened preceptibly.

"I hate that," he said.

"I don't see why. It's just business."

She waited a moment and then, as Jerry kept silent, added, "Of course it doesn't mean anything." n -

His profile looked sulky and the line in his cheek was deep and definite. She tapped it with an experimental forefinger, but she could not make it quiver into a smile line. "Oh, Jerry," she said in exasperation, "why be such a goose?"

"Who's this fellow?" Jerry wanted to know.

"The one who posed with me?"

"The one who kissed you."

Dolly ignored the correction. "His name is Gordon Fitzgerald," she said. "He's quite a well-known photographic model—poses for Dobbs hats and things like that. And then he does bits in the movies sometimes. And he's a chorus man this winter in Little Red Riding-hood."

"Really quite a person," remarked Jerry ironically.

"He thinks so. He's terribly vain. He just thinks he's the best looking thing God ever made. Guess what he said to me, Jerry? We had lunch, and he spent the whole time telling me confidentially that hundreds of girls were erazy about him and several rich women wanted to marry him, but that he was 'as hard to catch as a waiter's eye'—"

"Look here," broke in Jerry, "you had lunch?"

"Um-hum."

"With this chorus man?"

"Certainly. Why not? We got through at the same time and came out of the studio together, and we both had to eat in a hurry because we both had appointments right afterwards, and, so we went into a cafeteria that's near there and ate at the same table. Is there anything so awful about that?"

"Go on."

"I will not!" declared Dolly with spirit. "If this is the way you're going to act, I won't say another word."

Nor did she for ten full minutes.

During those ten minutes they left the taxicab, scuttled shiveringly across a span of sidewalk, entered an austere and pompous gray-fronted house . . . and gained admittance to Jerry's new speak-easy. n -

The speak-easy was on the second floor. You mounted wide stairs and knocked at a door with a card beside it: "Mr. Joseph R. George." To your knock Mr. George himself responded immediately but cautiously, opening the door a fraction of an inch. You then said, in the manner of one calling upon a close personal friend, "Hullo, there, Joe! How's the boy?" And he, flinging wide the door, replied in the manner of a close personal friend being called upon, "Hullo yourself! Awfully glad to see you. Come on in!"

The little play of amity continued after you were inside. The bootlegger, a clean-cut, impeccably groomed young man who might have been the "Our Mr. George" of some distinguished law or brokerage firm, relieved you of your wraps in his foyer and ushered you into one or the other of the two big and beautiful dim-lit rooms adjoining. He seated you in a sinky chair and pushed a small laoquered table to your elbow. He provided you with cigarettes and matches, chatting with you lightly and not a little cleverly the while. He said, as a sudden hospitable thought, "May I mix you a drink?" The only thing he did not do that your close personal friend would have done was introduce you to his other guests—people whose chairs in twos close together dotted the rim of the room, and whose conversation filled it with low sibilance.

Under the spell of these soothing surroundings Jerry's mood abruptly changed. He settled himself askew in his chair, one long leg thrown over his arm, and sat rattling the ice in a highball glass and smiling contritely at Dolly. "Go ahead," he urged, "tell me more."

Dolly smiled back. "You won't fly in a rage?"

"Not unless there's something to fly in a rage about."

"There wasn't before," she reminded him.

"We look at things differently," he said. "But forget it. I want to hear the rest. What did you do this afternoon? I'm wild about you in that little blue dress," he appended. n -

"Thank you," said Dolly.

Leaning, she took the half smoked cigarette from his fingers, sucked at it gingerly and blew mightily; upon the somewhat faint result she gazed with profound admiration. "I made a ring! Look, Jerry."

"Handsome," he approved gravely.

Dolly restored the cigarette and snuggling deep into the velvet embrace of her chair, resumed her narrative. "Well, let's see. After lunch I went down to Steichen and posed in some hats for Vogue. Ten dollars for that. And at three o'clock I went around to Mr. Elliott's. The cover is nearly done, Jerry. Tomorrow will finish it up, he thinks. Oh, and it's gorgeous! Wait till you see."

"When can I?"

She counted on her fingers. "December, January, February, March, April. Five months from now. Then you'll see it! Strings of it across the top of every corner news stand, and piles of it on every magazine counter—"

"By the way!" exclaimed Jerry. "I bought—wait a second."

He rose, and left her.

Until his slim loafing figure and his dark symmetrical head had vanished into the foyer beyond, Dolly watched him; and there was a new light in her eyes; a soft sweet light that had not used to be there for Jerry. You would have said, observing her, that she was in love with him. Or falling in love.

You would have been only half right. Dolly Quinn was falling in love with her vision of the Jerry that might be. A sober Jerry. A Jerry made strong. A Jerry with all Jerry's charm but without his defects. . . . So clear was the vision that often it became more real to her than the man, and she thought, "I love him," when she meant, "I could love him, if he were thus, or so."

She thought now, "I love him." And when, after a minute, he strolled back into the room, she thought it again, with a sudden curious quickening of the pulses.

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The sight of him, after even the briefest absence, affected her that way—lately. "Ever since," her frank mind flashed at her, "you started letting him kiss you."

She asked herself for the hundredth time if the she had for Jerry was physical, primarily; and for the hundredth time she assured herself with emphasis that it was not. The physical element entered in, of course. No denying that. But there were other elements, even (she was sure of it) stronger. The maternal element, for one. She wanted to mother Jerry. She wanted to protect and scold and help and fuss over him. More often than she wanted to be taken in his arms, she yearned to take him in hers, and caress his hair with her fingers, and croon to him. "There. There, now. Little boy . . ."

He was standing beside her chair, letting a magazine fall into her lap. "Had it in my overcoat pocket," he explained. "It's just out. I bought it this afternoon—" he craned over her, thumbing the first few pages "—and what should hit me right smack in the eye but—Here! Seen these?"

"Oh!" ejaculated Dolly. "I—no, I hadn't seen them. Not since they were published, I mean." She bent over the illustrations absorbedly. "Oh, look, Jerry! Didn't he make me cute? This one here—"

"If by 'he' you mean God—" Jerry began gallantly.

"I suppose," said Dolly, unheeding, "the time will come some day when I won't get any lift out of seeing my pictures in a magazine—but not so soon—" Her voice trailed off absently. She turned a page and examined the last illustration of the group. "Oh, but I had a time on these!" she half laughed, half sighed. "He was only the second artist I ever worked for, remember? Charles Fernando. Mr. Uling sent me up there. First he wanted me to pose for the figure. Undraped, that means. It seems he does almost all his illustrations that way. Draws the nudes, and then draws the clothes on them afterwards—he says he gets much better lines, and more grace. I

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understand that, but of course I had to say I couldn't do it. But Jerry, think how darned hard to turn him down! I was just beginning—and he was Charles Fernando—"

"I don't care," said Jerry stoutly, "if he was Hallelujah G. Heaven, you shouldn't have even considered—"

"Well, I didn't do it," Dolly interjected. "I said no, politely but firmly, and he growled a little bit about 'false modesty' and 'perfectly idiotic,' but finally he said he guessed he'd use me anyway. And he nearly killed me! Tempermental—whew! He would jump up and pace the floor and rumple his hair and say, 'I can't get it, I can't get it!' Then when he finally started he'd go like a house afire, and you couldn't make him stop! He just forgets entirely that his models are human beings. A lot of 'em do, for that matter, but usually if you remind them they're all apologies. Not Fernando. I'd say I was tired, in a weak little squeak, and he'd say, 'Great God, but you can't move now! Hold on a couple of minutes longer'—"

She shook her head, smiling. "My, but that seems ages ago! And it was only September."

"A lot's happened to you since then," Jerry said.

"Hasn't it!"

She shut the magazine, laid it over the chair arm and sat pattering a slow tune on its cover with her finger tips. "Would you believe that a person's life could change so, Jerry—just in such a little while?" She hesitated, groping for expression. "It's all so wonderful, and it's all reeled off so fast—I can't—I haven't had time to get used to the idea, somehow or other. I go around just hoping and hoping that nobody will wake me up—yet a while."

"Sweet," announced Jerry, irrelevantly but very positively. "You're the sweetest thing alive."

"I'm the happiest," said Dolly. "I know that."

He stared at her for some seconds then in rather a singular way. . . . Through the mellow gilt cast over them by a near silk-shaded lamp she returned his scrutiny. Merrily at first. Then soberly. Then with a small scowl

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of bewilderment. "Jerry! What are you looking so fearfully funny about?"

His eyes shifted. "Nothing."

"Tell me!"

"Nothing, really. I was just thinking."

"Thinking what?"

Again he stared at her. He said slowly, "Thinking—that these things that make you so happy—are making me very damn miserable. Oh, I know!" he pursued bitterly, checking her startled outcry. "I know it's selfish, and all that. But I can't help it. You see, when you were just a little kid who worked in a store, without any money at all and not much prospect of ever making any, ambitious as the devil and not able to do anything about it—well, then I used to feel there was a chance for me. I figured that some day you'd get tired of that stuff—tired of working so hard, and scrimping and saving, and not getting any place. That's why I stuck so close, sweetheart. I wanted to be sure and be right there beside you, with these arms open—when you got tired."

His voice sank almost to a whisper on the last four words. For a moment after he had uttered them he sat wordless, sliding his fingers absently up and down his glass, frowning into space.

Dolly waited, studying him.

"There are things about this model racket that I—can't bear," he said. "Things like your kissing that chorus fellow, for instance. You don't realize how that wallops me, Dolly! I want your lips for mine. Always and all the time. You say that it's just business, that it doesn't mean anything—maybe not—but I don't want my girl in that kind of business! Don't you see? Not my girl. Not you. And I hate the things it's doing to you, sugar. It's changing you in little ways. You're more sophisticated. Your eyes know more. I don't want you changed! Not one particle. And I hate your being closeted for hours every day alone with these damn artists. They're a rotten

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bunch, everybody knows that. Oh, I know what you're going to say! You've said it before. That they're not as black as they're painted, that you haven't had any trouble so far, that the ones you've posed for have treated you with all the respect in the world—All right. I believe you. But some day you're going to run across one who won't—"

"Dear!" breathed Dolly. "Please, not so loud! People are looking at us."

He glowered around the room, at the pale hazy faces that here and there were turned toward their corner. "Let 'em," he muttered. . . . But his voice, when he had drained his 'highball thirstily and resumed speaking again, was once more low, for Dolly's ears alone.

"Most of all, I hate your success," he said cruelly. "I'm proud of it, in a way—but I wish to God you'd fallen down on the job. For my sake." His lips twisted in a sort of humorless smile. "I guess you can't understand that, can you?"

"No," replied Dolly reflectively. "No, I can't. I should think if you really and truly loved me the way you say you do—"

"That's just it! It's because I love you so that I feel this way!" He was inclining toward her now, grim with earnestness. "You see, honey, love isn't generous. Love isn't liberal or big-hearted or broad-minded—except in books. Love is mean. It wants what it wants, and when anything interferes—I want you, little Dolly. You know that. I've never made any secret of it, have I? Since the start. I want to marry you and take care of you and give you things. And I used to think that some day maybe you'd let me, if only because you—needed things so badly. And then, all at once, everything changed. You don't need me now. You've got work that you like to do, and enough money to make you comfortable. You're a successful artists' model, and in a year or a couple of years you're going to be a successful artist yourself—and you're perfectly happy. And so—" he shrugged hopelessly; pa-

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thetically, Dolly thought. "It looks as if I'm just out of luck, that's all."

She had never so longed as then to hold his head against her breast, to caress his hair with her hands, and croon to him. "Little boy, dearest boy. . . ." Her hands went out to him impulsively. He caught them in his and clenched them, searching her eyes with his eyes; and then at once he was not a little boy at all, but a man, who loved her terribly and whom she terribly loved.

"But I do need you, Jerry," she whispered.

They remained as they were for another age-long, strangely electric instant. Then Jerry set free her hands. Almost roughly. Almost he threw them away. "You don't," he said. "That's just talk. You'd marry me, if you did."

"There is only one reason why I won't marry you. I've told you what that is, several times."

In the pause that followed she reached out and took the empty glass from the little lacquered table. "This," she said.

She replaced it. "I didn't mean to lug the subject in again, Jerry. We've discussed it enough already, goodness knows, and I always sound puritanical and—and naggy. And I never accomplish anything. I just annoy you. But—there's the answer. It's not the work I'm doing, or the money I'm making, that comes between you and me. And it's not—" she touched the glass again, "—not just one drink. Or even two or three. I wouldn't care at all, if you drank like other people. But you love it so! You've let it get such a hold on you—

"I'm afraid to marry you, Jerry," she finished.

She expected argument, and it was forthcoming. "Rats!" exploded Jerry. "'Hold on me,' hell! I like it, certainly—but I can take it or leave it alone, don't think I can't! You've never seen me drunk, have fou, he demanded belligerently. "Feeling good a couple of times, maybe—but what I mean is, really drunk?" n -

"No. And I don't believe I've ever seen you really sober."

"What?"

"I'm sorry." Her voice was very gentle. "I honestly don't believe I ever have, my dear. And I've known you—over a year, it is now."

Another short pause. Then Jerry began patiently to explain.

"The trouble is, honey," he said, "that you don't drink anything yourself. I've noticed time and time again that people who don't drink themselves always suspect that people who do are tight if they so much as have a breath on. Whereas the breath may be the result of one drink only—one'll do it—and they may be just as sober as you are."

"Yes," Dolly granted, nodding earnestly, "I see that. But the point about you is, Jerry, that if you've had one drink you've always had more. I mean—it's taken for granted. Tonight, for instance. You'd been drinking before you met me, hadn't you? Some?"

"Not very much."

"No, but some. And you've had three whisky-and-sodas one right after the other since we've been in here—"

"Listen!" cut in Jerry. "Would you say I was tight right this minute?"

Unexpectedly, Dolly chuckled. "Darn it," she said, "every time we talk like this I feel like such a crabapple!" She stopped, and grew grave again, responding to his query. "Why, no. I wouldn't say you were tight at all, Jerry. But you're not exactly cold sober. Are you, dear? You're just sort of fifty-fifty, the way you—generally are.

"Oh, let's not talk about it," she added a moment later. "What's the use? I despise talking like the W. C. T. U.—and you despise having me. So let's drop it."

"Wait," said Jerry.

Again he leaned toward her, his elbows on the arms of her chair and his face close to hers. "Honey, answer me

-

something. Will you marry me if I promise to go on the wagon?"

Dolly hesitated only an instant. "I'll marry you—if you go on," she answered.

Her little hand patted one of his hands, and she smiled at him to lessen the sting of her words. "I'm afraid you'll have to show me you mean it, and can do it, first, Jerry. You were going on the wagon once before for me, d'you remember?"

Jerry remembered. It was plain from the remorseful twist of his mouth that he remembered.

"This time," he said gruffly, "I mean it. You'll see. I'll quit drinking now, tonight, if you say so. I can do it all right. And if I do—" he swayed closer to her, sheltered from alien glances by the big chair's back. "Oh, beautiful, if I do, then how soon—"

She wanted to cry, "Now! Immediately! Never mind what I said, all that doesn't matter." . . . And then, looking direct into Jerry's near dark eyes, she saw that the lids were puffy, that the whites were etched with little red tattletale lines. . . .

"In the summer," she told him. "Maybe."

He straightened up, incredulous. "Summer? But darlin', that's months from now!"

"Well—spring, then. Late spring. May, or June. I've always thought," she said dreamily, "I'd like to be married in June." She smiled, adoring Jerry with her eyes. "Does that seem awfully long? It does to me, too. But I'll know, then. If you keep your promise all those six months—then I'll know, I'll be sure, that I mean more to you—than things to drink."

There came to them at that moment, with unconscious pertinency, Mr. Joseph R. George, to ask if he might not refill his friend Mr. Davis's glass.

"No," said Jerry. And cleared his throat and, looking straight at Dolly, said further, "Thanks, Joe, I—no more."

-

/ch//ADVENTURES IN INDISCRETION

There is in the world a new type of young married woman. So new she is that no adequate name for her, as a type, has yet been found. But you know her. And I know her. We all number one or two of her, ten or twelve of her, among our acquaintances.

The century has produced this new young wife. She is born of a Cosmic Condition, of a Spirit, of a State of Mind. She grew up too soon and too fast and too much; she went to school to War, and Hysteria and Recklessness taught her all they knew. . . . In her twenties she is queerly old. She is frivolous and extravagant and selfish and vain. She is bored with her husband, or she bores him, or both. She has no children, or she has a lonely one, whose upbringing devolves upon her servants. She cares nothing for domesticity. She exists for such excitement as she can find in the fifth or sixth cocktail, in the highest notch of speed, in the maddest bleat of Blues, in the dark, bold, predatory eyes of the newest man. She is flagrantly, perpetually indiscreet; but she is seldom immoral. Potentially her sins are tremendous. Actually they are only little sins. . . . d Gay Pomeroy had been married less than a month when she discovered that marriage, after all, didn't make, or needn't make, much difference.

Her first intimation of this came during her honeymoon. At one of the hotels where she and Alan stopped a beauti-

-

ful young man named Don Durant was also stopping; and because he wore a fraternity pin twin to the one that Alan would have worn had Alan been a little less long out of college, a friendship began. During three afternoons then Durant played golf with Alan. For three evenings he dined with Alan and Gay, and danced with Gay, and told her things. . . .

As they danced on the third evening he told her that the following afternoon he would not play golf with Alan, but instead would take her riding in his roadster. This was the method of Don Durant with ladies. He did not issue an invitation; he made an announcement.

"Silly," said Gay, "I can't do that."

"And why not?"

"Alan wouldn't like it."

"My dear girl, Alan wouldn't know it! Listen to me. We'll time our arrival back to the hotel to coincide with his approach shot to the eighteenth green. By the time he's holed out and added up and collected his bets and started in, you can be awaiting him in your rooms, wearing the injured expression peculiar to golf widows and polishi your nails with the air of one who's been doing just that the afternoon long."

"You talk it well," commented Gay.

"I'm leaving day after tomorrow, you know," Durant went on. "So tomorrow is the only chance I'll have to see you alone."

"Why should you want to see me alone?"

"Please," he said severely, "don't be naïve. It doesn't suit you."

"All right," said Gay, "I'll be firm. I'm not going. Furthermore, I think it's rather eccentric of you to have asked me, under the circumstances. Do you often invite honeymooning brides to go motoring with you, Don Durant?"

"No," he answered seriously. "Not often. In fact I may say practically never, unless—" he peered accusingly

-

down at Gay, "—unless I've somehow picked up the notion that I might get away with it—"

She didn't go motoring. But the next afternoon, sitting alone in the stiff plushy parlor of their suite with a tiresome novel, pages downward, saddling her knee, she wished she had. She thought of Alan, irresponsible and happy on the links. Thought, "And I'm expected to just sit here!" Felt excessively sorry for herself. When Alan returned, a ruddy giant in plus fours and a brown suede knitted-necked jacket, she forgot that she did not really care whether he came or went—forgot that she had urged him to play golf on this trip so that she might sometimes be alone—and reproached him hotly for neglecting her. "I'm not used to it!" she stormed. "All my life I've had things to do, people to divert me, every minute. I never just sat around—and I don't intend to. If you won't see that I'm entertained, all right—I guess I can find someone who will—"

Alan was quite flattered.

He said that he hadn't realized, he'd never have left her if he'd thought she was going to get lonesome, he'd let golf go for the rest of the trip, gladly, since she felt that way.

And he did.

Nevertheless Gay continued vaguely to regret that solitary, stupid afternoon, that could have been neither stupid nor solitary; and vaguely to suspect that the next time someone as attractive as Don Durant invited her somewhere she might not refuse in such a hurry.

And she didn't. d "I think I'll give a treasure hunt," said Irene Matthews, one day in November. "Saturday night. It isn't too cold, do you think? With closed cars?"

She looked to Gay and found Gay's expression blank. "Don't you know what a treasure hunt is?" she demanded, shocked. m -

"I've heard of them," Gay said. "I have a dim idea. You chase all around after slips of paper, or something. Isn't that it? It always sounded sort of childish to me."

Irene giggled—immoderately, Gay thought. "Oh, so? My good woman, it's high time you went on one!

"Here's what happens," she continued. "We begin with a dinner party. Then—supposing there are seven couples, the whole Crowd—we have seven machines on hand, and as soon as dinner is over each man takes his dinner partner and one of the cars, and starts forth. There's where the slips of paper come in. Every couple has one to start with, giving them veiled instructions where to go. And if they figure it out all right, and get there, they find another paper with further instructions. And soon. Finally the trail leads back where they started from, and the first couple to get back with the right number of little papers in hand gets the treasure. Prize of some sort. And by that time it's dawn or thereabouts, so we finish up with breakfast. There's just one rule: husbands and wives are absolutely not permitted to hunt together."

Irene halted, and her green eyes thoughtfully interrogated Gay. "I suppose we'll have to waive that rule for you and Alan. Wont we? Those of us who've been married a century or more think rather well of it, but you two babes in the matrimonial woods will probably set up an awful howl if we try to separate you."

"Not necessarily."

"Alan will."

"He shouldn't," Gay replied gravely. "He might as well make up his mind to—do as the Romans."

"Well," said Irene, "you fix it, then. Because really it's a lot more fun that way. Believe it or not." Her left eyebrow lifted higher than the right one, knowingly. "You'll appreciate a treasure hunt some day, darling."

Gay said nothing.

"Is there," Irene ventured, "anybody in the Crowd you'd especially like to have as a partner?" n -

Gay pondered for perhaps thirty seconds—twenty-nine seconds longer than she needed to ponder. "That Chuck Sully is rather nice," she said then.

Irene's eyebrow went even higher. But when she spoke her tone was blandly matter-of-fact. "Right. He is. I'll put Chuck down for you, then." Then laughter bubbled from her. "To tell you the truth I had already—acting on his instructions—put you down for Chuck!" d Two o'clock in the morning.

They had ridden for hours together, Chuck Sully and Gay, through the highways and byways of Westchester County, on the crazy, zigzag, blearily moonlit trail of the treasure hunt. They had talked together of matters personal and impersonal, and laughed together, and drunk cocktails out of the cap of a thermos bottle, and smoked from the same cigarettes, to conserve, because their supply was low. They had discussed the topics of acquaintanceship: books, plays, headlines, football, people they both knew. And the topics of coquetry: love (in the abstract), Gay's eyelashes, the moon, their first impressions of each other, their later impressions, things Gay had heard about Chuck, things Chuck had been told about Gay, love again, and whether or not Chuck meant a word he said. . . .

They had found, just now, their fifth small slip of paper, under a certain stone at the foot of a certain signboard at a certain spot on the Boston Post Road.

"Read it," Chuck commanded, climbing back into the car and slamming the door.

Gay spread the paper smooth against her knee, where the tiny light on the dashboard made it legible. She read:

/poi// "Not five miles from where you are, Heading toward a famous town Where they have a mammoth cup And little cups to drink 'er down—" //poi/

-

"New Haven," decided she and Chuck in a breath. "That's easy," Gay supplemented. "That 'drink 'er down' line from the Yale song gives it dead away. And the mammoth cup is the Bowl, of course. All right. Five miles from where we are, going toward New Haven—"

She read on slowly:

/poi// "There's a side road to the left Take it, but not much of; Find a place where stones don't lie But up on thew edges sit—" //poi/

"Wha-at?"

Chuck shrugged. "You've got me."

He too bent to examine the paper, putting his arm across the back of the seat behind Gay. "'Find a place where stones don't lie. But up on their edges sit.' Hmm. Gravestones, maybe? Let's see what else it says."

Their faces, pink and cool with autumn night air, were almost cheek to cheek above the little slip of paper. Out of the corner of her eye Gay could glimpse Chuck's profile; the outline of his handsome, slightly acquiline nose, and the deep downward jut of his chin. She knew that he was acutely conscious of their proximity, as she was; that it stirred him, as it exhilarated her.

Both had lost interest in the typewritten lines. But they made a great pretense of interest. Chuck read the remaining two lines aloud:

/poi// "Look around for James M. Hope He will give you all the dope." //poi/

And they debated James M. Hope (would be a person? or a name on a gravestone?) with a sprightliness that deceived neither of them . . . until at last Chuck said, interrupting himself in the middle of a sentence, "Oh, to hell with that!" and let his arm swoop from the back of the seat to gather Gay in. n -

Holding her thus, he contemplated her, blue eyes narrowed. "I wish you weren't so—newly-wed," he said.

"Why?"

"I'd kiss you."

Gay smiled faintly. "Oh really, would you?"

She was thinking, with a small detached fragment of her mind, how many moments like this moment she had known. Thinking exultantly that, after all, nothing was changed. Everything was just the same. Same moon. Same treearched, vacant roadway, lit with the long pale gold the headlights spilled. Same lost wind, wandering, weeping, through the trees. Same scenery, music, gestures . . . the old exciting, fascinating play. . . .

"Stop it!" Chuck cried out. "Stop daring me with those eyes of yours! Do you want to be kissed anyway? Right now?"

"No."

"You lie!" he said. And kissed her. d It began with that night, Gay's first little sin, the little affair of Chuck Sully. And it lasted about two months.

It was a typical little affair of its kind, neither at all right nor altogether wrong. It had the usual components. Telephone conversations warily prefaced by, "Is anyone near? Can you talk?" Notes that were read and then torn to bits and then incinerated, bit by bit. Rendezvous at "the usual place"—which in this instance was the mezzanine balcony of a downtown hotel. Tête-à-tête luncheons. Tête-à-tête teas. Motor rides. Legitimate meetings at the Crowd's parties, where they guiltily and senselessly kept rather far apart. . . .

Occasionally of an evening when there was no party, Chuck's wife, Rosalie, would telephone Gay and say, "Come on over, you and Alan, and play bridge." And Gay and Alan would go. And Gay and Chuck, who had spent the afternoon together, would play bridge very badly,

-

very badly indeed, because they had to bear so many things besides the cards in mind.

With this affair, Gay definitely joined the ranks of young matrons who must think before they speak. Would it be safe to say this? or that? Would such and such a remark arouse any suspicion, or prompt any questions ticklish to answer? Alan casually mentioning last Wednesday—oh, heavens, where had she told him she was last Wednesday? Was that the day she said she went shopping? Or the day she said she took tea at Irene's?

She had to be always alert, on guard. She had to be always clever. She had to be able to concoct a plausible fib in half a second and remember it, word for word, days, weeks, later. . . . It was considerable of a strain.

She thought often during those two months, that it wasn't worth it; especially since she wasn't really very fond of Chuck, and never could be. She thought, "I'll know better next time. No more of this sort of thing, I'd rather have peace of mind." . . . But these resolutions were all for the future. She allowed the current affair to drift along, making no attempt to hasten the inevitable break.

When she and Chuck quarreled finally—quarreled because Chuck said an unkind thing about Alan, and some weirdly distorted sense of loyalty in Gay caused her to resent it with fury—she felt relieved, and free, and blissfully unburdened. It was good, she told herself, to have it over. It was good to say to Alan, "I was with Jane all afternoon," without saying to herself at the same time, "I must see Jane before he does." It was good to carry nothing on the conscience; to let the wit relax its vigilance.

It was good. But it was dull.

After a month of it, Gay began to be bored with life again. d Then the Hinchleys produced Jack Millard, of San Francisco. n -

The Hinchleys, Tom and Eleanor, were members of the Crowd. And Jack Millard, Eleanor explained to Gay over the telephone, was an old school friend of Tom's, "—and a perfect lamb, my dear, you'll just adore him!" He had arrived in New York only that morning, and was to be there but three days, and, said Eleanor, if Gay wasn't doing anything special today wouldn't she run up to their place for luncheon, and maybe a little bridge later? Tom was staying home from the office and they needed a fourth.

Gay would. And did.

The net result was that it was not three days, but seventeen, before Jack Millard departed from Manhattan. And then he departed with the utmost reluctance.

Gay went to the station with him. Twice after he had left her to board his train he bolted back through the gate again to say good bye just once more. The second time he insisted that he wasn't going. Nope. Wasn't going. Couldn't go, that was all. Tear up the tickets and wire his resignation to the firm. . . . But when the long rolling cry of "All-l-l aboar-r-rd!" resounded from below, he lifted Gay off her feet, hugged her until her breath was lost, set her down, stared at her an instant, young agony in his eyes—and went.

His letters arrived. A steady stream of letters, white links in a marching chain across the continent. Each letter was enclosed in two envelopes, like a wedding invitation. The outer stamped envelope he addressed, for safety's sake, to Eleanor Hinchley. On the inner one he wrote, "For Gay again, please, Eleanor" or simply, "Gay."

Daily, or almost daily, Eleanor would call up Gay: "Something for you, my dear. If I'm not here when you come, you know where to find it." Daily, or almost daily, Gay would stop in at the Hinchleys' apartment to get the letter, from Eleanor if Eleanor was there, from among the pages of Madame Bovary in the bookcase to the left of the fireplace if Eleanor was not. She preferred to find Eleanor there, so that she might read parts of the letter

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aloud; for women love to let other women know how very much beloved they are. Jack Millard wanted to marry Gay. He wanted her to divorce Alan so that he might do so. This was the theme of all his letters. At first, when the lovableness of still vivid and fresh in her mind, Gay was impressed. She even played mentally with the idea he proposed, and thought that perhaps, some day. . . . Later his reiterated pleas grew monotonous, and later still they began to seem absurd.

In time she ceased writing to him. It had always been a bother, anyhow. And San Francisco was a long way off. . . . d By the end of the first half year of her marriage, Gay had reached the stage where she found it necessary to be acutely interested in some man other than Alan all the time. She had reached the stage where parties, social congregations of any size or sort, wearied her, unless there was present some man with whom she was having a flirtation, or about to have a flirtation. Preferably the latter; for the moment "before the kiss is kissed, or the word spoken" was wine to her, as it had ever been.

Someone for whom to dress. Someone for whom to scintillate. Someone whose mere existence made all days piquant, all music dreamful, each ringing of the telephone a tingling in the veins. . . . This she required. This she must have. To Gay Pomeroy, as to Gay Leonard, masculine devotion was a drug; and a drug that lost its potency fast unless the vial from which it poured was ever new.

Men were, she found, not less entertaining than they had been a year ago, but more entertaining, infinitely. There was a forbiddenness to them now that fascinated her. Once upon a time, tea for two had been nothing more or less than a table, some cups, some cinnamon toast, some conversation—just tea, for two. Now it was a Risk

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and an Adventure. Once upon a time "I adore you" had been merely one of the light, careless, complimentary things men said. Now it was thrilling, because men had no right to say it and she no right at all to listen.

Harry Welch, husband of Aline Welch, one of her closest friends; Wade Reynolds, young novelist, divorced and picturesque; Gregory Vaughan, "Hank" Bailey—with these and other bachelors and benedicts she filled her time and her waking thoughts that winter.

And one day in the spring— d It was a day just like another spring day, blue-roofed, clean-smelling, blithe with sunshine and budding trees and blossoming shop windows. An April day, in the early afternoon. Mrs. Alan Pomeroy, stepping on to the sidewalk through the spinning doors of a gown shop in which she had delightfully spent an hour and six hundred dollars, discovered by means of her wrist watch that the time was five minutes past one; and she forthwith commanded the doorman to get her a taxi, "—and hurry!"

She was late. Five minutes ago she should have met Irene and Reg Wright and Gregory Vaughan, with whom she was to motor that afternoon out into the Jersey hills, to the camp of a playwright friend of Gregory's; and the meeting place, where the foursome would lunch before starting, was fifteen blocks away from the shop. While the doorman blew and beckoned she stood on the curb, craning anxiously, wondering why it was that when you were most rushed every cab that came along had someone in it. . . .

Of a sudden she stopped craning; stopped turning her small bright head in its smart black straw now to the left, now right; stopped shifting her weight from one to the other of her high-heeled, inadequate looking shoes; stopped breathing, almost.

Across the street, directly opposite her, a car was parked.

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A long-nosed, glossy car. A low and crouching giant car of pale tan and silver. Jerry's. Specially designed and specially built . . . surely there was not in all the world another like it.

Then her view was blocked by a cab of a well-known hue, which shot from nowhere and braked in front of her. She stared at it resentfully; at the driver who waited, and at the doorman who opened the door and held it open.

"I've changed my mind," she told them.

The cab pulled away again. She had a hazy impression that the driver said something caustic as he slammed into gear, but she did not know or care what it was.

Jerry's car was still there. It was still empty.

She went toward it, cutting dangerously through the midday, midstreet traffic, judging by instinct rather than by eye when to halt and when to dart on, keeping her gaze riveted ahead. It was as though the tan car mesmerized her, as strong light mesmerizes creatures of the woods at night.

Jerry's car. All doubt was removed when she reached it, by the monogram "J. D." done in silver on its door. Jerry's car. Familiar as a dear face, or as a favorite room. And Jerry was somewhere near! From somewhere close by, from the haberdasher's shop, or the florist's next to it, or the music store just beyond that, he would come, very soon (he couldn't park long on this street) back to his car. . . .

Smiling a little, Gay unlatched the monogrammed door and slipped in.

The soft leather cushions, like friendly arms, received her. She pulled the door shut, and slid low in the seat, and sat still; and she fancied the passing pedestrians must hear her heart, so boisterously it banged against her ribs.

She thought, "I'm glad I never called him. Oh, but I'm glad, now!" She had wanted to call him, innumerable times; had desperately wanted just the sound of his voice. Twice she had gone so far as to give his number—only to

-

hang up then and run from the telephone. She had said to herself over and over, "Don't do it. Don't be a fool. What would you say if you did call? What excuse would you have? No. Wait. Some day you'll happen on to him somewhere—" So she had waited and waited, searching the faces of crowds, watching the aisles in theaters and the doorways in supper clubs, playing at love with many men to while away the waiting time. . . . Till now.

She explored her moiré hand bag for lip salve and powder and rouge, and applied them hastily, leaning over as if to search for something dropped on the floor.

She sat back. Arranged her fluffy fur neckpiece. Crossed her legs.

She decided not to be looking for Jerry when he spied her; not to be glancing up and down the sidewalk, eyeing the'shop entrances expectantly; but to await his seturn to the car in some such nonchalant attitude as would have been hers had he left her there only a moment ago. A magazine lying on the seat beside her solved the problem of just how to give this effect. She'd be reading. . . .

The magazine was a woman's magazine, of the sort that features recipes, household hints, needlework patterns, articles on the care of the skin and the hair and the nails and the baby. To find a copy of it in Jerry Davis's car was somewhat surprising. Gay regarded it, puzzled, disturbed.

For almost the first time the thought definitely occured to her that there might be a Mrs. Jerry Davis. He might have married that Pageant girl. Or some girl.

On the instant, panic seized her. Suppose he were married! Suppose he emerged from the haberdasher's shop, or the florist's next to it, or the music store just beyond, accompanied by his wife—and found her there in his car! Worse still, suppose his wife appeared alone—and found her there!

. . . Time and time again Gay had dreamed a dream that she called her "after-lobster-Newburg nightmare."

-

The dream was always the same, It always had her in a stalled car on a railroad track, wrenching vainly frantically, at the handle of the door. She was reminded of that dream now. She could not seem to open the door of Jerry's car, and she knew the same terror, had the same sense of no-time-to-lose, felt, as she always felt in the dream, that it was so silly of her not to be able to open it . . . it had never been hard to open before. . . .

"You're not leaving," said an amused drawl, close to her ear, "so soon?"

Her hand dropped away from the recalcitrant handle hastily, guiltily even.

There was no one with him. That was the first thing she noticed. And he had grown a tiny pointed black mustache. That was the second thing.

"I don't like it," she said reproachfully.

"You don't like—"

"The mustache."

"What a greeting!" said Jerry Davis.

They laughed together then, and shook hands gayly across the door of the car, and exchanged the how-are-yous and so-glad-to-see-yous of very old friends reunited. And all the time Gay was thinking, "A year and a half, almost. How have I stood it?"

She said, "You're looking simply wonderful, Jerry—north and south of the upper lip. Honestly, I mean it. You look new. What have you been doing to yourself—eating yeast, or something?"

"No. Drinking sarsaparilla. I'm on the wagon."

"You're not!"

He nodded. "Sure am. Not a drop since the middle of December."

Gay leaned back against the leather seat and regarded him, arms folded. "You certainly must love her," she hazarded.

"I do."

"Ooh!" Gay sat erect again. "Hit the nail on the head

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that time, didn't I? And I was only guessing. Well! Who is she, Jerry? The little Quinn? Wasn't that her name—Quinn?

Jerry nodded again. "You met her at Atlantic City."

"Oh, she told you?"

"She told me, yes."

("Told him everything I said, I suppose," Gay thought.)

Aloud she remarked, smiling, "I remember she seemed very much concerned then because you drank so much, and I said to her, 'Well, why don't you marry him and reform him?' I thought she could certainly do it, if anyone could. And she—has, I take it? She—you're married?"

"Not yet."

("Not yet!" echoed her heart. "Not yet!")

"You see," went on Jerry, "she reversed your advice. She's going to reform me first, and make sure it takes, and then marry me—being a wise and sensible little soul. But say, Gay! Let's not talk here. A curbstone is no place at all to hash over the happenings of—how long has it been? A year? I've got a million things I want to tell you, and ask you." He beamed. "I haven't even offered my felicitations! But I will. Listen: Have you had luncheon?"

"No, I haven't."

"Going to have it with the lord and master?"

"I—no."

"Then let's go."

He circled around the front of the machine, and took his place beside her, under the wheel. "Where'll we go?" His dark eyes turned to consult her and remained, appreciative, upon her face. "You're very gorgeous, Gay," he said.

She smiled. "Had you forgotten?"

"Of course not. People don't forget you, you must know that. If I shouldn't see you again for twenty years after today, I'd still remember you, as the most glamorous person I ever knew. I said to Dolly once—about you—

-

I said, 'When you look at her you think of orchids, and feather fans, and pink lights, and young men in love. And there's a Lopez band in the sound of her name.'"

"I like that," approved Gay softly. And wondered whether Dolly Quinn had altogether liked it. And hoped she hadn't.

"Where'll we lunch?" persisted Jerry, snapping on the switch. "Anywhere in particular?"

"Just anywhere. I don't care. How does it happen," she queried as the car bore them swiftly up the street, "you're not lunching with your fiancée? Don't you usually?"

"Hardly ever. My fiancée—" he paused an instant, and Gay had an uncomfortable conviction that his mind was loving the words "—my fiancée has to do her noontime eating on the run. She's awfully busy. She's an artists' model, you know."

"I didn't know."

"Well, she is. And going big. Busy all day long. And besides that, five nights a week she studies art. So except for dinners and Sundays I don't rate much of her time. Worse luck."

"I should say so!" Gay was sympathetic. "You must get very lonesome, with such an arrangement. Don't you?"

"Sure do." He grinned at her, half mockingly. "Won't you take pity on me once in a while, now that I've found you again?"

"I'd say yes," said Gay, "if I thought you meant it."

"I do mean it. I'd love it if you'd have lunch with me sometimes, see a matinée and bat around now and then. But—there's the husband."

"Well? There's the fiancée, for that matter."

"Oh," said Jerry confidently, "Dolly wouldn't object. Not in the least."

"Alan wouldn't object either," averred Gay. She added deliberately, "He wouldn't know." n -

"Oh!" said Jerry again, this time in a tone of enlightenment. She felt the sidewise flicker of his eyes across her face. "Aren't you happy, Gay, he asked after a pause.

She shook her head. "Not very."

"I'm sorry," said Jerry.

("Darn him," she thought, "he is sorry.")

He said further, "I knew Pomeroy at prep school. Not very well. But I always thought he was—magnificent. When I'd heard you'd married him I thought you were—both of you—very much to be congratulated."

Gay was silent.

"I'm terribly sorry," he concluded.

The silence was mutual then, and three blocks long.

"Tell me more!" Gay said at last, to break it. "Tell me everything about yourself. Tell me—" Her glance discovered the magazine, still lying in her lap. "For heaven's sake tell me, when did you develop this housewifely taste in reading matter?"

"Not guilty. Nary a word have I read, nor shall. I bought it because—well, have you looked hard at the cover?"

Gay hadn't; not hard. Now she did, and saw a girl with a Spanish shawl and a rose in her blue-black hair. "Pretty—" she began. "Oh! Oh, it's Dolly!"

"Right you are."

"I didn't recognize her at first."

She studied the picture for some little time. "She's lovely," she made herself say at last.

She put the magazine down in the seat between them. "Cigarette please, Jerry."

Jerry supplied one, and pulled out the dashboard lighter.

"When," inquired Gay evenly, settling back, "are you going to be married?"

"In June."

(June. Two months. Only two months.)

"That's not very long, is it," she observed.

"It's damnably long," said Jerry. n -

Gay took a second immense inhalation of smoke. "Well, why don't you make her make it a little sooner?"

"I can't. God knows I've tried. You see, explained Jerry, miraculously avoiding collision with a madcap laundry truck, she promised, back in December, that she'd marry me in June if I wouldn't drink a thing all that time. And June it is. She won't consider shortening it by a day, even."

"But I think that's silly," Gay argued. "If you've kept on the wagon for four whole months, certainly you've proved—whatever you were expected to prove. She's being unnecessarily strict, it seems to me."

"Well," said Jerry, "you can't blame her. She has a father back in New Hampshire who's considerable of a drunk from all accounts, and her childhood recollections have made her almost fanatical on the subject. And besides—" He hesitated. "I told you I hadn't had a drop since December, since we made the agreement. That's not quite true. I weakened once—in February, I guess it was—and got cock-eyed. Dolly found out about it. I told her myself, in fact. And it very nearly gummed the whole works. I managed by the grace of God to talk her into giving me just one more chance—but any remote possibility of getting her to say May, or April, instead of June, went bye-bye then."

"I see," said Gay. "And so this is your very last chance, hmm?"

"It is. If I fall off again, it's all over. Done. Dished. Blotto. She's made that perfectly plain. But," declared Jerry positively, "I won't fall off."

"No," murmured Gay. "No, of course you mustn't."

She let her lashes fall then, so that her lids might hide from him the new hope in her shining, scheming eyes.

-

/ch//HEARTBREAK

Dolly Quinn, in these days of prosperity, no longer boarded. She had an apartment. How proudly, with what an unconscious small air, she would have told you: "Up at my apartment—"

It wasn't much of an apartment, really. Two rooms and a bath in a converted brownstone house; the rooms tiny rooms, the bath a slightly overgrown cupboard literally jammed with plumbing. Nor was it altogether her apartment. She shared it with another model, a girl named Bee.

They had met back in November, at one of the commercial art studios. The meeting had been quite informal. Dolly, carefully donning the gossamer stockings in which her legs were to trip through the advertising pages of magazines for months to come, had heard a voice like little chimes say suddenly, "Got a lipstick?" And looking up, she had beheld in her dressing room doorway a ravishing beauty with gray eyes and rust-red curly hair, clad airily in a chemise.

"I've lost mine," went on the newcomer. "I think it must have dropped out of my bag when I paid the taxi driver. Can I just steal a tiny smear of yours—do you mind—I'll put it on with my finger—"

While she bent toward the mirror, rubbing pigment from Dolly's pencil on to her smallest finger tip and thence on to her scalloped, small, already carmine mouth, she took the interrogative side of a comradely dialogue. What was Dolly's name? How long had she been a photo-

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graphic model? How did she like it? It wasn't bad, was it, at five dollars a throw—or more if one was not averse to posing in lingerie.

Just at that moment a man in the corridor shouted, "Miss James!" peremptorily, and Bee fled, with a hurried, "Thanks lots—see you again."

"Agai" came soon.

The manufacturer of the gossamer stockings was present that morning to watch them photographed. A stout swarthy person with a crag of a nose and an astrakhan-collared, mink-lined overcoat. During the photography he stood at one side, nibbling a thin cigar and speaking no word. When it was over he coughed the preliminary cough of his kind and said, "You're a good model, Miss—er—"

"Quinn."

"Miss Quinn. You're very good."

"Thank you," said Dolly. "I hope you'll think so when you see the proofs."

"I will, sure."

That appeared to Dolly to be that. She smiled once more, and started for her dressing room.

He overtook her in the corridor. "Oh, Miss Quinn!"

Her "Yes?" was as cool as she dared make it. She knew what was coming. "When their voices begin to get greasy—" she reflected.

"How about a bite of lunch somewhere?"

"I'm so sorry. I've another engagement."

"Aw, that's what they all say," said the astrakhan-collared one. He took a step toward Dolly. Dolly took a quick step back. This brought her against the wall, and he promptly jailed her there by bracing his palms on the plaster on either side of her.

"Listen," he said, his face close to hers, "I'm a pretty good guy to go to lunch with. I'll take you to the Ritz—Pierre's—any place you like—"

"But I have an engagement—" n -

The nearest in the line of dressing room doors swung open, and Bee James, dressed for the street, issued forth. "Hurry up, kid," she said matter-of-factly to Dolly. "You know how Mamma'll rave if we keep her waiting."

The pretty good guy to go to lunch with eyed this intruder up and down, then glanced uneasily back at Dolly. "Oh, so you're going to meet your momma?"

Dolly nodded soberly, wanting to laugh.

"Well—some other day, then?"

"I'd love to—some other day."

When the mink-lined coat had disappeared from view, Dolly smiled, "Is your mother really waiting for you?"

"Indeed yes," said Bee, "—in Great Falls, Montana."

They had lunch together. Coffee and salad and a pastry—for Bee. Hot chocolate and a sandwich and abundant advice for Dolly.

Bee was well qualified to give advice; she was a young woman of wide and diversified experience, and of a sophistication rather shocking, rather pitiful, in its completeness. Seven years alone in New York—she was twenty-three now—seven years as model, mannequin, chorus girl and movie extra, had left her no shred of illusion. The glamour of the world, of which Dolly was so sensitive, had rubbed off entirely for Bee, long since. She saw things with sad clarity; the strings and the brass of a crooning band, the painted backdrop of a play, the tarnish on a golden gown, the dust in corners, the thorns on roses. . . .

Still, she was not melancholy. She had a saving sense of humor, that substituted amusement for enchantment. Nothing was magic or romantic any more; but most things were funny. People were funny. Men especially were funny. Life and love were all right, if you didn't take them too seriously. Such was Bee's philosophy.

She found in Dolly Quinn a sense of humor equal to hers, a joie de vivre that was tonic to her, and a freshness that she wanted to cherish. "Listen," she said at the end of that first luncheon, "you need taking care of, and plenty

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of it. And I'm the nurse-elect—because I like you, you funny little baby."

So they lunched again together, many times. And they had long talks in the tiny apartment that Bee shared then with a gilt-haired cabaret dancer named Lorraine Allen (who was never at home). And occasionally on Saturday nights they partied, with Jerry Davis and some dapper playmate of Bee's. And once they went together to the Famous Players-Lasky studios at Long Island City, where Dolly made her début to the cinema, as one of several hundred spectators at a wedding. (Months later she would view this film twice over, and never be able to descry herself at all.)

In January, Lorraine Allen relinquished her half interest in the apartment, and Dolly was persuaded to move from Mrs. Minafee's and fill her place . . . until June.

"What's Lorraine leaving for?" she asked.

"For a personal maid and a Locomobile, the sap!"

That was Bee. Morals she had none, gods she had none; the sensible, the smart thing, was her sole religion. In Bee's category, there were no sinners; there were only fools. . . .

They dwelt merrily together in the two small rooms, Dolly and Bee. Of course, they were somewhat cramped, and the rooms were always somewhat cluttered. Dolly's drawing table and implements, Bee's stack of theatrical and photoplay publications and her cigarettes and cigarette ashes, the electric percolator and toaster with which they cooked their breakfasts, the electric iron whereby they kept their frocks in press—these were much in evidence. The single closet was simply gagged with clothes, the twin beds straddled a multitude of boxes, the wash basin in the bathroom frequently held a pair of drowning stockings or an unwrapped bouquet, and one was seldom able to gaze at oneself in any mirror without first peeling off several home-laundered handkerchiefs pasted there to dry. . . . But they made light of all inconveniences,

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joked about them to their friends and to one another, and were very insouciant and cheerful and not nearly so uncomfortable as, perhaps, they sound. d She came home alone from the Art Students' League that soft May evening, riding down Fifth Avenue on the top of a swaying bus, wind in her face, peace in her whole being. She was utterly content. Everything contributed to contentment. The night. The blissful cool. The procession of gilded show windows below, and the moving people. She felt majestic, riding here so high. This was her chariot; those people her subjects; those windows the windows of her treasury. She had only to lift her hand and the chariot would halt, the people would stop where they stood and do obeisance, the treasures in the windows would be offered up to her, to take her choice. . . . It is easy to feel this way on the top of a bus, if one has imagination and sits by oneself in the very foremost seat.

Less whimsically, Dolly was happy because the portfolio she bore contained the finest drawing she had ever made, drawn that evening in the life class; and because, as soon as she reached the apartment, she would begin some little sketches which Brooks Uling had suggested end which he promised to submit when finished to a magazine editor whom he personally knew. She was happy because with the thirty-two dollars (income of that day) in her pocketbook, plus sundry additional dollars earned ere this and tucked away, she could tomorrow buy the moonbeam gown at Maison Mona—the gown in which she meant to be married. She was happy that only nineteen days remained until her chosen wedding day. She was happy that Jerry loved her. And being so completely happy, she was in her subconsciousness a little sad, knowing that happiness is never complete for very long. . . .

The apartment was empty when she reached it. A

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scribbled sheet of stationery pinned to the back of a chair in the living room explained the absence of Bee. Characteristically. "Have gone stepping with Nick," it read, "in your silver slippers, thanks, Don't wait up. Me." Dolly unpinned the note and wadded it into a ball, smiling. Bee and Nick Standish . . . brought together first by her, and now constantly together. . . .

She pulled off her hat, slipped out of her dress and into another not so new, opened the windows, and sat down before her drawing board, sighing gratefully, "Now!" She adjusted paper on the board, observed that the banjo clock on the wall beside the door said eleven, disturbed her hair riotously and quite fetchingly with her fingers, and went to work.

Half past one found her still working. She looked tired; the floor around her chair was covered with pencil parings and eraser crumbs; but there were two little sketches, finished, exquisite, propped up on a desk near She pushed her chair back and rose, squaring her shoulders and stretching her arms to ease the kinks of fatigue; and for a long moment she stood surveying the two little sketches. Her expression as she faced them was a mixed one. Sternly critical it tried to be, triumphant it was in spite of itself—and faintly awed. "They're better," said Dolly to Dolly, "than I know how."

Enthusiasm drove her back to the chair and the drawing board; but even such a glow of creative fervor as now possessed her could not indefinitely withstand the onslaught of physical weariness. Nor of hunger. Dolly decided, rubbing out the first tentative lines of a third little drawing, that she was hungry. Starved. She would make herself some coffee and drink it black, and then perhaps she might work an hour or so longer.

She filled the electric percolator, and connected it, and switched on the current. She found a loaf of bread and cut several wafer-thin slices to be made into hot crumbly

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toast when the coffee was done. While she waited, she turned her back on the gay small room, with its cushions and cretonne, its parchment-shaded lamps and pictured walls, and folding her arms on the sill of one of the windows, leaned out.

The same star-speckled, balmy, velvet night. "Ummm!" breathed Dolly, leaning farther. Rods away, to her left, where the Avenue crossed, motor cars were flashing by: toys pulled along by the yellow reins of their headlights. Off to her right an elevated train linked the two corner buildings with a momentary chain of flame. But the side street below was dim and almost deserted. A solitary pedestrian parading a dog on leash, a parked limousine, a few lighted windows in the apartment houses opposite, a neighboring phonograph playing Always—except for these, this whole street seemed to sleep.

Resting her chin on her folded arms, Dolly hummed softly with the phonograph:

/poi// I'll be loving you Always With a love that's true Always . . . //poi/

She wondered if Jerry was still up; if he was out somewhere, or reading late in his apartment. At seven o'clock, when she dined with him, he had had no plans for the evening. "Believe I'll go home," he had said as he left her, "and smoke a pipe and think about you."

Her head drooped sideways, so that one soft cheek lay against the hand that wore his ring. Dreamily she remembered how dear, how particularly dear, he had been at dinner. "Surprise for you, beautiful!" he had crowed the instant they met. And he had teased her, tantalized her, made her try to guess what it was. And at last he had told her: "I'm going to have the rear bedroom in the apartment fixed over into the best looking studio you

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ever saw, for my little artist wife to work in! Going to tear out those two windows and have 'em made into one huge studio window, and Peyton's going to decorate—Perry Peyton, friend of mine, he's clever as the deuce. And I told him he might as well do the whole place over while he was about it. Everything's going to be done while we're in Europe, honey. I've made all the arrangements." And then for many minutes he had talked of these arrangements, so buoyantly, so boyishly, that she had scarcely heard him for adoring him.

/poi// . . . Not for just an hour, Not for just a day, Not for just a year, But always." //poi/

The unseen phonograph stopped. Dolly straightened up, gripped the window sill with her hands and once more leaned far out, taking a final deep, refreshing inhalation.

A taxicab was coming down the canyon of the side street. Afterwards she recalled having noticed it; recalled even that it was a pale taxi with a dark top. But at the moment she had no conscious thought of it at all. She withdrew her head and turned back into the room.

She was still humming the song, the syncopated vow of constancy, as she toasted bread and buttered the toast and poured a cup of coffee. She was still humming it as she cleared magazines and ash trays from the corner of the center table and drew up a chair. She was humming it when the doorbell rang. Rang and rang.

She thought casually, "There's Bee." And she dimpled, amused, because Bee always said, "Don't wait up"—and then invariably forgot her key, so that if one hadn't waited up one had to get up, to let her in.

She went to the wall and thumbed the little button that clicked open the street door downstairs. She opened the

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door of the flat and left it ajar. Because it occurred to her that Bee, observing lights from the street, might bring Nick upstairs for a good-night chat with them both, she dashed into the bedroom, smoothed her hair before the mirror, dusted powder over her face. Then she returned to the living room and began to cut more bread for more hot toast, against a possible invasion of appetites.

It was while she trimmed off crusts that she heard the mounting footsteps; she paused, knife poised in hand, to listen.

Such strange footsteps. Heavy, ponderous, yet somehow not firm. Stumbling and uncertain, halt and slow. And there were accompanying noises. Crashes against the banisters. Thuds against the wall. The ascent of a person blind, or—or—

Suddenly she knew.

The bread knife clattered on the table. Dolly stood stricken, staring at the half open door. Then she crossed to it, and peered out into the hallway.

"Jerry," she said.

The footsteps ceased.

"Jerry." Her lips were stiff and dry.

She heard him clear his throat, somewhere in the gloomy well of the staircase, rather near. "'Lo," he answered.

She went to the balustrade, and looked down.

He was on the landing a dozen steps below. By a night light that burned on the wall just over his head she could see him quite plainly. Too plainly. He wore a straw hat and dinner clothes, and with one hooked finger he dragged his topcoat after him, like a train. That he believed himself unobserved was obvious. His free hand, palm flat, patted the wall timorously, as though to make sure it was there; and having made sure, patted it affectionately, applaudingly. He slumped against the wall. His right foot, seeking the next step, grazed it and slipped off, found it again and again slipped off, pawed at it, hoof-fashion. . . . n -

"Jerry, called Dolly, tensely low, "listen. Listen to me a minute, Jerry."

He looked up then; grasped the banister rail and rocked far backward—perilously far backward, so that she all but cried out in alarm—and lifted his face toward her. The slanted brim of his hat shadowed his eyes; but she could see his mouth. His smirking mouth.

"There you are!" he cried. "'Wa-a-a-ay up there."

"Jerry." Her stage whisper sounded to her like a scream in the slumbering house. "Please, dear—do something for me. Turn around now, and go back downstairs, and go home. Will you do that? Please. It's so late. I—I'll see you in the morning."

Jerry gave no sign of having heard. "Been looking f'r you," he mumbled, "been looking f'r you—" with a sweep of his arm "—hours 'n' hours. Been looking. Fact." His tone became argumentative, and louder. "S'God's truth! You ask Gay. Gay'll tell you. I said, 'Mus' go see li'l Dolly ana—ana/i//pol'//i/gize. Mus'.'" He wagged his head owlishly. "S'what I said."

Words. Mumbled, thick-tongued words, Dolly's brain made no sense of them, so intent it was on its more immediate and pressing problem. How to get rid of him? How to induce him to go, before the whole house wakened?

She rounded the curve of the balustrade and descended fleetly until she stood one step above him. She put her hands on his shoulders and attempted gently to turn him around. "Come on now, Jerry," she urged. "You're headed in the wrong direction, honey—didn't you know that? You want to go down. Come, take hold of my hand, I'll go down with you." She heard herself murmuring these coaxing wheedling things, just as she had murmured them in unforgettable midnights long ago. She thought, "Like my father. Like my father. Like my father." Monotonously.

All at once she was terribly angry. Her fingers on Jerry's shoulders tightened spasmodically, her nails dug

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the cloth of his dinner coat; she shook him, strove with all her puny strength to dislodge him from the railing to which he held fast. "You—go—away!" she panted, half sobbing. "Go away! I can't—you—oh, I can't stand this—"

That was it. The second she had said it she recognized its truth. She could not endure to see him so. Not concern for the other dwellers in the house, nor fear of what they might think, motivated her; but a frantic desire to get Jerry, this blinking, babbling, hideous Jerry, out of her own sight, her own hearing.

Her hands fell away from him and hung, clenched into little fists, at her sides. She bit her lip to stop its hysterical quivering, and for the first time she looked squarely at him, straight into his dark swollen eyes.

"Jerry—"

"Now, now," he broke in reprovingly, "don' be mad. /i//Mus'//i/n' be mad." Still anchored by one arm to the banister rail he sought to pull her to him with the other. "Kiss 'n' make up—"

Choking, she whirled then and fled. Up the stairs. Along the hall. Into the room that she perceived only as a brilliance hazed with her tears. She shut the door. Clinging with both hands to the knob, she dropped to her knees, swayed sideways and huddled there, racked with long sobs, against the panel.

Then the footsteps again.

She thought frantically, "Oh, he's coming after me!" and started to her feet with a confused, half crazed notion of further flight. In that instant it was as though some sinister Thing pursued her; some grim relentless Thing of which she was mortally afraid. . . . Then she remembered, and sank back. There was nothing to be afraid of. He could do nothing more than break her heart, and that he had already done.

"Anyway, she thought, he can't get in."

He couldn't. He tried to, with raps, with husky words.

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with twists of the doorknob, with poundings that she fancied shook the building. He wanted to tell her something. He assured her repeatedly that he had to tell her, that it was very important, that she must open the door and let him talk to her. . . .

Crouched on the floor, not three inches from him, she listened; but she did not speak a single word.

His outburst was succeeded finally by a silence so absolute, so lasting, that it began to seem ominous to her after a while. What was he doing out there? He hadn't gone; she would have heard him go. What made him so strangely still? She strained her ear to the panel of the door. No sound. Not the faintest breath of a sound.

She got up quickly and unlocked the door, and threw it wide. Jerry reclined at her feet. His legs were outstretched along the door sill, his back was to the wall; he had removed the straw hat, and his usually sleek black hair was touseled as a little boy's. He had evidently been almost asleep, his chin on his starched white chest; but with the opening of the door and the sudden illumination he raised drowsy lids and smiled at her. Trustfully, somehow.

Bitterness went from her then, though her mind clutched for it, tried hard to retain it. She had hated Jerry a moment ago. Now she did not hate him, and could not. She could only pity him. So helpless he looked! And so young. "Oh," she said, "poor kid. You're tired, aren't you?"

He nodded. "Li'l nap—fix me right up."

She nodded too, in swift compassionate agreement. "Yes. But not there. You mustn't sleep there." She bent over him, tugging at his limp arms. "Get up, Jerry honey. Stand up just a second. I want you to come inside—where you can be comfy—"

For half an hour after that, until Bee's return, she sat near the couch on which Jerry lay sprawled, and watched him; her eyes fixed and dull with pain; her fingers stirring

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and stirring and stirring a cup of cold black coffee with a spoon. d The engagement was broken. Not all Jerry's reiterated pleas and frantic promisings, not all his threats, his announcements that he would go "straight to hell" if she released him, his shrewd persistent appeal to that maternal side of Dolly which he knew to be basic in her love for him, could alter her decision. She was moved by what he said; emotionally wracked and shaken. All through the long harrowing interview, held that next morning in the little apartment after Bee had departed for work, she eried wretchedly. But she did not change her mind.

"I can't," she said again and again. "Don't you see I can't, Jerry? Not now. You failed me. You wouldn't leave liquor alone just for six little months, when marrying me depended on it. You wouldn't or you couldn't. You either didn't care enough, or you—weren't man enough, Hither way I—I don't want you."

And again, "If I had some influence over you, Jerry—if I really could help you—it might be different. But I haven't any influence over you. That's been proved. I haven't even now, when you love me most. And as soon as ever I belonged to you, and had become a sort of fixture, a habit—then I wouldn't have any at all—and my life would be just one long succession of nights like last night—"

And again, in an overpowering surge of grief, "Oh, Jerry, how could you? When there were only nineteen days, and I was so happy!"

Then he would repeat his explanation. It was like this: He hadn't intended to get drunk, nor even to take a drink. Not for one minute. She must believe that. It had all happened—vwell, it had been an accident. Just a slip. He had gone straight home after leaving her, intending to write some letters and go to bed, "—but when

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I was unlocking the door of the apartment I hee phone ringing, and it was Gay. And she said Alan, that's her husband, was out of town, and she was alone, and wouldn't I please come up and rescue her before she bored herself to death? So I said sure. I knew you wouldn't care."

He hesitated, and looked at Dolly, and Dolly said, "No, of course not," lightly, as was expected of her. For a month now, something more than a month, she had been assuring him that she "didn't care"—that his revived and flourishing friendship with Gay had her entire approval—because she had thought, "I won't be selfish about this. I neglect him—I work all day and study all evening—and he's entitled to some companionship, isn't he? (Isn't he?) There isn't any harm in it, is there? (Is there?)"

"Well," continued Jerry, "so I went up to her place. They have a house on a roof, you know. Marvelous place. I'd never seen it before, and I was crazy about it. She showed me all around, and we sat outside a while, looking at the lights on the river and across on Long Island—it's simply grand up there, you can't imagine. And then Gay said she was going to mix a cocktail for herself before we started out. We'd decided to go to a few of the night clubs, you see, and dance and eat and fool around. So we went back into the kitchen, and Gay mixed this shaker full of cocktails—"

The story became difficult for Jerry at this point. He would avert his eyes, light a cigarette, or leap up to amble aimlessly about the living room. "She kept trying to get me to taste it. Just to taste it, you know, and tell her if she'd put in enough sugar, or enough gin and absinthe. Of course she knew I was on the wagon. I'd told her that all along. It was about the first thing I said to her that day I found her sitting in my car, remember? And lots of times—oh, every time I've seen her since, I guess—she's brought the subject up and kidded me about it, until—until I felt like a Willie-boy! So anyway, this time,

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last night, she kept begging me to taste these cocktails, and pushing the goblet in my face, and laughing at me—she has the most derisive little laugh, I can't describe it—and finally, just to shut her up, I tasted the little bit that was in the goblet. I said to myself, 'Dolly wouldn't mind this. This doesn't count, it's such a little bit.' But then—it tasted so damned good—"

He had accepted a full cocktail, and swallowed it. And it had had "a kick like a mule," because he had taken nothing alcoholic for so long. And he had thought, "Well, as long as I've had one, I might as well have just one more." And he had taken another. And then he had ceased to think anything about it at all, except that the cocktails were very delicious and very plentiful. . . .

"And by and by I knew I was boiled, boiled as an owl. And I began to have the most terrible attack of conscience. It came to me all of a sudden just what I'd done. And I kept telling Gay—we were at some night club by that time—I kept telling her I ought to leave right away, and go to you, and ask you to forgive me. I was obsessed with that idea. I remember thinking in a muddled sort of way that if I waited till morning it would be too late. Or something. Anyway, I thought I had to go to you right then, and Gay said yes, she thought that was the thing for me to do, so finally we left this place and piled in a cab and both drove down here. It took us quite a while, because I got the address all balled up." He smiled ruefully. "That shows you how far gone I was! Forgetting your address. I got it right finally, though, and the taxi driver helped me up your front steps, and Gay rang your bell forme. And then she went on alone in the cab and I came in. And you know the rest."

Yes. Dolly knew the rest.

Part of her mind defended Jerry and refused to blame him. It wasn't his fault, it was Gay's fault. She had played upon his weakness, deliberately. Just to see if she could, probably. Just "for fun." Or perhaps (here she

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touched the edges of the real solution) perhaps for her, Dolly's, benefit. A gesture of defiance. It would be, thought Dolly, recalling her single encounter with Gay that night in Atlantic City, exactly like her.

But with the other, the stronger part of her mind, Dolly blamed Jerry wholly. After all, he had done this thing. Did the fact that Gay had tempted him exculpate him? It did not. Rather the contrary. Dolly was first of all a woman; that another woman had been able to make Jerry break his promise to her—the promise upon which so much depended—rendered his dereliction, in the final analysis, but the more unforgivable in her eyes.

So she said drearily, again and again, "I can't. I can't do it, Jerry. Don't you see I can't, now?" . . . Until at last Jerry, tight-lipped and white as death, flung himself through the doorway of the little apartment, raced down the stairs and went out, still in his crumpled dinner clothes, into the bright May sunlight.

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/ch//REBOUND

The Alan Pomeroys spent the summer in the city. Business held Alan there, and Gay stayed with him—not fretfully, as might have been expected, but with astonishing good grace. "I shan't mind," she stated when they first talked it over, early in June. "It won't be so bad. There's always a breeze on this roof—we'll keep fairly cool, I think. And we can go off week ends if we want to."

"Um," assented Alan a little dubiously. "Still—you've never spent a summer in New York before in your life, have you honey? I'm not sure you won't be miserable. Practically all the Crowd will be gone, you know. And I'll have to work like hell, Dad being away." He regarded her with affectionate, solicitous gray eyes. "How are you going to put in the time?"

Gay could have told him.

"Oh, I don't know. Somehow," she said carelessly d Mornings when she drifted up smiling from sleep, thinking of Jerry, thinking, "In an hour or two now. In just an hour or two I'll see him!" She telephoned him daily before she set foot out of bed. Since the morning Alan overslept and was at home to answer Jerry's call—and Jerry was obliged to say, "Is this Tyson's? No? Oh, I beg your pardon!"—it was deemed best for Gay to do the calling. She would speak his number softly, drawlingly, as though her lips enjoyed the syllables; she would sing "Good morning!" in a way that implied, "I love you very

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much this morning;" and all through their dialogue she would smile her prettiest smile and flirt violently with the telephone's mouthpiece.

Noons when they met. Sometimes Jerry picked her up at a downtown shop or store or hairdressing establishment; waited for her beside the curb in his car. Sometimes they met in a hotel lounge, or at the restaurant where they would lunch. Sometimes she went to his apartment, walking through the lobby a trifle too fast and too self-consciously, hating the doorman who touched his cap and the elevator boy who knew so well what floor to whisk her to.

And afternoons. Afternoons of motoring through the green and gold country, with Jerry's arm a boa for Gay's silken shoulders, her hair a tawny lash against his face. Afternoons of swimming at some beach not too far distant; of sitting side by side and close together near the water, sunning themselves, idly murmuring, while Jerry shied pebbles and Gay buried her bare legs beneath a patted mummy case of sand. Afternoons alone in Jerry's apartment, where they smoked and talked and drank and shared long kisses. Stolen summer afternoons, madly dangerous and madly sweet.

Jerry was hers now. He belonged to her. She had won him, caught him on the rebound—though that wasn't the way she put it. She preferred to believe and to tell herself, as Jerry told her sometimes between sips from a tall amber glass, that deep down in his heart he had always loved her . . . best. . . . Almost perpetually nowadays he sipped from tall amber glasses. Gay was glad of that. She encouraged it. Whenever he was sober he was terrbily quiet, and his brooding eyes forgot that she was there. . . .

He never spoke of Dolly Quinn at all. Not since that May morning when he telephoned Gay and told her succinctly that it was "all over" had he so much as mentioned Dolly's name. Once Gay herself had mentioned it, goad-

-

ingly, to see what he would say. He had said, the lines in his pale cheeks deepening, hardening, "Oh, never mind her. Waiter! More White Rock here. And more cracked ice." d They were reckless about their public appearances together. Too reckless, Jerry thougat. He protested uneasily and often.

"As long as we stay here in my apartment, or drive in the country, or eat in little out-of-the-way places where no one anyone knows ever comes," he said one day, "we're reasonably safe. But this riding through the downtown streets together in my car, as big as life, and meeting in the lobby of the Biltmore or the Roosevelt, and appearing at matinées together—why, Gay, its insane! Sooner or later somebody's bound to see us and tell Alan—the way somebody told your father that time, remember? Or Alan may see us himself, One thing is certain: we can't get away with it indefinitely. We'll be caught some one of these days, as sure's you're born."

A little arching of Gay's thin brows. A little flick of her hands. "Well?" she said calmly.

"Well—he'd raise particular hell, wouldn't he? Alan?"

"I dare say he would."

"You know he would!"

"He might—" continued Gay reflectively, "he might even—divorce me."

The two words, uttered low, seemed to scream in the atmosphere, to echo and resound from all the walls. Gay, eyeing her cigarette, sat very still, as though she listened to them. . . . After an interval her chin jerked up and her eyes winged to Jerry's in a glance that asked point blank, "What then?"

Jerry stared, startled. Then he smiled as if she had made a facetious light remark, and busied his eyes and his hands with a search for matches. "Darling child,"

-

he said, "don't be so pessimistic. People have to have grounds to get divorces. This is not Paris."

"Am I—being pessimistic?"

"Aren't you, rather?"

"Pessimistic." In effect she held the adjective up between them and invited his contemplation of it. "Pessimistic means 'inclined to look on the gloomy side'—not mistaken."

Jerry struck a match.

"And that I might some day be—be free—" Gay said. "Is that such a gloomy possibility—from your standpoint?"

"My standpoint has nothing to do with it."

They were speaking carefully now, so carefully; and avoiding each other's eyes. They were tense; the very air was tense, charged with the things unsaid through all these weeks and now about to be said, irrevocably.

"I'm looking at it," went on Jerry, "from your standpoint only. A divorce—procured by your husband—wouldn't be very pleasant for you, my dear. Would it? Provided he could get one and wanted one—which of course he can't and doesn't."

"You were thinking of me? You're quite sure?"

"Quite sure."

"You weren't thinking—" Gay moistened her lips. "You weren't thinking that if my husband divorced me—on account of you—you might feel compelled to marry me yourself? That wasn't by any chance the—the gloomy side—was it? Oh, she cried out abruptly, impatiently, "but this is absurd! Why should we hedge like this? Why can't we say what we mean?"

In a swift small rush she crossed the room to him. She framed his face between her hands, felt his arms slip around her body and lock her close. "I can, she breathed. "I can say what I mean. I love you, Jerry. And you? You love me?" n -

"You would marry me—if I were free? You would want to?"

"Of course, dear."

("Please! Please!" Gay's eyes were saying.)

"I should want to very much," Jerry added.

"You mean that?"

He nodded gravely.

"You've never said so before, Jerry."

"I—it was understood."

Their eyes held an instant longer. Then Gay reached back and unloosed his arms; took his hands gently with her hands and dropped them at his sides. Aware of his following glance, she returned to her seat on the divan, opened a vanity case, powdered her exquisite nose with fingers whose tremulousness she hoped he would not notice.

"I could—get free," she offered, not quite inaudibly. d "Jerry Davis?" said an acquaintance of Jerry's to an inquiring second acquaintance that summer. "Yeah, I see him occasionally. Same old tank." And then, smiling only slightly (for the situation is not rare in these nineteen twenties), "They tell me he's engaged to a married woman." . . . d On the matter of Gay's freedom there were numerous discussions. Day after day she brought the subject up, and worried about it verbally to Jerry. That she could not divorce Alan without Alan's consent and coöperation was acknowledged at the start. She would have no case, in any state. Therefore she must go to Alan—ah, but that was easy enough to say!

"If only he hadn't been so darned wonderful to me always!" she wailed despairingly a hundred times.

Repeatedly she suggested that Jerry himself go to Alan. The idea of husband and lover dueling over her, dueling

-

with words for weapons, was not without its melancholy appeal; besides, it would not be nearly so hard for her to approach Alan if Jerry went first and paved the way. . . . But Jerry would not. "Impossible, he declared flatly. "Walk into a man's office and say, 'Listen here, old boy, I'd like to marry your wife if you've no objections'—why, the thing's impossible, Gay! Don't you see it is? Things like that simply aren't done, except on the stage sweetheart. I'll stand the gaff afterwards, whatever happens—but you'll have to break it to Alan yourself. There's no other way."

And once, when she insisted tearfully that the task was too great for her, that he must, he must relieve her of the burden of it, he became again the cool, indifferent Jerry of old and turned away, shrugging, saying, "Very well. If you don't consider it worth your trouble—" And then so panicky was she, instantly, and so eager to banish the terrifying chill from Jerry's eyes, that it never once occurred to her to say in return, "And if you don't consider it worth your trouble—"

Fate came to her aid. Less than a week after this episode had convinced her finally that there was indeed "no other way," an occasion for the difficult and dread talk with Alan presented itself to her, ready-made. . . .

She had been swimming at Sea Beach with Jerry all that sultry August day; and she came into the bungalow at five in the afternoon, her damp bathing suit and caps rolled into a raincoat under her arm, and found Alan, home a little early for him, in the living room.

There was nothing in his attitude nor in the manner of his greeting to warn her that the cataclysmic moment was near. He lay stretched out lazily in a long chair, reading; from a table beside him an electric fan, borrowed from the kitchen, swept him with artificial wind. At Gay's entrance he lowered his book and grinned a welcome. "Hullo, honey!"

"Hello. Well! The tired business man—" She went

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to him mechanically and leaning over, touched her lips to his. "How long've you been home?"

"Oh, I don't know—fifteen minutes or so." He had her hand and was squeezing it, smiling up at her. "Cute," he said. "Gee, but you're cute! I never seem to get over it." And then, indicating the bundle she carried, "What's this thing? Did you find an abandoned infant on our doorstep?"

"It's my bathing suit," Gay answered casually. "I've been swimming all afternoon. Gretchen Wilce and I, in the pool at the Shelton." This was the fib upon which she had decided on the way back from Sea Beach with Jerry. Yielding to the fibber's guilty impulse to make it a good one, a convincing one, replete with glib and authentic sounding details, she said further, "It was so hot out today! Wasn't it? Just sweltering. We were going to do some shopping—Gretchen wanted to look for wall panels and lamp shades and things for her new apartment—they're moving the first of September, you know. But neither of us could bear the thought of stuffy little decorators' shops on a day like this, so we waited the well-known hour after lunch and then made for the Shelton pool, and we've been cooling off in it ever since."

On a final impulse she pulled off her hat and fin ere the back of her head. "My hair's still a little bit damp—"

Having been hatted tightly ever since her swim, her hair was damp. She was rather pleased with herself for having thought of it; it strengthened and substantiated the story. She ducked her head toward Alan. "Feel."

But Alan did not obey.

She straightened up and looked at him, surprised; and as soon as she met his eyes her satisfaction wilted, for she saw that somewhere, somehow, she had erred. . . . At the same time she realized that the hand with which she had touched her hair was the hand he had lately been holding. When had he released it? When she made the fatal mistake, no doubt—so when? At the beginning of

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her narrative? Or toward the end? She had not noticed, and could not remember.

Her mind fumbled furiously for a clue. Her body, without her conscious volition, backed away slowly several steps, until a chair nudged the calves of her legs and she dropped into it. She knew that she was very pale; that her eyes, held and accused by those gray eyes of Alan's, were dilated with alarm. "Wh-what's the matter?" she faltered. And her voice sounded little and shaky and thin in her ears.

Alan was sitting upright now. . . . Of all her countless mental pictures of him, the one photographed on the lens of her memory in this moment was to be for the rest of her life the most vivid. Years later she would close her eyes sometimes and see his shoulders, square and solid, in the gold-and-black silk lounging robe; his big hand planted against the chair back, pushing him forward; his steady, sorry gaze; and the way the fan beside him, swinging now right, now left, slightly stirred the crisp ruddy kinks of his hair. . . .

He said, "You were lying, weren't you."

"N-not exactly—"

"I know you were lying," he went on quietly, "because I spent the afternoon in the pool at the Shelton myself. It was too hot to work. I telephoned you about noon, thinking we might do something together, but you had left. So I lunched at the Yale Club and waited 'the well-known hour'—and then I went over to the pool. I was there until half an hour ago.

"Of course," he supplemented in the same even tone, "I would have seen you, if you'd been there."

Gay nodded dumbly. Useless to argue that.

All sorts of thoughts made a dizziness and a chaos in her head. Irrelevant thoughts, most of them; thoughts that helped her predicament not at all. She ought, she most assuredly ought to be considering what next to say. Instead she was thinking of the Shelton pool; of Alan

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in his swimming suit; of a pronunciamento. Irene Matthews once had uttered: "It's the unimaginable thing, Gay, the thing you didn't and couldn't anticipate, the one possibility you overlooked when you worked it all out beforehand, that always happens." Of that especially she wag thinking. Irene had been so might!—Alan spying herself and Jerry as they left town in Jerry's car, Alan encountering Gretchen Wilce somewhere during the afternoon—those were possibilities she had recognized, and risked deliberately. But that Alan would swim that after noon in the pool at the Hotel Shelton—how could she have foreseen that? Why, he never swam there! As far as she knew, he had never been swimming there in his life before!

As though he read her thoughts (and so lightning-fast had they run on that there was scarcely a halt in the flow of his speech) he said, "I rather expected to find you there. That's why I went. You've been in that pool—or you've told me you have—so many afternoons this summer."

So many afternoons this summer. . . . The simple phrase cleared her brain. It brought back Jerry. It brought back Jerry's chill dark eyes, his curt, "If you don't consider it worth your trouble—" Well, now, then. Now was the time.

She drew a quick full breath. "I was lying," she admitted. "I went swimming, but not at the Shelton, and not with Gretchen. I went swimming down at Sea Beach with—with Jerry Davis."

"Who?"

"Jerry Davis."

There was a pause. An endless one. Gay listened intently, so intently that her eardrums ached; but she heard only the galloping thud-thud of her heart, and the low steady mutter of the fan. She dared not look up.

The pause became intolerable.

"You know Jerry Davis," she said inanely, because

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somebody had to say something. "I remember you told me once you knew him."

"I remember that too." Alan's voice was harsh, queer; not Alan's voice at all. "I told you he was rotten. And in spite of that, you—Look here, Gay. Look at me."

He waited until Gay's eyes had crept to the level of his.

"I want to get this straight," he said, and his voice was more puzzled now than condemnatory. "You've been seeing this fellow lately?"

"Yes."

"Often?"

"Y-yes."

"How often?"

"Well—" began Gay, and stopped. For just an instant she was terribly afraid. What would he do to her? What would he say? . . . The old accustomed instinct for evasion seized her. Her eyes shifted.

"No," said Alan quickly, "don't. Don't lie. Not any more. I want the whole truth, this time."

So she gave it to him.

It was a long story, covering several years. She told it hesitantly at first. Then more firmly. Finally, as she talked of the months just past, quite firmly and with something like pride. There was a delight in hearing herself say aloud, again and again, that Jerry loved her; she became impressed as never before with the depth and strength of his love. She became a little dramatic. Lines from "triangle" plays she had witnessed, spoken with the vocal inflection of actresses she had heard, stole into her narrative:

"Inevitable . . . one of those things that simply can't be helped, you see, Alan . . . fought against it, both of us . . . tried to forget, honestly tried to find happiness apart . . ."

And all the while Alan never moved, never spoke, never took his eyes from her. n -

"He wants to marry me, she wound up. "And—Alan, I want that too. I want it—more than anything.

"So," she finished, "now you know."

Still Alan made no comment.

His silence was irritating. His relentless scrutiny was worse than irritating; it made her feel embarrassed, fidgety. Why didn't he say something? Why must he stay so still, and look at her so strangely? She hated that look. It wasn't angry; she was armored against wrath. It wasn't reproachful, it wasn't even hurt. It was curious. Merely and insultingly that.

"You're looking at me," she said slowly, "as if I were a—a brand new kind of insect. You're looking at me the way people look at people they've read about in the Sunday scandal sheet. Alan, why are you looking at me like that? Can't you—understand at all? Why don't you say something?"

"There's nothing to say," said Alan.

He reached to the table for his pipe. He filled it, punched the tobacco into the bow] with his thumb. "There's nothing to say," he repeated, "under the circumstances. If you want a divorce you can have it—but of course that goes without saying. Aside from that—" he shook his head. "There's nothing."

He threw the pipe down and got up; walked to the open French doors and stood there, his back to Gay. "If you'd told me you: were tired of marriage, or sick of me, or in love with some chap who was—who was at least a man—I'd have understood. But when you tell me you love Jerry Davis—Jerry Davis—"

For this reiteration, and for the tone of it, she hated him.

"God!" said Alan.

Under the silk patch pockets at the sides of his robe his fists bulged hard and huge. Still he did not turn. "I could wring his damned neck, I suppose," he remarked apathetically after a time. n -

Gay supposed he could. She regarded the fists and the shoulders, and thought reluctantly how fragile Jerry's right hand felt when one shook hands with him, and how slender Jerry's shoulders were to the clasp of one's arms.

"A lot of good that would do you, wouldn't it?" she murmured.

Alan shrugged. "No." And he added bitterly, "Oh, don't worry! I won't hurt him. You might tell him he needn't worry either. He'd appreciate that."

"It seems to me," Gay observed, "that for a person who had nothing to say, you're saying a great deal. Don't you think so?"

He wheeled then, and faced her; smiled a faint smile that she couldn't quite decipher, but that somehow made her want to recall her words.

He left the room without saying anything more at all.

Five minutes later he left the bungalow.

She detained him just a minute at the door. "Alan!"

"Yes?"

"Where—aren't you going to even tell me where you're going?"

His eyes strayed over her face, curious again, quizzical. "It doesn't matter, does it?" he said.

She thought that then sudden agony leaped into his eyes; but he turned away so quickly that she could not be sure. She believed she heard him whisper something; her name perhaps, and something else. But he was gone, and she could not ask him—ever—what it was.

-

/ch//PITY IS AKIN—

"Bee," said Dolly plaintively, "won't you please wake up? It's after eight. And I've called you three times."

"'Wake."

"You are not!"

"Am so."

To prove this contention Bee opened her eyes and struggled to a sitting position. Having proved it, she fell back with a moan. "Heaven pity the working girl! I mean the one called Bee with the hard-hearted roommate."

"If it wasn't for my hard heart, you'd never get up."

"No," sighing. "And wouldn't it he grand?"

After an interval Bee sat erect again and began to untie the shred of veiling that bound and preserved the waves of her red-gold hair. "Well!" she said. "Miss Quinn, I believe. How are you? Let me look at you, woman. I've hardly seen you for two whole days."

"Hasn't it been the darnedest thing?" agreed Dolly from the dressing table.

"Yesterday morning," Bee recited, "you were gone before I was three-fifths conscious. I came home about six P. M. to dress—no sign of you. I went out to food and a movie with Nick and got in again about eleven—still no sign. And you hadn't come when I went to sleep. Now! Kindly answer auntie: where, why, and who with?"

"Well," said Dolly, "when you were here at six I was having tea at Ray Curtis Elliott's studio. You see, I worked for him from three o'clock on—I was at Apeda's

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before that, and at Mr. Fernando's all morning until my appointment with the art editor of Levity—"

"Say, how about that? How'd you come out?"

"He bought the drawings."

"Honestly, Dolly?"

"Um-hum. Both of 'em. Twenty dollars apiece." Dolly twisted around on the dressing table bench, presenting a radiant face and blue eyes a-sparkle. "And he wants more! And another thing: the Hostess Shop—remember I told you last week about interviewing them?—well, they've given me an order for bridge tallies, sixteen dozen, four different designs, four dozen of each—"

"Wait a minute," said Bee, the practical. "Before I bust into hallelujahs, tell me—when do you think you're going to find time for all this? You haven't time to say 'Jack Robinson' as it is. Though I never could see," she mused, "any special percentage in saying 'Jack Robinson.' After all, does it get you a seat in the subway?"

"I'm going to take time," Dolly averred seriously. "I've figured it all out. I'm going to devote one day a week to my own work. On that one day I don't care who calls me—I don't care if Fisher and Flagg and LeGatta and Neysa McMein send me engraved invitations to come and pose—I'm not going to budge."

"One day a week," said Bee thoughtfully. "Sixteen dozen bridge tallies. And your stuff for the Manhattanite, and this new Levity thing—Are you sure one day a week will be enough?"

"Right now it will, with Sundays and some evenings. I hope it won't be enough for very long."

Bee was still sitting in bed, winding her wisp of veil around two fingers. "You know, she observed, "this sounds to me like the beginning of something."

"It does to me," said Dolly, luminous-eyed. "It sounds like the beginning of everything. Everything I've wanted. Now if only things keep breaking for me the way they have lately—" n -

"They will," Bee assured her. "Things always break—if you keep hammering at 'em hard enough." She unwound the veil and rewound it; held it up on her fingers and surveyed it absently. "The longer I live, Dolly, the more I'm convinced that there's no such thing as luck. Remember that, will you? Nobody's just lucky. The kid with the silver spoon in his mouth wasn't born with it; he bit it away from the doctor when the doctor put it in and said, 'Say Ah-h.'"

She slid out of bed and pattered across to hug Dolly fervently, chokingly, from behind. "Little monkey! I don't often slop over—but there isn't anybody ever going to be gladder of the things you do—"

This unwonted display of sentiment so embarrassed Bee herself and so touched Dolly that conversation between them was for some minutes afterwards at a standstill. Each busied herself with dressing. Bee hummed ragtime airily. Dolly debated between the powder-blue sport dress held aloft by her right hand and the pale yellow flannel raised similarly by her left, and thought, "Darling Bee. There's nobody in the world quite like her."

Bee said finally, "You were telling me about tea at Elliott's, Go on with the story. Who-all was there? He always has a gang."

"Gang is the word! About twenty when I left, and they were still straggling in." Dolly smiled. "I love the people you meet there, though, don't you? Artists and writers and actors and actresses—people who do things—I think they're fascinating."

She mentioned several of Elliott's guests by their more or less famous names, and supplied a few items of interest. . . . "The girl who had written the gold-digger story everyone was so wild about had been present, "—and she's a little bit of a thing, Bee! Much littler than I am. With a cute short raggedy bob and the best-looking dress on." The leading lady of a musical show had demonstrated that new dance called the Black Bottom, which appeared

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easy of execution but was not. And the father of a popular comic strip had drawn his leading character on the inside of an empty match folder "like lightning" and autographed it for Dolly. . . .

"And," said Bee, "Ray Curtis Elliott? What did he do, if anything?"

"He proposed to me."

"I knew he would! The last time I saw him with you I said to myself, 'It won't be long now.' So! And what did you tell him?"

"'No.'"

"Good!"

"But I wish," continued Dolly, "I cared enough about him to say yes. I don't, but I wish I did. Think who he is, Bee! Imagine being Mrs. Ray Curtis Elliott!"

"I can imagine worse things," said Bee, "—but not many. The woman who marries Elliott will work her fingers to the bone plucking blond hairs off his coat lapels. And that's that. What did you do after tea?"

"I came back here and dressed—you'd left then, that was about seven—and went to dinner at the Ambassador with Mark Bentley. And then to see the Scandals. And then for a ride."

"Mark Bentley is your little collegiate friend?"

"He's my little collegiate friend."

"How are things at good old Siwash?"

"Amherst, corrected Dolly gravely. "Things are rather peaceful, I suppose. This is vacation still—first of September."

They had migrated into the living room now and were preparing their breakfast. Dolly pounded two nail holes in the top of a condensed milk can, using a French-heeled slipper of Bee's as her precarious mallet. She picked up the can and inspected it with keen concentration. "He gave me his fraternity pin."

"No!"

"He did." n -

"His frat pin!" Bee was visibly and audibly awed. "Well! I've heard of models being awarded diamond bracelets and mink coats and other trifling trinkets—but a frat pin! You're getting in the débutante class."

"Don't say 'frat,' Bee, advised Dolly gently. "Say 'fraternity.'" Her eyes begged Bee's pardon for this, and she added apologetically, "They do."

Bee giggled. "Don't Sunday-clothes me, young lady! 'Frat' I said and 'frat' I'll stick to. I speak in words of one syllable. Where is this glorified Elks' button? I want to see it."

"It's in the other room. In my top bureau drawer. I thought," said Dolly judiciously, "I wouldn't wear it to work. They'd kid me even worse than you're kidding me about it."

The telephone rang.

"Don't take my little quips too much to heart," Bee smiled, rising to answer the summons. "As a matter of fact, I'm all for you. The more men you see, and like, these days, the better pleased I am. You were tied up altogether too long with one. And what a one! Hello?"

"Oh, that's all over," said Dolly. But to no hearer. Bee was intent upon the receiver.

"Yes . . . Yes. Who is calling, please? . . . Hold the line a minute." She turned from the telephone. "Somebody named Alan Pomeroy wants to speak to you."

"Alan—Pomeroy?" Dolly looked her bewilderment. "Why, that's—why, how funny!"

She put her palms on the table's edge and her elbows jerked up as though she would impel herself to her feet; then they dropped again. She stared helplessly at Bee. "Alan Pomeroy is Gay's husband. You know who I mean. Jerry's Gay. At least, her married name is Pomeroy, and I'm almost sure her husband's first name's Alan. Bee, what under the sun do you s'pose he wants?"

"Shall I ask him?"

"No." Dolly pushed her chair back. "I'm coming." n -

The voice on the telephone was a voice you liked; but grave, and quick, and bothered about something. "This is Alan Pomeroy, Miss Quinn. I don't imagine the name conveys anything—we've never met—"

"No," said Dolly, as he hesitated, "but I've met your wife, I think, Mr. Pomeroy. About a year ago, in Atlantic City?"

"You remember that, do you?"

"Very well, yes."

"I—" The voice seemed loath to proceed. "I'm afraid I have bad news for you, Miss Quinn. Or perhaps it isn news, if you—did you see the papers yesterday at all?"

"Why, no, I didn't."

"Well," said Pomeroy, "it's about Jerry Davis. He's been hurt. Quite badly. He was hurt in an automobile accident night before last. He and—and Mrs. Pomeroy were motoring, and they went over an embankment, out in Connecticut somewhere. They were taken to a hospital. I went down at five o'clock yesterday morning, as soon as I got word, and I came back to town late last night to try to locate you. You see, Miss Quinn, Jerry has been calling for you. He's delirious, and he keeps calling your name. We thought you would want to go to him."

Dolly's lips moved without sound. She swallowed, and tried again. "He—is going to—die?"

"He may," simply. "They don't know."

Dolly saw Bee start toward her from across the room, and knew from Bee's face that her own face must be blanched and terror-stricken. "Of course!" she was answering. "Of course I'll go! Now!"

"I'll stop for you," said Alan. "Your address is—I only have your phone number."

She gave him the address.

"In about half an hour? If that suits you."

. . . Not until after their connection was broken did she realize that although he had said his wife was with Jerry in the accident, she had omitted to inquire for her. n -

Going down the first two of the four flights of stairs the buttons of the coat she carried chattered along the banisters like a stick drawn by a little boy along a picket fence. At the top of the third flight she transferred the coat to the arm that was next the wall. She could not bear that cheerful noise, that carefree, careless, lively noise, just now. It seemed—just now—a kind of profanation.

He was waiting in the vestibule. From the bend in the final flight of stairs on down he was visible to her, through the uncurtained glass upper half of the front door. He had on a gray suit; his hands, except for the thumbs, were in the suit's coat pockets, his head was bare. He was very large indeed, and he was moving around, pacing and turning and prowling, as if the tiny entry were a cage and he its restless solitary captive.

While she crossed the hall to the door he caught sight of her; and he nodded and smiled faintly, instant recognition in his eyes. "I remember him too," she said to herself. He had been one of the two men who dined with Gay and a second girl that evening in Atlantic City, the evening of Gay's elopement. Once or twice in the past year she had recalled him, as "the nice looking gray-eyed one," and wondered idly if it was to him that Gay was married, or to the vague, unnoticed "other one."

She twisted the doorknob and was with him in the vestibule, surrendering her fingers to the swift crushing clasp of his.

"How do you do?"

"Hullo, Miss Quinn. I'm glad to know you."

She thought, "He looks older. Years." She said, "It's good of you to take this extra trouble—when you must be so worried yourself. Tell me about Mrs. Pomeroy. Was she—much hurt? You didn't tell me."

They had pushed through the outer door and were descending the brownstone steps to the sidewalk. "She wasn't hurt as seriously as Davis," Alan answered. "She's got a couple of broken ribs, and many bruises, and she

-

was cut with glass—that's the cruel thing," he finished. "There'll be scars."

"Oh, no!" Dolly stood stock still, hands flying to cheeks impulsively. "Not her beautiful face—"

He shook his head. "Not her face. About the neck and chest she's cut badly, but her face wasn't even scratched. It's fortunate," he added, "that it wasn't. She lies there crying to break her heart, as it is. They tell her there won't be any scars, but she knows better. If her face had been gashed I believe she—wouldn't want to live."

Dolly, aching with compassion, could think of nothing to say but that she was sorry. She said this in a stifled voice, laying her hand on Alan's sleeve without knowing that she did it, and lifting pitying eyes to his face. For the fraction of a minute his eyes gazed back, and friendly and grateful to her, over their pain. Then his lids fell. "You're kind," he murmured.

He opened the door of the roadster that stood at the curb and helped her in. In silence they moved off up the street, swinging left on the Avenue.

"Of course," said Alan then, "you'll want to know how it all happened. And I'll tell you as nearly as I can. Night before last—"

She interrupted him. "First—what is it about Jerry?"

"Internal injuries. And his left leg smashed. They're afraid they may have to amputate it, to save him. And even then—" Alan raised one hand, and let it fall again to curl tight around the steering wheel. "It's a damned shame," he said. "His worst enemy wouldn't have wished him anything like that."

Dolly did not speak. Tears brimmed in her eyes and hung on her lashes, and two of them slipped down her cheeks; but she did not wipe them away. She sat frozen. Not stirring. Just thinking, thinking on this horror.

She knew in a distant sort of way when Alan brought his eyes around to investigate her silence; knew with in-

-

Pity Is Akin—creasing' consciousness that they remained for some seconds upon her. She was reminded of her tears, and groped for a handkerchief.

"You're very fond of him, aren't you?" Alan decided.

Her response was direct and immediate. "Yes." Then, reviewing his words and the tone of them in her mind," she said further, "I'm not in love with him, if that's what you mean. But he's—dear to me. He always will be. If anything terrible happens—

A new rush of moisture scalded her eyes. She stopped speaking while grimly, knuckles against her lips, she battled it back.

"I was always so sorry for him anyway," she said after a time.

"Why?"

"Why, because—oh, I don't know. He was always sort of pathetic to me, Jerry was. He meant so well. You talk about his worst enemy—he himself was that! And he didn't know what to do about it, or how to help it—" She broke off, struck with an awkward thought. Perhaps she was annoying this man whose wife had motored late at night alone with Jerry—once at least that he knew of. Perhaps even now, when Jerry lay so ill, he would rather not hear him defended.

Consideration for Alan's feelings overrode her loyalty. She ended weakly, "Of course, that doesn't excuse him."

"No, agreed "Alan. And her suspicion became certainty.

"But I'm sorry for him now, all right, he added. "Poor devil."

He told then of a visit he had paid to I erry's bedside the afternoon before; told of it carefully, so as to prepare her without harrowing her unduly. He told of Jerry's cries for her, and of the physicians' expressed opinion that if "this girl, this Doll, could be found, her presence at the hospital might help. . . .

"He didn't mention your last name, and nobody knew

-

who 'Dolly' was. We didn't ask Gay. Didn't:

to know he was delirious, for one thing. I fo

finally through a clipping we got out of Davis's

It was a page torn from some fashion magaz: photographs advertising dresses—'Posed by Dolly

So I knew you were either an actress or a moc

when I got into town I went to the office and loo

up in the Studio Guide. We're an advertising fi

see, and we employ models sometimes, so we keep

on hand. And sure enough, there you were. I'd have called you last night, but it was so late—and the doctors had said no immediate danger."

He pondered then, briefly, while Dolly waited, perceiving that there was more to come. 'As soon as I saw your picture," he said, "I remembered about Atlantic City. Td forgotten your name, but I recognized your face. And, he paused again. "Tell me something, Miss Quinn. That night Gay went to your table and talked to you—she knew you knew Davis, didn't she? That was her reason for introducing herself?"

"Why—yes. 2?

"And you talked about him, you and she," Alan mused aloud, but as if to himself. "And she pumped you, and—Of course." He nodded, lips compressed. "It all adds up re guess there's no reason why I shouldn't tell you, he went on somewhat later, Dolly having maintained a confused silence. "Gay and I have separated. Permanently. We—agreed to disagree about two weeks before this thing happened, and she is going to get a divorce. She's going to—"

He stopped. What it was he had started to say Dolly could not know, but she sensed that it was not what finally, once more, he did say: "—divorce me."

Again she was at a loss for a suitable comment. Words of sympathy rushed to her lips, but she checked them before they were uttered. In the brave set of her com

want her und you bill fold ine—two Quinn.' del, and oked you irm, you D a CODY

-

Pity Is Akin—panion's ruddy head, in the determinedly nonchalant expression of his profile, she read that he did not want to be, wouldn't be, commiserated. She kept still.

During the next mile or so she stole slanting peeps at him, noting definitely things she had noted only in a general way before. "Not handsome, she thought, her artist's eye alert to imperfections. 'He's very attractive. So big. Nice eyes. They contrast with his skin, he's so brown. Why doesn't Gay like him, I wonder? Or doesn't he like her? He does, though. Awfully."

The last of her glances he intercepted, turning his head unexpectedly. And he half smiled at her. "Funny world. Isn't it?"

"Isn't it," she echoed.

This made them friends. She couldn't think quite why it should, but it did.

Alan settled lower in the seat and slid his hands down the polished wheel until the thumbs touched. Without preamble he began to relate what he knew of the accident. "It seems they'd been to some roadhouse out near Stamford. They'd been there all evening, and by the time they started back Davis was pretty well crocked. Gay says she begged him to let her do the driving, and even the fellow in charge of the parking place tried to reason with him, but he wouldn't listen, and away they went—going like hell. They hadn't gone very many miles when Davis missed a curve completely—just didn't see it, that was all, although there was a white rail fence there, and a sign. He kept straight on. And by the time Gay realized that he wasn't going to take the turn, it was too late—they crashed through the fence and down this embankment into a ravine. I went out yesterday for a look at the place." He shook his head. "It's a miracle they weren't both killed."

Dolly emitted a little wordless tormented sound..

"They didn't turn over," Alan continued. "The car stayed right side up—luckily. It shot down the bank

-

944 Litele Sins

and hit a tree, head on, and then it slithered: hit another tree, and stopped. It was the sec—got Jerry. They struck it broadside, you side. And the door beside him had sprung < opened it himself instinctively, trying to esc Gay thinks he couldn't have had time for that it was open, and his leg was hanging out and wi: betwe—Oh, I'm sorry!"

Dolly's face, blanched and twisted below the ha sought, by covering up her eyes, to blind her imag had given him pause. "I'm so sorry," he said again "I shouldn't have told you.

"Yes—you should—but how frightful—'Af instant her hands came away, fell to her lap."

IT have to know."

"That's about all. Some people driving just b them saw them go over, and stopped. And son phoned from a farmhouse for an ambulance—all."

"They were unconscious?"

"Oh, yes."

"I see." Dolly considered, gnawing at her lips. "There's his leg, and the internal injuries—and he was cut, too, I suppose when the windshield broke—"

"The windshield didn't break," said Alan. "It wasone of the kind that are guaranteed not to. It cracked into a million splinters, but didn't fly apart."

Very evenly and articulately then, keeping his pray eyes on the road before them, he spoke the thing that was somehow, of all these ghastly things, the most intolerable. "The glass that cut Gay—wasn't windshield glass. It was a whisky bottle of Davis's. She was holding it for him until he wanted it, and when the crash came she—didn't let go."

There was first a group of buildings of varying shapes

sideways and ond tree that see. On his ypen, or he'd ape—though t. Anyway, 1 was caught

e hands that imagination, again gently. After an p"Go on.

just back of id somebody wnce—That's

-

Pity Is Akin—and sizes, fastened together with passageways enclosed in wood and glass. Brick buildings, dark red, with porches here and there whereon invalids in wheel chairs sat motionless in the warm September sun. A long lawn stretched between the buildings and the street, and there was a drive with pebbles that spattered out behind approaching tires. Then three granite steps. Then a huge glass door, like a giant's picture frame. And beyond that, gray lincleum, and sallow plaster walls, and nurses moving tirelessly on chalky canvas shoes, and quiet, and the dim breath of ether. ..

To the left of the entrance there was a little room full of two men and a woman and a child. "Reception Room—Please Do Not Smoke, read a placard. At the right of the entrance was an office, presided over by two nurses, One of them was talking into a telephone. "No. No change," she said. And adjusted a hairpin more securely in her precise black hair.

The other nurse, a freckled one, smiled through a wicket and chirped, "Good morning, Mr. Pomeroy!"

"Good morning," said Ala�. "�ow's my wife?"

"Getting along nicely!"

"I called up earlier. They said she'd had a rather restless night."

"Oh, but that's to be expected. Really, she's just perfectly fine."

"And Davis?"

The nurse hesitated, glancing at Dolly.

"This is Miss Quinn, supphed Alan. "The young lady he was calling for."

"Oh, yes. Certainly. We heard a good deal about you yesterday, Miss Quinn, the nurse declared, and smiled. "It's nice you've come. But—" Here it was as though invisible fingers picked off her smile and pinched her red eyebrows together. "I'm afraid you can't see him today. Not until much later, at any rate. He's in the operating room."

-

Alan asked it, because Dolly could not. "The to amputate?"

The nurse nodded. "This morning. Very: Dr. Gresham and Dr. DeWolfe came out from N and half an hour after they got here the patient 1 given the anssthetic."

Her face was sweetly grave, professionally gra expression like soothing syrup, like a cooed, "There, Dolly looked away. . . . When she looked back th was forming noiseless words with her lips for Alan' fit. Two words. "Only hope." ..

Then there was an hour of waiting. The longer Dolly Quinn had ever known; as long, it seemed as all the hours of all her life combined. She in the little reception room, with the two men a woman and the child. The woman was weeping. Dolly didn't weep. She couldn't, now. She envied the woman, shedding the tears that, unshed, hurt so much worse.

She sat in a wooden rocking chair and stared out of the window. Sunshine. Green grass, green as Christmas ribbon. Machines lined along the edge of the drive; Alan Pomeroy's, and four more. A nurse bearing somebody small and new in a woolly pinkish blanket. A negro with khaki overalls, trimming the hedge. And beyond the hedge, the street, where were more machines, and peoplewalking. Walking along, never giving it a thought. People with two legs, walking.

An interne like a halfback in a baker's starched white suit appeared at the door of the reception room and nodded to the two men, and they and the weeping woman and the child filed out. The interne remained after they had gone, scanning Dolly.

"You're waiting to see somebody?"

She explained.

They discussed Jerry for a moment, the interne speak

y decided

suddenly ew York, was being

rave; an e, there, the nurse an's bene

sf hour to her, waited nd the

-

Pity Is Akin—ZT

ing noncommitally, as internes must. No telling what was what till the surgeons had finished anyway. . . . He asked Dolly if she knew the girl who had been brought in with Davis, and Dolly replied that she did.

"Rough on her, too, observed the interne, who liked and sympathized with pretty ladies.

"Isn't it!' said Dolly." I feel so dreadfully for her."

"Have you been up to see her?"

"No, I haven't yet. I mean to, later."

"Why don't you go now, he suggested, "while you're waiting?"

"Oh, not now. Her husband's with her—"Dolly halted, considering. "Still, I guess it doesn't matter. Yes, igi go. Where is her room?"

"I'll show you."

Together they went down a wide linoleum lane walled with successive doors. Many of the doors were open. Dolly glimpsed from the corners of her eyes high white iron beds, wan faces backed with pillows, flowers in crepepapered pots and in cheap glass vases. . . . All the way the interne talked to her sociably; of what, she had not the remotest idea. She knew only that he ought not to babble like that in a place like this, and that she wanted very much to say "Sh-h, to him. She was walking almost on tiptoes.

They entered a big elevator and were lifted to the floor above.

"Yl leave you here," he said, as they stepped out. He took her elbow and steered her to the right. "Straight down. Fourth—no, fifth door on this side. Number twenty-two."

The door of number twenty-two was somewhat ajar, but a screen had been placed just inside it, so that nothing was to be seen of the room or its occupants. Dolly listened; nothing was to be heard.

Diffidently she rapped on the panel.

A nurse appeared promptly from behind the screen and

-

248 Little Sons

thrust a chocolate-brown head, topped with a c dab of meringue, through the aperture. "Yes'

"Could I see Mrs. Pomeroy just for a minute Quinn."

The nurse vanished, and Dolly could hear tinguishable drone of her voice as she consul tient. Then another voice, petulant, high.

I don't want to see her!" The voice climbed higher. 'Don't let her in here—Alan—oh, te away ple-e-case—"

Dolly did not wait for the nurse to reappear. She went away, tiptoeing down the corridor. "Poor Gay, she thought, and whispered it to herself, striving to rout from her mind the little resentment, the sense of injury. . . . She had gone several yards before she saw that she went in the wrong direction; the elevator was at the other end. But there were stairs ahead. She kept on. "Poor Gay. I didn't mean to upset her."

Then suddenly all thought of Gay was ripped from her mind. She stopped moving, stood arrested, her fingers convulsive on the purse she carried, her eyes starting.

The stairway she had glimpsed was in an alcove. Deeper in the alcove, at the left of the stairs, so that she faced it squarely, there was a double door. It said "Surgery." Beside the door stood a stretcher on wheels. A gaunt white thing. <A significant, a gruesome, empty, waiting thing..

She got back to the reception room somehow; she never knew just how. She remembered a dizziness, a round rail under her hand, a mechanical setting of one foot ahead of the other, countless times. Then she was back in the stiff little room, crying terribly, with her head in her arms on the arm of the wooden rocker.

The freckled nurse came from across the hall and patted her shoulders and crooned that it was all right, things were going to turn out all right, she mustn't cry, she must be a little soldier. And Alan Pomeroy came. The nurse

cap like a og , ite? Dolly

the indisted her pa"No. No! hysterically'll her to go

-

Pity Is Akin—trotted off and presently returned with something liquid and cloudy-white in a glass, and Alan sat beside her and held her hand and said, "Drink it, will you, Dolly? Come on, now, let's see you drink it." Pleadingly, patiently, until she drank it.

She made a valiant effort to calm herself, and in time succeeded partially; even to the point where her eyes stayed dry when she dried them. The freckled nurse departed again, took up her place behind her wicket. Alan remarked that what he had come for particularly was to ask her to pardon Gay. It was just nerves; he hoped she understood.

"How much longer do you think they'll be?" she queried.

"I don't know. Not a great while, surely."

"Will you do something for me?"

"Of course. Anything I can."

"Will you," Dolly besought him, "go up there, near where he is—so you'll know the minute there is any news? And I'll wait right here—"

She was alone again in the little room.

One thing she knew; she would marry Jerry if he lived. Without process of reasoning, without debate or question, this was settled. It was as though it had been decided for her, delivered to her brain as an ultimatum by some parent mentality which must be obeyed. She would marry Jerry if he lived. She would help him, care for him, shield him from hurt, kissing his eyelids to blind him to the pity in mens' eyes, filling his ears with endearments so that he should not hear them say, "Poor devil!" . . . She would be very gentle, very kind, his whole life long.

She did not love him. Almost ever since that May morning when she sent him finally away, she had been aware of that. Quickly, with the passing of the first sharp shock, amazed realization had come; and she had said to herself, "I don't believe I ever did love him, really." But he was dear to her. He was dearer to her than any human being, save only Bee. She could pretend to love him, if

-

it would help it all, if it would make up to him in any smallest measure for things lost and irrecoverable.

She found herself praying silently into the palm of the hand that supported her chi�. "�od—please let me do that—give me the chance. Because maybe it's my fault this happened. If I hadn't sent him away that day—God, oh, don't let him dte—"

Hers was a simple, perfect faith. She had prayed, and she was comforted. She sat relaxed, her hands softly folded, waiting for Alan. And when at last he came she said before he spoke, "I know. He's going to get well."

And it was 80.

-

/ch//SEESAW

Wuen Gay was told, a full week later, what they had done to Jerry for the saving of his life, her first dazed thought was that now he would never be able to dance again. Beyond that, for a moment, her mind refused to go. It was appalling that Jerry would never dance again—he who had danced so nimbly, so tirelessly. She thought of their foxtrots together at the roadhouse that last evening, early, before he became unsteady on his feet. Beautifully they had glided to the wail of the lovesick horns, while the pink lights tinted them, and the people peered. She closed her eyes and felt the motion of that dancing, as one who had sailed feels the motion of the ship when he lands. ..

Never again. Never any more.

To Alan, who had told her," she said in a dead little voice, "He'll just have to sit and watch, won't he. It seems—so—strange."

And he wouldn't be able to walk very well. That was the second link in the chain of her full comprehension. He wouldn't even be able to walk very well.

Twice that summer she had gone to see a motion picture calle�. The Big Parade. In it the hero, who looked not unlike Jerry, came back from the War maimed as Jerry was maimed. Scenes from the film flickered through her mind now, and she knew just how Jerry would walk, just how he would appear. Crutches under his armpits, hunching his shoulders high, shortening his neck. Tall body swinging from the crutches forward, onerously.

Steps that all were right steps. You would have't quite slowly, walking beside him. And you woul conspicuous—"Oh, cried Gay to herself in's "What a thing to think of!" But she had thought of it. Its mark was there.

More thoughts came. He would be half helpless, now. Almost an invalid. He would have the biggest, easiest chair, and people would wait upon him, people would say hurriedly, "No, no, don't get up, sit still." His crutches would have to be handed to him. He would need to be helped into his coat. When he walked, he couldn't carry anything; not even a book, or a package, or a girl's extra wrap. He could drive a car perhaps—but golf, tennis, things like that, would be out of the question. And he could not comfortably go where great crowds were; to football games, to prize fights, to the races. Nor could he travel with convenience. Oh, poor Jerry, what would he do with himself, what would he do?

Her face on the pillow, rimmed with bright hair, was drained of color, and her eyes were huge and horrified.

She said, "Why didn't you tell me before, Alan?"

"You were so miserable anyway, he answered. "We didn't want to make you any more unhappy, till you were stronger and could bear it better."

Gay's lashes drooped. She turned her face from Alan, toward the wall. Of course. This was hers to bear. Jerry was her man, whom she had chosen. She it was who now must walk beside him, wait upon him, sit with him and watch the gliding dancers, make daily, hourly sacrifices for him. ..

"I could get out of it, she mused. "I could—I won't, though. I won't be a quitter." But even as she told herself this, feeling faintly noble, her innermost secret self was not deceived. "You will, it said. "You'll get out of it. Why not? Why let Jerry ruin your life? He has very nearly ruined it already. Would you be here now, in this hospital—but for him? Would you wear these

"walk'd feel hame.

-

bandages around your chest and neck—would you bear scars the rest of your days—but for his utter carelessness of you?"

Her fingers crept up to her throat. Timidly, fearfully, they touched the layers of gauze that bound it tight, making her look a little like a nun. . . . Limply they fell again and lay at the sides of her body that was small and slender under the counterpane.

"I'm most terrifically sorry, Gay," Alan was saying. "Believe me, I am. It seems almost too much, doesn't it? On top of your own trouble.

"I wish I could do something, he added, frowning.

Alan was so good. After the way she had treated him.

Her eyes strayed toward him wonderingly. "Why are you so good to me, Alan?"

"I'm always good to little sick girls, he countered lightly. But his smile was a thing of the lips alone, and his eyes avoided hers.

He waited a minute. Then he struck his palms on the arms of the chair decisively, and rose. "I must go." He approached the high white bed and stood beside it, looking down. "If I can do anything," he said, "anything at all, you'll let me know, won't you? I probably won't come again, unless you need me."

"You're too busy?" she asked deliberately.

"It isn't that. As you know."

He picked up Gay's nearest hand and held it loosely in both his. "After you're out of here," he said, "we'll have to have a talk about things. In the meantime, remember I'm to hear from you if I can help in any way. I'm at the Yale Club—but of course you know that." Still he lingered. 'Are you sure you don't want me to wire to Chicago for your mother to come on?"

"No. I'd rather they didn't know anything about it."

Alan nodded, "As you say, of course, hi He started for the door. From her pillow Gay watched

"Alan, don't go, she whispered suddenly.

He faced around on the threshold, eyebrows raised. "Hm 9"

"Nothing."

"I thought you spoke."

"No. Oh, I said 'Good bye.'"

"Good bye, he echoed. "Take good care of your self."

He went. She lay inert, and listened. Footsteps firm and regular, one-two, one-two, one-two, down the corridor.

"Jerry dearest:

"This is the first time they've let me write you a note, though I've been begging to for days and days. They said you were too sick to be bothered, poor darling. But day before yesterday and yesterday were such good days for you (I'm so glad!) and today they say it will be all right for you to receive a very little one.

"Doesn't it seem queer to be writing and not seeing one another, when we've spent the last ten days only a few feet apart? Your room is right next to mine—you knew that, didn't you? I think it's quite intriguing. When you get better we must arrange a system of code signals, and thump messages to each other on the wall—though maybe we won't be able to hear, the walls seem to be very thick. I haven't heard a sound from your room, not one, though my nurse says you shouted out all your darkest secrets that first day. I tried to get her to say what they were, but the mean thing wouldn't.

"Jerry, I can't tell you how badly I feel about what's happened to you. You know I do, dear; it makes me want to cry whenever I think of it; but then, you're alive and getting well, and that's what matters. Everyone says it's a miracle we weren't both killed, so I suppose we ought to thank the Lord things aren't worse than they are. I have twenty-one stitches in my chest and neck and feel like a piece of embroidery. I'm afraid I'm going to be all scarred up and you won't call me 'Beautiful' any more, but perhaps if I wear high collars I won't look so bad. Alan cheers me with talk

-

about plastic surgery. It does wonders sometimes, and I have hopes.

"Alan has been awfully nice, Jerry. I haven't seen him now for several days, but the first week he came every day. And never a word. Has your little friend Dolly been to see you often? I know she was here the second day because she came to my door to ask how I was.

"I seem to have disobeyed orders about the 'very little' note, after all. There's so much to say—and I haven't even started! But never mind, we'll see each other soon. I'm sitting up in bed now, and one of these days when you least expect it I'll come calling on you in a wheel chair. In the meantime, I'm thinking about you, Jerry. All the time.

"Gay."

"Here," she said to the brown-haired nurse, "will you take this next door? And here—just throw these scraps away, will you please?"

The nurse chuckled. "If I can find a waste-basket big enough!"

"Gay:

"I wanted to answer your sweet little letter the minute I got it, but I'd have had to dictate my answer and I didn't think that would be so good. Today at last they've yielded and given me a pencil—for two minutes. Hope you can read this writing. I'm flat on my back still.

"What's happened to me is my own fault, Gay, and I guess it was coming to me. But I'll never so long as I live forgive myself for what's happened to you. That was all my fault too—and it's my worst punishment. Tell me that it isn't so bad, and that something can be done. 'That's one of the things I want to talk to you about. When are they going to let you come in and see me? You're right. There's a lot to be said. And a lot to be settled.

"Alan has been wonderful to me, too. He's one damned fine fellow, Gay, that husband of yours.

"They won't let me write any more now. So till later—

-

256 Little Sms

His room was just like her room; she had't subconscious impressien of it. The same yel�. The identical white-painted iron furnishings pair of rocking chairs, placed as if for the ex gossip sotto voce. Only in details did the two differ. There were not so many flowers on the top in Jerry's room. There were no merry n piled on his bedside table. The blond nurse was so was the enormous framed photograph cent flowers on the bureau—a photograph, she later di of Dolly Quinn.

Her conscious mind, all her acutest p 1 bent upon Jerry himself. She was thinking ho lay on the high white bed; how pinched and face looked, pointed toward the ceiling; how it was that the counterpane should tent so h his left thigh—and then so abruptly drop to perfe ness. She had an instant's grisly impulse to and explore that smoothness with her hand. It be as flat there as it seemed.

She said, "Well, here I am!" And hated the silly speech, and laughed a small feverish laugh to cover it.

Jerry's profile shifted, and his chin dug into his collar bone so that without lifting his head he might watch her approach. He was very thin and ghastly, and unshaven. But his eyes were the old Jerry's eyes. Mocking. Sleepylidded.

"Bless your little heart," he said, "here you are at last. And I'm so glad to see you—Push her up closer, please, where I cam see her."

Gay's wheel chair was propelled to the very edge of the bed. 'Nou'remember, warned her beaming nurse. "Not a long visit this first time. I'll be back to get you in ten minutes."

Both nurses withdrew.

The pair left behind were without words, at first. They smiled softly. Their hands came together on the counter

hat swift, ow walls. The very change of chambers ie bureau nagazines new, and ering the iscovered.

ons, were w still he sharp his incredible igh above ct smoothreach out

could not

-

pane, and clung. Jerry's hand was warmly moist, and the knuckles felt like big pebbles below the skin. Gay thought, "He's a shadow. He must have suffered wnutterably. Oh, poor, poor Jerry, I'm so sorry for him!" But she wished she could let go of that damp hot hand.

"Jerry, she began.!

The hand pressed hers quickly; a silencing pressure. "Don't," he said. "Please. It's easier if people don't say anything at all." His mouth quirked whimsically. "Left to my own devices, he explained. "I'm quite genial about it. I've developed into quite a Pollyanna. I think, well, it might have been both legs—and I think how I fooled a certain varicose vein—and so on. But the minute somebody comes along and feels sorry for me, then I begin to feel sorry for myself. I begin to think it was a damned fine leg at that, for all its faults. Serviceable. Handy to own."

She did not have to tell herself then that she pitied him. His flippancy was lacerating—the more so because it seemed quite effortless. He might have been speaking of some tiny minor mishap, like a bruise or the breaking of a nail. . . . Her emotion must have betrayed itself in her glance, for I erry drew her hand to his lips and kissed the palm of it. "Thank you, honey, he murmured.

He released her hand, and locked his two together behind his head on the shallow pillow. His eyes regarded her obliquely. "It's you I want to talk about, he stated. He was not smiling now. 'Those bandages of yours—hit me where I live."

Gay's hands went swiftly to her throat and clasped it, in that gesture that was to be a habit of hers in days to come. Pity for herself, hovering always very near the surface, leaped uppermost, and eclipsed all other pity. Jerry ceased to be Jerry, crippled, sick, pathetically valiant; and became an Audience.

"J ust think," she said, "I'll never be able to wear a low

necked evening gown again. Never." Her eyes had

-

strayed, so that she missed Jerry's wince, the ti;

of his lips. "The bandages aren't anything."

tinued. 'It's when they take them off! Great

jagged marks, one here, and one here, and one

she traced the lines on her chest with her finger,—auu one that comes up on my neck, clear to here—"

"Don't, he cried out.

She looked back at him vaguely; her vision was still focused upon the memory of that torn stitched flesh, her own flesh, glimpsed shudderingly whenever they changed the dressings.

"It's not your fault,'"she said mechanically. "I'm not blaming you, Jerry."

"Of course it's my fault! If I hadn't been drunk—"

She wondered, eyeing him, whether he knew how entirely his fault it was; whether he knew about the bottle. She decided that in all probability he did not. He would fail to recall that he had handed the bottle to her, to hold. And they of the hospital, sparing him such anguish as they could, would not have enlightened him. Her mind acknowledged the rightness of this, but some small insensate demon in the back of it wished that he did know, insisted that he ought to know, itched to tell him.

She said tentatively, "It's queer, how it happened—" And thought, "I won't say any more, I won't!"

"Yes, agreed Jerry listlessly. 'Dolly told me."

Gay sat bolt upright, grasping the arms of her wheel chair. "Dolly told you?"

He nodded. "I made her. I'd thought it all over a thousand times, you see, lying here. I was sure it couldn't have been the windshield, and I had a hunch—I asked her, and kept asking, and she finally admitted my hunch was right."

"That was unkind of her," Gay said coldly.

"She couldn't help it. I knew anyway. No, added Jerry, "it wasn't unkind. Dolly is never unkind."

"She's been here a lot, asked Gay, after a slight pause.

shtening she conterrible

here, ee

-

He nodded, but gave no other answer. "Of course, he resumed, "words are futile. I could tell you to in dying day how sorry I am, and how I curse myself—wouldn't have had it happen, Gay, for anything in the world—"

"I know," she said, as he broke off.

"There are two things," Jerry went on slowly, "that I know of that I can do toward compensation. They're very little things comparatively, but if you'll let me do them I'll at least feel I've done something. One is, I can send you to the best plastic surgeons in this country—or abroad, if they're better there—and see if they can't help. I'm sure they can, somehow. They must.

"The other—" He interrupted himself again and gazed at Gay, straight and soberly at her. He reached for herhand once more, and fitted her fingers between his fingers. "I can give you back to Alan," he said.

So! He was going to make it easy for her! She felt lighter of heart than she had for days, breathed more freely . . . even while she shrilled as wonderingly as though the notion was quite new to her, "But Jerry! Why?"

Still holding her hand, he smiled at her from under his lazy lids. "My dear," he said, "let's be honest. I know, and you know, that you don't love me—now. You don't any more want to marry me now than—than I want to marry my nurse. Don't think I'm criticizing you! I'm not. I don't blame you, not the least bit. You loved me because I was the ideal playmate for you; that was my appeal. And that's gone now, of course. I can't play any more." Again his whimsical tilted smile. "The Referee—has ruled me out."

He covered her hand with his free one, and squeezed it hard. "So, he finished, "we'll call it quits, won't we."

It seemed to Gay that she ought to protest, that it was heartless not to protest at least a little; but she did not. What use, really? Why argue, and pretend, and fib—

-

only to reach the conclusion that had already, economy of words and embarrassment, been

Jerry's final "won't w, had had no question ms

end. It had not expected other than an affirmati —or an affirmative silence. She gave it the latter. She sat holding tight to his hand, and looking at the r house visible through the window, and thinking number of the Yale Club was Murray Hill ei

eight-o . . . eight-one-eight-o. ..

"Alan will want you back, of course, observe

"Of course, she echoed. After an instant sh her head and eyed him somewhat uneasily. "WI you say that, Jerry? There isn't any doubt there?"

"Not that I know of. No, certainly not. He's mad about you. Only," said Jerry, "I think you may have to be rather diplomatic."

"I don't see why."

"You don't?" He smiled slightly. "Rememb ~your husband is nobody's fool. You left hi�. There can't help being a suspicion in his mind n if I hadn't had this—mishap—you'd never have co to him."

"But I would have, cried Gay. And so high seesaw of her affections elevated Alan with Jerr that she actually believed herself. "I adore / said earnestly. "I don't think I'd ever have div: really, when it came right down to it. You me, Jerry—you were the ideal playmate, as you said yourself. But that wouldn't have lasted. Not even if you—if this hadn't happened. You mustn't think that thas has made any difference. I'd have come to my senses in time, accident or no accident."

Jerry's eyes were amused, they were cynical, mocking. But his tongue accorded politely with what she had said. "Of course. And if you can sell that idea to Alan—" He folded his hands,"AIlI's well that ends well."

with an reached? irk on its ve reply.

that the 'ight-one

d Jerry e turned iat made of it, is

or, Gray, for me iow that me back

th had the y's descent \lan, she orced him, fascinated.

-

en mT a EEE eee

Seesaw "You think I can't?"

"On the contrary. I think," said Jerry, smiling at her, "—-T have always found—that a gorgeous brown-eyed blonde can sell almost anything to practically anybody."

"I bow," said Gay, also smiling.

They were silent then. Jerry contemplated a scar in the ceiling over his head. Gay looked through the window again, wondering why his remarks about Alan had even dimly disturbed her. It was silly to feel disturbed. It was ridiculous to consider for one second such an absolute impossibility. . . . She decided that she would not consider it; that she would banish it from her mind, completely, and now. She thought, "I'll talk." And spoke the first words that occurred to her: "I see you have Dolly's picture over there."

Both regarded the picture, Jerry longer than Gay. She glanced back at him and watched him as he looked at it.

"So this is love!" she said suddenly.

He nodded, not moving his eyes. "It always has been."

"Always?" Gay would not have been Gay if she had forborne the little arch reminder.

Jerry did not appear to hear it, and presently she said, "Well. Maybe you'll marry her after all—now that you've disposed of me?"

"No," said Jerry firmly. "I won't do that."

"I don't see why not,' Gay argued, rather diverted by the discovery that she could so argue and feel nothing at all." You love her. You've just admitted it. And the only thing about you she didn't care for was the drinking, and you probably won't be wanting to do much of that from now on. Why don't you ask her to take you back?"

"She has already offered to."

"She has? Well, then—"

Jerry went on, unheeding. His voice marveled: "In spite of everything, Gay. She did it in the sweetest way you possibly can imagine. Not as if she were sorry for me, doing it out of pity, but as if she really wanted—"

-

He checked himself sharply, and Gay saw't of his throat contract. "She's a good actress cluded dryly. "She doesn't love me. I know just her—beautiful loyalty. And her big hear

Gay found nothing to say.

"I told her," said Jerry after a moment, "that I was in love with you, Gay. I told her you and I were going to be married—although I knew we wouldn't be. I told her everything I could think of to try and talk her out of it. Even about the rotten way I make my living." He thought a minute, "I never told you that, did I?"

"No.'

"I publish little leather-bound books that have nothing in them but collected smut—jokes, verses, anecdotes—and my agents peddle the books around on the quiet, chiefly in college towns." One corner of Jerry's mouth curled up. "Pretty, isn't it?"

Gay was staring at him curiously . thinking how little one really knew about the people one knew best in this odd world, remembering that she had never once heard Jerry tell a questionable story, nor make a risque remark.

"Jerry," she said, "I never dreamed—"

"Thanks, ironically.

She took a new tack. 'Well, and what did Dolly say to that?" She supplemented: "I can't see exactly why you had to tell her that anyway, unless you just wanted to. I mean—did the argument need clinching? I should think that when you told her you loved me, that would have been quite sufficient. It wasn't true—but she didn't know it wasn't." There was a note of uncertainty in Gay's tone. She herself was not sure that it wasn't true. She was not sure of anything just now, but all confused.

"Yes, she did," said Jerry. "She knew. I gave myself away, you see, inadvertently. When I was delirious, and again when I was coming out of the ether, I called—nobody's name but hers. Like a fool, he muttered.

"Oh. I see."

he muscles WY.

-

There was a protracted pause.

"She was sorry," Jerry said at last, "about the business. She was disappointed in me—again. But it didn't change her mind. I couldn't make her change her mind, no matter what I said. I haven't yet."

"Well? Why try?" queried Gay.

It seemed to her, when she said it, a sensible thing to say; but Jerry's eyes made her feel that it was stupid. They were almost impatient with her, those dark eyes. "Do you think," he said simply, "I could let her marry a wreck like me?"

"Jerry! You're—"

"Oh, he interrupted, and the impatience was in his voice now, "I don't mean because 'm—crippled. Not that specially. They'll give me a nice new leg, painted pink and only a little too short, and I'll be as good as new—standing still. It's not that, so much as it's other things. I've had a lot of time lately to think, Gay, and figure things out. Just as you have. And I've got them figured now, for once and for all. I can't have Dolly. She's not for me, and she never was. She deserves the best—morally, physically, all round—and the thing for me to do is be on my way, so that some day she can get it."

"Oh, breathed Gay. "How—how—" She could not find the word.

"When I get out of here," Jerry said, "I'm going to sell my business—if I can find a buyer—and I'm going West, I think. To Montana. I've a friend there who's—".

He stopped. His gaze strayed past Gay, toward the door. "Hello, he smiled. 'The police are back."

"Now, Mr. Davis! I've given you twice as long as I should've, and here you call me names!" The nurse leaned over Gay. "This little lady has got to get back into bed."

"All right," said Gay absently. Her eyes had not left Jerry's face.

-

"Bed, he repeated. "That sounds like a word! He smiled at Gay. His lean moist hand grip again, briefly. "So long, sugar," he said, just as he had always said it. "You'll come in again and say hello, won't you, o

"Of course. Of course I will."

"And, he hesitated, "if you talk to her, you won't say anything about Montana, will you? It's better if she doesn't know, until I'm gone."

"I won't, Jerry."

They wheeled her away. She went looking back at Jerry, around the side of her chair. She wanted him to see that there were real tears on her lashes. . . . But he did not see. His eyes were closed.

[ know, ped hers

-

/ch//THE THIRD. SEPTEMBER

"Tus party," said Ray Ourtis Elliott, "will be a bore."

"I think it's going to be fun, protested Dolly.

"You always think things are going to be fun."

"Well, they always are!"

From his great height he smiled down upon the little velvet-wrapped, fur-collared figure that lilted along at his side, taking three steps to his one. "Perhaps they'll call on you for a speech, he suggested.

Dolly stopped dead. "Ray! They wouldn't!"

"Why not? What could be more fitting? Here's a party, went on Elliott very solemly, "given to inaugurate the publication of a new young magazine—a dinner party given by the publishers, with the artists and writers who contributed to the first issue as guests of honor. And here are you, the newest and youngest contributor of the bunch. Not to say the loveliest. Not to say—

Dolly chuckled, reassured. 'You scared me, she remarked. 'For one fiendish minute I thought you really thought they might. And of course I'd just die—Here, Ray. Take my wrap, please."

She spilled it off backward, a fluffy white mass, into his hands. While he checked it she stood on the threshold of the hotel banquet room, gazing in. They were not late, she noted with relief—and with some surprise, for one rather expected to be late when the leisurely Elliott was one's escort. She surveyed the scene before her eagerly. Tables arranged in a vast unbroken horseshoe, burdened with thousands of roses, miles of smilax, tons of silver.

2"Little Sims

Encircling gilt-backed chairs, empty as yet.

corner, in a palmy grotto, a jazz band awaited

You could see the musicians' shirtfronts, g)

you could hear the instruments tentatively

brass and silver throats. At the end of the

was another doorway that linked it with a

room. People were drifting into this doorway. Laughing, gay people with goblets in their hands were drifting out again. ..

Dolly distinguished several whom she knew. T!

Brooks Uling, talking to a woman in green. Ov was the little poetess, Annabelle Savage, whose touched her bare golden shoulders. And the pud occupied gentleman bustling from group to group, Oliver, father of his new born magazine—J Oliver, who, more than a year ago, when heManhattamte, had published Dolly Quinn's f ings, and thus given himself the right to claim Discovery.

Dolly's eyes watched Jackson Oliver, and she smiled. She was thinking of a certain tin lock box under the couch in her little studio, and of a certain document it contained. "BE IT UNDERSTOOD: That the Paramount Publishing Company, hereinafter referred to as party of the first part, agrees to pay to Dolly Quinn, hereinafter referred to as party of the second part, the sum of one hundred dollars ($100) apiece for twenty-four (24) drawings.." A page full of typing, and at the bottom, signatures, in ink still scarcely dry: "Jackson J. Oliver, Editor-in-chief (Party of the first part); Dolly Quinn (Party of the second part)." With a smear on the final n of the Quinn, because she had been so excited. . . .

"What are you smiling about, demanded Elliott, joining her.

"Nothing special. I just feel good. Look, Ray, directed Dolly, nodding toward the horseshoe table. "What do you s'pose those are beside each 'place?"

et. In a far zited its hour eaming white; clearing their ballroom there nother smaller

There was Iver there a earrings udgy, pre>", was Mr. ackson I edited the irst drawher as his

—s =a—os << SS ee ES

= a-Sa SB A = The Third September 267%

"Let's find out."

"Thos, proved upon closer inspection to be advance copies of the new magazine's first issue, bound in suede. They served a double purpose, being not only sonyenirs but place cards. Upon each the name of a contributor

was stamped in large gilt letters.

"You can look those over later,"said Elliott, tucking a hand under Dolly's elbo�. "�here's a lot of important drinking to be done at the moment. Come on.' /

They crossed an acre of carpeted floor and entered the anteroom where champagne was being served. It was noisy, smoky, crammed with people. 'People got in your way. Acquaintances stopped you for greetings. Strangers bumped into you, mumbled apologies, were themselves bumped, and jostled you again.

"Here," said Elliott, "this won't do." He led Dolly out again and sat her down in a chair beside the door. "You wait here. I'll bring you some."

She waited. <A tall, sallow, young-old man with a forked mustache came and kissed her hand and sat beside her. He was Charles Fernando, for whom, once upon a time, she had often posed. He spoke of this, as he invariably did when they met. "And now you have them posing for you, eh?"

"Yes—poor things."

He regarded her with friendly black eyes. 'Making a lot of money?"

"You wouldn't call it a lot," she said, "but for me it's a fortune."

"Well, advised Fernando, "don't tie yourself up with any contracts."

Dolly looked startled. "Why not?"

"Foolish if you do. You're going to be the rage, young lady, in another year. I know. I've watched your stuff. I've heard the talk. Sign up now for—oh, say eighty, a hundred dollars a drawing—whatever you make—and that's what you'll get six months from now, when you

-

might be worth a hundred and fifty." He wa head. "Don't do it."

"Somebody, thought Dolly, "is always takin out of life." But she was not really bothered dred and fifty dollars for one of her drawings possible! She forgot that one hundred dollars w seemed impossible, a little year ago.

"You've come up fast," Fernando was talking on. 'When I think of the struggle I had—why, say, do you know that it took me seven years to gain any sort of recognition? And four more to get anywhere near where [—Yow're not listening."

Dolly's eyes returned to his with guilty haste. "I'm so sorry! I—there's a man over there I used to know."

"Someone rather special, hazarded Fernando, observing her quizzically. 'Yes?"

"No, no. Just an acquaintance. But—" Dolly hesitated. "I haven't seen him since a year ago—" Again her eyes were drawn away from her visd-vis, to the main entrance across the room. "I wonder what he's doing here, she murmured.

"Striking looking chap," said Fernando, following her glance. "You mean the young giant with the tan, I take s+ 99 ."Um-hum."

"Who is he?"

"His name's Pomeroy. I don't know who he is exactly, except that he's in the advertising business."

"Pomeroy Agency, perhaps? The old man has a couple of sons."

"Perhaps," said Dolly. "I don't know." Abruptly she brought her attention back to Fernando; became quite elaborately attentive, desiring to atone for her lapse. "Anyway. Forgive me. You were telling about the seven years—"

He went on telling about them. Dolly strove to listen. Ordinarily this man's account of his climb to artistic

agged his

g the joy One hun—oh, tmr ould have

-

eminence would have engrossed her; but now, although her gentian eyes remained intent and responsive on his face, she did not listen long. Her mind wandered again. Alan Pomeroy. Alan. Right over there in the doorway. Would he see her, recognize her? Was he even now coming across the floor to speak to her? Someone was coming, a dark shape glimpsed out of the corner of her eye.

"+ No. Wrong man. . . . Perhaps he wouldn't notice her at all. A year was a long time; he might easily have forgotten all about her. Well, she would remind him. In a little while, if he hadn't come, she would march straight over to him and say," Don't you remember me?" Because she had to talk to him. He might know something about Jerry.

She thought this, and then, being a >erson habitually honest with herself, she thought, "Now that's ridiculous. He won't know anything about Jerry. That's just an excuse. You think he's nice, and you've been kind of thinking all year it would be nice to see him again, and that's why you want to talk to him. There!"

After which she felt much better, and was able to consider the situation without self-consciousness. Here was Alan Pomeroy. What was he doing here, at this party? Was he a contributor to the new magazine, or had his advertising business earned him an invitation? Had he brought Gay? The last time Dolly had seen him (it was only the fourth or fifth time in her life) he had been with Gay. From the window of Jerry's hospital room she had watched him help Gay into his roadster—carefully, gently, as if she might break—and drive her away, toward New York; and she had thought, "That's all fixed up, then." She wondered now. Was it fixed up? She had not seen or heard of either since, until tonight.

She flung another glance across the room, and suddenly was tense in all her muscles. Alan was coming toward her—no, not toward her, toward the door beside which she sat. He was alone, and he was striding briskly, his

-

fingers tucked into the pockets of his dinner ja thumbs outside, like large pale commas. He perceived her. His eyes were fixed above and her, on someone or something in the anteroom fraction of a minute he would pass her by. In second—

"Good evening," she said demurely.

"Good—" The instinctive social echo was h before he really saw her.—: Then, "Why, hullo cried Alan. 'Well, I'll be darned. It's you!" 1] down, thrusting forth his big hand, flashing his in smile.

"But who, quizzed Dolly, dimple much in evidence, am I 97?

She knew very well he knew. And he must have known that she knew it, for he did not trouble to reply. "Say," he said. "It's perfectly great to see you."

"You tried not to. Tried your best!" She withdrew her hand from his and was gratified to find that, however it might feel as a result of his grip, it looked the same. "Mr. Pomeroy, Mr. Fernando, she murmured, nodding from one to the other.

The two exchanged amenities. Fernando resumed his chair, and Alan dragged another out of the line and placed it before Dolly.

"Well," he said, seating himself with the careless grace of the very muscular. "It's getting to be an annual thing, isn't it? Every September regularly our paths cross. This makes the third in succession."

They contemplated one another smilingly, with frank interest. "Tell me, added Ala�. "�ow've you been, and all that sort of thing?"

"Fine, thank you."

"Unnecessary question, of course. I have eyes."

"Yes, thought Dolly to that. Such eyes, such great, gray, laughing eyes they were.

"I'm so glad to find you at this party," Alan continued.

cket, the had not beyond

In the another

alf out there!" He bent atchless

-

"I don't know what to de. I thought there'd be nobody present but editors and authors and artists and such. And editors and authors and artists, he grinned cheerfully at Fernando, "—cramp my feeble style. I mean to say, I'm scared to death of 'em. So I hadn't anticipated a very high time. But—things are picking up."

"Speaking of ar, began Fernando, but subsided, having been severely nudged.—

"How do you happen to be here?" Dolly asked Alan.

"There's a business connection, he answered. "And you? Ican guess. You're the girl on the magazine cover."

"No, I'm not."—"You're the heart-smashing heroine in an illustration."

"No."

"You're the beautiful lady washing her hair with Mulsified Cocoanut Oil." ©

"Colder and colder."

"Then what are you? I abhor guessing games."

"Oh," Dolly quoted airily, "there's a business connection—"

Ray Curtis Elliott reappeared bearing two glasses from which most of the original content had been spilled in transit. He was followed through the anteroom door by a jocular group that swarmed around Dolly and Fernando. Dolly presented Alan, and thereafter, while she laughed and talked and sipped her champagne, covertly watched him, Nice. Nice voice, engaging manner, irresistible smile. They liked him. You could tell. It was rather pleasant to be the one who had introduced him..

Presently he maneuvered himself next to her and requested in an aside if she knew where she was to sit at the banquet table. Dolly didn't: know.

"What are you going to do, she added, as he started purposefully off.

He came back, and leaned down until their heads were confidentially close together. "You won't tell?"

6e 0."

-

"You won't make any public outcry, no matter what your private reactions?"

"I'll try not to."

"I'm going," said Alan, "to juggle a couple of place cards around."

They met again at the table a few minutes later. Alan was there before her, standing with his hands on the backs of two adjacent chairs. As she approached, attended by Elliott, he patted one of the chairs and said, "It seems we're together, Miss Quinn, so gravely, so guilelessly, that she almost giggled aloud.

When Elliott had gone on she asked in an undertone, "Didn't anybody see you do it?"

"Doubtless, complacently. "But nobody said �. That's the advantage of being twnconnu—they thought I was a waiter." He poked forward h head and gazed past her. "Who's the fattishyour left?"

"I don't know. I never saw him before."

"Good, approved Alan. "If he makes any overtures, get haughty. Say, 'Sir! I believe I have not the honor, and tell him that under no circumstances do you talk to strangers. Because I want all—you hear me?—all your attention."

They were seated now. They smiled, gray eyes into blue, blue into gray. Dolly saw that his lashes were thick and straight, as a man's should be; that his hair, slicked tight beside a waxen central part, would crinkle when the water that slicked it dried. She had a swift clear recollection of the hair, crinkly and crisp and reddish in the sunlight of a long-ago morning.

Evidently he too was thinking of that morning, for he said without preamble, "What about Jerry Davis? Tell me. Dolly shook her head slowly. "I don't know a thing.

nything, probably is ruddy narty on

-

He went away, you know, as soon as he got out of the hosital—" P "Yes, I knew that."

"He went West. I don't even know where. Just 'West' was all he said. Or wrote, rather." She reached for her water goblet, twisted its narrow stem around and around between two pinching fingers. "He didn't tell me he was going. He never mentioned going. He just wrote me a letter and mailed it when he left, saying he would be gone when I got it—and why." Her eyes flashed up; consulted Alan's. "You knew why?"

He nodded. "Gay told me." There was nothing to be learned, nothing to be even guessed, from the way he said "Gay." He said it without hesitation, matter-of-factly, "—as though, reflected Dolly, "it was just anybody's name."

"I thought it was—heroic of him," Alan went on. "I didn't know which to admire the more: you, for what you tried to do, or Davis for what he did."

"There's no comparison," she said simply. "What he did was hard to do, terribly hard. It meant giving up everything. New York. All his friends. Everything he cared about and was used to. What I wanted to do wouldn't have been hard for me. It would have made me very happy, I think, in a way."

"In a way," Alan emphasized, "yes, maybe. But—you didn't love him."

"No.7"

"I remember you told me that, that day."

Dolly tasted her fruit cocktail absently; found it tasteless; put down her spoon.

"And you've never heard a word from him since, queried Alan.

"Not a word. Except—" Her fingers plucked at a circle of diamonds finished with a diamond bowknot, pinned to her gown. "He sent me this, last Christmas. Just with his card. It came direct from a shop in San

-

274 "Little Sine

Francisco, and I wrote to them right away, but: back that they didn't have his address."

"It's beautiful," said Alan soberly.

"Tsn't it? I think the world of it." D, fruit cocktail again. "Of course, she's laden spoon poised, he shouldn't have done ried about it, because it must have been awful and he certainly ought not to throw his money especially now. He sold his business—"She 'Did you know about his business?"

"I knew a little about it. I—Gay told me wh�. So he sold it, did he?"

"Yes, A friend of his, Parker Lane, sold it while he was still in the hospital. It was all: terious. He got twenty-five thousand, but whoev it wouldn't allow Parker to tell anybody who he even Jerry himself! I've always thought, obser reflectively, "that that was so funny."

"Um," said Alan, busy with a cigarette.

"Wasn't it?"

Alan ignited the cigarette and waved the match to extinguish its flame before he answered. "Yes," he said.

"rather. But then again—maybe the buyer thought it wasn't the sort of business he wanted his name linked up with—

"Still, he might have told Jerry. Jerry certainly couldn't have censored him for it." Dolly shook her head in a puzzled way. "I can't understand—

"Pardon me." <A voice in her left ear. She turned from Alan obediently and at once smiled her very best smile; for this was the sort of little old man she liked. A plump, pink, twinkling little old man, much like a shaved Santa Claus.

"I observe," he said, "from your souvenir copy of the maiden publication whose début we have foregathered here to celebrate—er—that you are Miss Dolly Quinn."

"Yes, I am."

ut they wrote

ly tried the upplemented, it. I've worly expensive, pney around. She paused.

what it was.

1 it for him,'ll very mysoever bought he was—not served Dolly

-

"Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Harker, Eric Harker.'"He hurried over the name, it being rather a great name and he a very humble little old man. "I believe it is to you I am indebted for the illustrations that grace and glorify this little story—"

His own copy of the new magazine was open in his hands. Dolly peered down at it. Needlessly. She knew the page well. "Night Moth' by Erve Harker. Illustrated by Dolly Quimn."

"I'm afraid I'm guilty," she said. And to herself, 'Heavens, who'd have thought he'd look like that? He's a darling—but his stories—he ought to look like Adolphe Menjou."

"Guilty, he repeated. "Guilty, reproachfully. "My dear child, let me tell you something. You have genius. Genius!" He roared the word, and as he roared, beat the table once with a wrinkled pink fist, so that dishes jumped and silver jumped and blocks of ice in glasses jumped, and people stared, and Dolly thought, "Oh, this is awful,"—but rather liked it.

"I'm so glad you think so, she half whispered.

"Think?" He was still emphatic, but he was more quiet about it." I know! You wonder how I know. I will enlighten you. Writing is my business—but art is my hobby. I've made a study of it for years. That's how I know." He smoothed the open page with fingers that were almost reverent, and invited Dolly to behold her handiwork. "See! Immature in spots, of course. You're very young. You can't have had a great deal of training. But the sweep of those lines—the shading in that background—God in heaven, child! What can you not do, what can you not accomplish, when you start so!"

He held her in conversation for several minutes; asked countless questions about her training, her work, her ambitions; hearkened with flattering interest to the replies. Finally, abruptly he said, "Thank you, my dear. Resume now your ¢eete-d-tete with the Herculean young man.

-

Marry him, if you like. But—" He held up warningly. "Don't make a home for him. Gen in dish water. Please remember."

Upon which this astounding person presented of his shaggy white head obliviously to her gaze.

"Well, gasped Dolly inwardly.

She was almost afraid to look around at Alan, for fear he might have overheard that final admonition. She devoted herself to her plate, wondering vaguely o become of the first two courses. . . . She felt Als felt them so acutely that her cheeks burned on eating, taking very small, prim bites of this A bite of fish. A nibble of bread. A sip of water.

"I hope," said Alan affably, "you choke."

She looked at him then, wide-eyed. "Ah," he said. "That's better. Insults get results. Now will you be good enough to drop that fork and give me your undivided attention for a moment?"

She dropped the fork and folded her hands, hooking them to the table edge by their little fingers. 'You have it."

"Why, he began sternly, "didn't you tell me?" He tapped the magazine.

"Well—for one thing, you said you were afraid of artists."

"Tam! And if I'm afraid of artists, how do you think geniuses affect me?"

Dolly gurgled amusement. "Oh, you heard him?"

"Heard him! They heard him in Harlem! And when he pounded the table, pictures fell off the walls in Queens! Of course I heard him. And I hastened to open my own copy, to look for myself, and found to my unutterable confusion that the old baby's probably reght!" He scowled fiercely. "You got that seat under false pretences, woman. You got it because I thought you and I were interlopers in the realm of the arts, and should stick together. And

now look at you!"

one finger ius drowns

id the back e.

what had in's eyes; She kept and that.

-

"Well," said Dolly meekly, "shall I move?"

They smiled together. Alan abandoned his bantering tone; he turned slightly sideways in his chair, the better to contemplate her. "I want to know all about it," he said. "I want to catch up. You were a model a year ago—and then what happened? And how? Give me the lowdown."

She explained, briefly, lightly. 'Well, I'd been studying art off and on for two or three years, and about the time I met you I was just beginning to do something with it. I got a few odd jobs, and I used to take one day a week off from posing, and draw. I got along fairly well, and a couple of magazines took an interest in me, and pretty soon I had to take two days a week off. Then I picked up some commercial work, ads and fashion sketches. And I sold another magazine a full-page drawing to go with a poem—a college boy I knew wrote the poem—and they gave me a story to illustrate. My first story. About that time I began to take three days a week. And—" She paused. 'And so it went."

"How many days, inquired Alan, "are you taking now?"

"All of them."

"Not posing any more?"

"No. I haven't for four or five months."

"I'm glad I didn't call you, he remarked thoughtfully.

She scanned him with interest. "Did you think of calling me?"

"Several times. I was going to call you and ask you to pose for some of our stuff. Ads, you know."

"Well, why didn't you?"

"T—just didn't." His eyes met hers for a strange, a clashing instant; then fell again. "I think I would have," he said, "before long, if I hadn't happened to run across you again. You see—it's just been lately that I thought of calling."

"Oh." After a little deliberation Dolly said, picking

-

her words, "I don't know whether that's co or not. It's nice to be remembered after a would be nice if you'd remembered me once "ing that year.

"I mean, remembered me when you needed she added in some confusion, and flushed.

She looked very carefully at her plate, and that Alan beside her was looking at his. From her eye she saw him spear two tiny French fork. "I remembered," he said. "But I had things on my mind, until lately."

"Oh," Dolly murmured again.

She took up her own fork; dabbed aimlessly

"Gay divorced me, you know," said Alan.

Dolly laid down the fork again. She felt—un ably, idiotically—that it would tremble if she 'Really," she said.

Alan sent her a quick oblique glance, "I told you that day that she was going to."

"Yes, but I thought—I thought perhaps afterwards she—you—

"No," he said. Merely that. Nothing more.

With one accord they turned away from one another then, and became excessively polite to the persons on their other sides. Dolly asked Eric Harker if he took his char acters from real life or if he invented them, but to this day she does not know what he answered. She was absorbed in the thumping of her pulses, in the si her mind. She was busy with self-rebuke, "Li Silly! Stop it! There's no reason for you to! this!" . . . Presently she sensed that Alan had ¢ his remarks to the lady on his right and turned't once she was in a fever to turn back also. Eric continuing voice filled her with unreasonable im She wanted to say, "Never mind. Thanks just 1 but—never mind now."

At the first lull she smiled at the little old man, and

mplimentary year—but it or twice dur

-d a model."

d was aware in the tail of yeas with his ad—a lot of

ssly with it.—unaccount' ghe didn't.

nging of ttle fool! feel like oncluded ack. At Harker's patience.—he same.

-

nodded hurriedly. Then the soft white V of her chin came around, left shoulder to right shoulder. ..

"Hullo," Alan grinned.

"Hello."

"You seem fascinated. What was he telling you, anyway?"

"He was telling me," Dolly said earnestly, "how he gets his fiction characters."

"How does he?"

"Well—he didn't make it very plain."

They were not to talk about Gay any more just now; Alan's eyes, his tone, his new mood, decreed it. Dolly eared not at all. She had no further curiosity. There had been a divorce; if she never heard any more than just that, she would not care.

They were to talk about Dolly. Alan insisted. "Go on, he urged. "Tell me lots more things." And he interrogated her, as had Eric Harker, and she answered him. Yes, she worked very hard indeed. Regular hours—nine till four or five. Yes, her time was pretty full. She had a contract with this new magazine, two illustrations an issue for one year; that would take a week or more every month. The rest of the time she would work on things for other publications, and on commercial orders. Of course she'd do some drawings for his firm—if he wasn't just trying to be nice to her. Oh, any time he had something in her line. Not colors; she wasn't so good at colors. ..

Again Alan opened the magazine and studied her illustrations. "Great," he said. "Honestly they are. Though of course it doesn't mean anything, coming from me." And then, "Who was your model for the girl?"

"Bee Standish," Dolly told him. "My very best friend. You've heard of Nick Standish, haven't you? He writes that 'Bagdad-on-the-Subway' column in the Star? 'Well, his wife. She was my roommate when I lived on Eighth Street—Bee James, she was then. She was 2 model too—

-

and she's my model now whenever I want her, heart."

"She looks very lovely."

"She is. She's marvelous."

Alan let the pages fall back into place. 'So,"vou don't live on Eighth Street any more?"

"No. I moved in June, when Bee was married. I've got a little studio apartment on University Place. One of those," said Dolly, "that are all studio. Youkr—

"No, I don't," said Alan.

"Why, I mean the studio is so huge compare oth—" She broke off; laughed a little. "You w ing," she said.

"I was hinting," said Alan.

"Oh. Well—you can come and see it some day, if that's what you mean."

"What day?"

"Oh—any day you like."

"Tomorrow is one of my favorite days," said Alan.

bless her

he said.

10W.

d to the rere fool

-

/ch//FALLING STAR

SHE was seated at her dressing table, polishing her nails with a buffer like a tiny white boat, when she suddenly remembered. In the looking glass she saw herself remember; saw the slender brows contract under the scalloped yellow hair, saw the brown eyes fix and widen, the pinktipped hands grow listless, cease their motions. She dropped the buffer and joined her fingers loosely. She sat still. Like a portrait of a girl, that girl in the mirror, so painted-still she sat. A portrait of a girl whose flimsy silk peignoir with its border of wilted lace lay open, revealing above a chiffon slip her creamy throat, etched with dead-white lines, thin, crooked, cruel. . . . But Gay was not looking at the lines. She was looking at the wide dark eyes, watching them intently, as if to see how they took the small, dull blow her memory without warninghad delivered.

She had been divorced a year today.

All day she had not thought of it. Each day was like another, and time went by, and the month and the date meant little. She had never once recalled what day this was until just now, when the day was old, when the city glittered, baffling the night with a billion bright white lights, beyond her windows.

Sitting here before the mirror, staring, she could trace the sequence of idle thoughts that had ended finally in this recollection. Fingernails . . . tomorrow at ten a manicure appointment . . . manicures at the Charm Shop cost a dollar now . higher-priced, like everything else

. Money, money . soon another dres bills . . . getting near the end of the mon was what? . the twenty-eighth . thet of March. . . . Anniversary. She very slightly smiled. 'Well, one thing I'm not as blue as I was a year ago tonight, something of the anguish of that night recurr: she shook her head sharply, closed her eyes, p: elbows on the dressing table so that her palms n tight against her temples. She remained thus, motionless, for a long t: Her mind reached further back into last ye the day of her release from the hospital. A roadster had come for her, because she had the day before and asked him to come and driv�. They had talked scarcely at all on the way been very dear, very solicitous and kind; but: tive. She had snuggled low in the seat beside hearsing mentally, for the hundredth time, the tl would say. . . later . . . And later, in the livi of their bungalow on the roof (having invited him on up and talk a little while") she had said thos She did not remember now what words she had what gestures employed. It was of no consequenc remembered Alan's words, almost every one, and h and even his voice, quiet and even. "But what w the use, Gay? The thing's quite hopeless. We could pateh it up—but no blown-out tire runs very far on a patch." That was the sort of thing he had said, so quietly. "You don't give a damn for me, honey. You never did. Davis is out of the picture now—but that doesn't really make any permanent difference, does it? He was ~-*—* it once before—and I didn't interest you. I w second fiddle. 'There were always other men better—oh, I understand that now. I've heard blame you, it wasn't your fault. I simply fail

d deluge of th. this wenty-eighth

ng's certain: 'And then, rring to her, propped her 3 might press

time year, back to Alan in his 1 telephoned ve her home. Alan had it not talkaide him, re1e things she living room 1im to "come those things had spoken, yuence. She and his eyes, 1at would be

Yau VU UL asn't even you liked . I don't >d to hold

-

you, that was all. And now I think it's best for us both if I give up trying to hold you and—let you go."

Anger she could have soothed. Hurt she could have anointed with tears and healed with promises. Reproach she could have defeated by vehement self-reproach: "i'm all you say and more, and I'm so sorry." But-against his ealm finality, his quiet, sad resolve, she had no weapon. She tried them all: tears, pleadings, protestations. But none availed. "It wouldn't work out," he said over and over. "It wouldn't ever work out." And once, halfsmiling," he said slowly, "You know, Gay, I hated your loving Jerry Davis. But I think I hate your ceasing to

love him—now that he's unfortunate—more."

The divorce took six months. Pending it, Gay continued to live in the bungalow on the roof. Alan lived at the Yale Club. She saw him, during that long half year, three times. The first time was in her lawyer's

office. The third time was in court. The second time—

Remembering that second meeting, her closed eyes squeezed tighter shut, and her hands slid together and covered them. Still she could see. Still she could not help seeing. There was the garish little hotel in the Forties to which she had gone one evening by appointment, accompanied by her lawyer and her witnesses. There was the door with the number that corresponded to the number scrawled on a paper crushed in her hand. Hleven

tharty-three. She knew it yet. There was the room with

the sickly carpet and the curtains of net dyed with dust and the corner washstand supported by a pipe like a green snake standing on its tail. There was Alan. There was the hired corespondent with the hennaed hair. . . . The case of Pomeroy versus Pomeroy, carefully cooked up in

accordance with the law of New York..

She went abroad as soon as the divorce was granted. She had fifty thousand dollars; two-thirds of the money Alan's mother had left him. "I want you to have it, he had told her simply, that day in her lawyer's office.

-

284 Little Sms

"You've got to have something. Fifty thou in good reliable bonds will bring you an in thousand a year or more. That's not a lot you fairly comfortable—until you marry ag

"I shall never marry again, she had put in And added in a tone at once curious and some "Shall you, Alan?"

"Certainly not." Alan was just as positive. "will. Of course you will. I'd gamble on that, eyed her reflectively for an instant. "However neither here nor there. About this money: if you' not have it in one lump, if you'd rather get it in ments, like alimony—with the interest, of course—fix it that way. Or any way you say."

She had elected to take it all in one lump.

A faint sigh escaped her. She uncovered her her lashes lifted heavily. In the mirror the e opaque now. Dull, and a little old. Fifty thou Jars! It had sounded like such a tremendous's had thought she could do so much with it, and would last so long. She had thought, "I'll take a trip first. I need to get away." She had gone to Paris, and stayed four months. . . . Returning to New York, she had taken a suite at the Plaza. She had bought a ear. In a burst of unwounded generosity, inspired by one of the whimpering, before-we-lost-everything letters that came to her biweekly from Chicago, she had bought a grand piano for her mother. And one day, one October day, she had said quite casually to the white-haired man at the big desk in her bank, "By the way. I've been meaning to ask you. What's something safe I can put my money into? I mean, some good reliable bonds or something. I've got fifty thous—no, I guess it's about forty-five thousand now, I've spent some. How much is it exactly, can you tell me?"

He had looked it up for her. Twenty-eight thousand five hundred and thirty-four dollars and fifty-two cents.

NE ENT EO TO Lee

sand invested come of thre�. But it'll keep rain."

in positively mewhat hurt.

e. "But you at." He had ever. That's f you'd rather it in installurse—we can

her eyes, and he eyes were thousand dolus sum. She and that it

-

She had not hesitated to argue with him. There was some mistake. The bank was mistaken. Almost half her capital vanished—why, that couldn't be! She colored a little now, remembering the things she had said to the white-haired man. What a fool he must have thought her! But of course. She had been a fool. A child about money. Utterly ignorant, grossly incompetent. <A fool.

She had gone from the bank at last, convinced, and quite dizzy with shock and panic. She had gone without any further talk of safe investments. It had seemed to her that in this emergency the purchase of bonds paying six per cent was not a sufficiently drastic measure. She had consulted a brown-eyed young broker who loved her lightly, who had loved her lightly since their first meeting at a party a month before. To him she had entrusted twenty thousand of her twenty-eight thousand dollars, upon his assurance that he would double it for her "in no time." She had had (incredible to think of it now!) almost no misgivings. The young broker was trustworthy; he was fond of her; he would do the wisest thing for her. Her father had lost his fortune in Wall Street—yes, but he had made it there! She would make hers, and then she would "get out and stay out."

"Hm," she said bitterly to the mirror, "that's funny."

She stood up, overturning the cane-topped mahogany bench, which she let lie. She began to roam about the bedroom distractedly, frowning at the floor. Her face was wan and strained, the eyes baunted. She had forgotten Alan now, and the divorce. She had forgotten everything but the thing she was never able nowadays to forget for very long. Money. The money thing..

The young broker had bought her automobile stock, on margin, Five months ago. Almost at once the stock had begun to drop; it had dropped relentlessly, terrifyingly, day by day. In the past two months she had been compelled to feed over five thousand additional dollars into the insatiable maw of the market, in order that it might

-

not wholly consume her original twenty tl day, at this moment, she possessed in actu twenty-seven hundred dollars) She had over eight hundred. And if the stock fell ws fell lower. ..

She stopped pacing abruptly and stood still dle of the room, gazing with unseeing eyes at

evening gown that hung waiting acrc

of a chair. Her mind was off now, runnin; too-familiar grooves. She thought aloud: any lower, I'll have to borrow from someboc put in any more of my own money. I can't.—I lwe on? Somebody'll have to lend me some. Who could I ask? Dad hasn't a penny. Jerry's not that I'd ask him, anyway. Alan—" Quickly, decisively, she shook her head, so crystal pendants hanging from her ears banged against her cheeks. She would never appeal 1 never. That one thing the ghost of her pride . . Well, who, then? Ted Matthews? Ted: was old friend. And a millionaire. But she had n very much of Ted, nor of Irene, lately. And I titude toward her when they did meet was a little now, a little hardened. Upon her return from Eu: ter her divorce she had noticed it at once; and shederstood it. He sympathized with Alan. All the men who had been her friends and Alan's sympathized with Alan.

Her thoughts were diverted momentarily from her financial to her social situation, which irked her almost as much these weary days). The Crowd had dropped her. Definitely. Undeniably. They were inviting Alan to their gatherings and leaving her out—at least, she presumed it was on account of Alan. She could think of no other reason why she should be excluded. They certainly were not such mid-Victorians as to let the fact that she was a divorcee weigh with them; they were surely not such snobs as to be influenced by the fact that she had moved

1ousand. Toal cash about debts totaling lower. of

ll in the midat the maize ross the back ng swiftly in

"If it falls ody. I can't

What would ie. But who?

erry's gone—

, so that the anged lightly peal to Alan, ride forbade dwas an old, had not seen And Ted's atlittle strange in Europe afd she had un

-

Falling Star 28"

from the Plaza to less expensive, far less fashionable quarters further downtown. No. It was because of Alan. They liked him better. Now that a choice had to be made, they chose him in preference to herself. She could almost hear the recurrent question: "Shall we ask Alan? Or Gay? We can't have them both, of course." And the answer: "Oh, let's ask Alan." With adjectives, probably. "Good old Alan." Or, in subtle criticism of her, "Poor old Alan."

It was galling. To Gay Leonard, accustomed to homage, imbued since childhood with the notion that no party given by her friends was really a party without her, it was so galling as to be almost intolerable. She could not understand it. Why did they prefer Alan? Oh, of course the girls would; she had never been popular with girls. But the men! Men with whom she had grown up, boys who had kissed her, fought over her, proposed to her—that they should enjoy Alan's conipany more than hers was not to be believed. Yet it must be believed. It was only too evident.

She lit a cigarette, sat on the edge of a chair and leaned forward, elbow on crossed knee. She smoked, gazing blankly ahead. She was remembering how expectant, how excited she had been on the ship coming back from Europe, thinking of Tom Sinclair, of Peter Newton, of Punk Wyman, of half a dozen former beaux still unmarried, and of the rush they would give her again, now that she was free. She had visualized a new era like the old sweet vivid era of her teens. Another year or two of moonlight and young nonsense, of dates and florists' boxes and wild little notes, of telephone ringing, ringing all day, of fraternity pins and proms. . . . She was not too old. Only twenty-two. And she was beautiful still. Of course, there were the scars, the thin white scars which surgeons on both sides of the water had confessed their powerlessness to eradicate; but against those, there were the gowns she had chosen so cleverly in Paris. The daytime gowns

-

with the smart small collars that hugged the throat or fitted choker-tight about her neck gowns that rose high in the front and were cu in With these gowns, this beauty, this new had thought to recapture the glamour of sea

She could have laughed at herself now—s laughed, if she had not felt so much like wee had been no rush. They had failed her, Tom Newton and the rest. They had forgotten her spoke, they said hello, and asked about her trip: did not call up afterwards, or write, or come'�. They were worshiping at new shrines now. / they looked at her their eyes were critical, and cool, "You gave good old Pomeroy a pretty:—that was all their eyes seemed to remember.

She had been forced, out of sheer boredom, to upon the companionship of men newly met a known. Chance acquaintances. Young men abc Men like the brown-eyed broker. Men like Carter with the mammoth diamond on his little finger whom there was no glamour, with whom nothing was very much fun.

Thought of Carter Thayer roused her to recol of the hour. She glanced over at the cloisonné cl:

the little bedside table. Nine-thirty. He would be along at any moment now. She crushed out her cigarette, rose, returned to the dressing table. She righted the overturned bench and seated herself once more. She was ready, except for her gown and the finishing touches. Rouge, lipstick, mascara. She began to apply them mechanically.

Her pity for herself was almost a physical ache. Her

shoulders drooped with it, her fingers that plied the and puffs were leaden with it, "Everything's ay ful, she thought. "Hverything's gone wrong. A What did I ever do? It isn't fair. I can't standing in this little hole. No friends, no money.

e base of he�. The evening 1t to the waist

freedom, she sons gone he could have ping. There ym and Peter er. Oh, they rip; but they ae to see her. And when ind somewhat ty raw deal' er. 1, to fall back et and little n about town arter Thayer, ger. Men in thing one did

o recollection onne clock on

ie pencils vful, awnd why? it! LivHow am

-

I going to get money?" She was back on the main track now. "Suppose the stock doesn't fall any more. Suppose it stays right about where it is for a while. Stil I'm out of luck. I can't live forever on a couple of thousand dollars—with no more coming in. I've got to get some somehow, sooner or later—"

Well. If you had to have money, and you couldn't borrow, there were two alternatives: either you must marry it, or you must earn it. She could marry Carter Thayer—"Ach, no, he's terrible," she said aloud, in instant repudiation of the idea. Better to earn it. But how? How did girls with no training and no talent earn money in New York? They started tea rooms, tiny shops—ah, but not without capital. They went on the stage—but not with sharp white scars across their throats. They worked in stores, at switchboards—but for twenty dollars a week or so. Drop in the bucket.

She was still debating the problem exhaustively in her mind when her room telephone jangled, and a voice twenty floors below announced "Mr. Thayer."

She might have said, "Ask him to come right up." One of her three rooms in this modest hotel was a sitting room. Instead she said, "Tell him I'll be right down." If he came up, he would expect to kiss her. ..

"You're quiet this evening."

"Am I? I didn't mean to be."

She thought. "I mustn't be quiet. I must talk." Carter Thayer liked girls who talked, who laughed and made him laugh—female court jesters. Once upon a time, feeling quiet, she would have kept quiet, caring not one whit whether she pleased him or displeased him. But then, once upon a time she would not have been with Carter Thayer at all.

She took two swallows from her highball glass, set it

down, folded her milky arms on the edge of the table.

-

She smiled confidentially. "Do you thinking of," she said. "I was think get tight tonight, to celebrate—becau: I got my divorce."

"Is that a fact," said Thayer. "down, groping under the table; for a see nothing of him but a shoulder, a that steadied him, and a slant-wise po face, the eye gleaming roguishly. I erect again, uncorking a brown quart for a little service!'

He strengthened her highball mighti] himself half a glassful of straight liquor. Drink up! Many happy returns!"

They both drank.

"I never met your husband, remarked I he had replaced the bottle. "What sort of a:

ay 9?

"Oh—I don't know. I don't know just how 1 him. He—" She broke off, her eyes fixed th on her companion. "You wouldn't have liked said. What she meant was that Alan would not Thayer.

"Why not, he inquired, but without inte ever-restless small black eyes, wandering away had spied a friend at a nearby tabl�. "�here's hart, he announced. And shouted, "Ya-ay.

A stagy brunette in a shred of crimson g her head languidly, smiled without any mark asm, wiggled long lazy pale fingers with lacq in a little salute.

"That's Harry Farron with her," said Thayer ron, he's a big financier, friend of mine. Pardon 1 a sec, Gay. I want to hop over and say hello to He paused, standing beside his chair. "Do you

"Not at all," Gay replied. She didn't min larly. She was accustomed to it. Everywher

know what I was cing that I ought to 3e a year ago today

Well!" He leaned moment Gay could an arm, five fingers yrtion of his chubby 'hen he was sitting bottle. "That calls

ghtily, and poured yuor. "There now!

arked Thayer after rt of a seed was he.

just how to describe's fixed thoughtfully ave liked him, she would not have liked

hout interest. Hising away from Gay, 'There's Ruby Rine"Ya-ay, Ruby!"

"imson gown turned ny marked enthusiwith lacquered nails

said Thayer. "Farne. Pardon me just say hello to them."

"Do you mind 2, lidn't mind particuEverywhere, always.

-

Carter Thayer "hopped over and said hell, to people. He knew everybody. . Actors, actresses, singers, dancers, mannequins, boxers, ball players, journalists, jazz composers—everybody who was anybody in the noisy little world that was his world—Carter Thayer knew. And some of them knew him.

"Be right back, he promised now. And went. Idly, from her seat at the table, Gay watched him go: a stout, short young man of perhaps thirty, with dark hair already quite sparse on top, with a face unhealthily, unpleasantly pink—barber-shop pink—and a strutting walk. The walk expressed him. It said very plainly, "I'm Carter Thayer. I've got a lot of money. I started on a shoe string, and made it myself, and I could buy this night club if I wanted to."

Gay's red mouth curled a little. Her lashes dropped down, veiling the half-amused scorn in her dark eyes. She tapped her cigarette on the grooved glass ash tray, continued to tap it long after the ashes had fallen from its end.

"Never," she said to herself. "I'd take in washing first."

Carter Thayer's call at the table of the stagy brunette was not long. When the band bleated the first bars of a syncopated tune he returned, and commanded Gay to dance with him. They squeezed themselves on to the floor.

"I was talking to Fallon," said Thayer. "He—Ouch! Hire a hall, you big ox, you!" (This to a colliding collegian, but low enough so that the collegian did not hear.) "I was talking to Fallon. He tells me Miskall Motors took another flop today. Five points lower at closing. Did you know it?"

"No. No, I—didn't."

"Rotten break, commiserated Thayer.

Gay said nothing. Five points, five points. It was knocking in her pulses. Five points, five points. The

-

orchestra was playing it, and her silver shoing to its beat.

"But you should never buy on margin, we "Unless it's an absolutely sure-fire thing—"

"This was supposed to be a sure-fire thin

"Yes—supposed to be! Alli I have to Thayer," this broker of yours must be eith or a crook. Now if you'd asked me—"

"I didn't know you then," Gay reminded Her hand slid from his shoulder. She turned 1 tabl�. "�et's sit down a minute, Carter drink."

They sat down. Thayer reached for the bot again replenished her highball, and added ice tle girl," he said, patting her hand. "It hits doesn't it? I had no idea—" His hand covered pressed it. 'What's the matter, baby? Broke? if that's all, you know your Uncle Carter will b to death to help you out—

"No, she interrupted hurriedly, "no, thank y get along all right." Abruptly her shoulders strai; her soft chin lifted. "I'm not broke," she said "How absurd!"

"Oh," said Carter. "Well, I just—"His voic dled off.

They drank and smoked in silence for a moment.

"Here comes Billy," said Carter then. "Hello, Billy! How's the boy?" He was on his feet, hospitable, effusive. 'Have a chair, Billy! Have a drink! I've got some real old stuff, I think you'll like it. You know Miss Leonard.

don't you! She's been up here with me before."

Billy Paterson, owner and proprietor of this supper club, greeted Gay and sat down at the table—albeit with

the air of one who would not remain there ver "Thanks," he said, "don't mind if I do. Just a though, just a touch—whoa! Nuf! Ive got't tonight yet, don't you know that?"

es were mov

nt on Thayer.

g, say is, said er a half-wit

d him wanly.toward their I—need a

bottle again, e. "Poor litits you hard, ered hers and ke? Because rill be tickled mk you. I'll straightened, 2 said coldly.

IS voice dwin

—touch, 0 work

-

Falling Star 293—

"Work, echoed Thayer jocularly. "You call singing a few songs and introducing half a dozen entertainers worl???

"If you think it's not, you're cuckoo," said Paterson laconically.

He sampled his drink, regarding Gay over the rim of his glass. "How're you tonight?, he asked her.

"Very well, thank you."

Carter Thayer, who had been watching him anxiously, now requested his honest opinion of the Scotch.

"It's all right," said Paterson. "Cut some. I've got better. You ought to buy your stuff from me, Carter."

"Can't afford to, retorted Carter, and beamed to show that this was merely humorous.

"You have quite a crowd tonight, remarked Gay.

"Good crowd, agreed Paterson. His eyes loitered over it, gloating. Then his forehead furrowed. "Say," he said, addressing Carter, "what d'you think of this? Bernice quit. Quit cold. Walked out on me, he snapped his fingers, "—yjust like that."

Carter was properly appalled. "No, he exclaimed.

"She did."

"When?"

"Tonight. Couple hours ago. Got sore because I told her to come away from that Thayer's table, that tightwad—she's sweet on him, you know, has been for some time—and out she went."

"For good?"

"You're right, for good, cried Paterson indignantly. "You think I'd take her back, after her doing me like that? And on a Saturday night, with a lot of convention boys from the sticks in the house? Huh! Not if she came begging on her hands and knees I wouldn't! Let me tell you, that kid is through, as far as my café is concerned."

"Is that a fact," said Carter Thayer. He regarded Paterson admiringly, as though he found his attitude in

-

the matter of Bernice quite magnificenting to get?" he queried.

Paterson shrugged. "Don't know yeting any. As soon as the word goes aroun is out, they'll be flocking in here by the do the job."

"What sort of a job is it?" Gay said smoke.

Carter turned a rebuking glance upon her you remember Bernice—used to be the hosts Sure you do! Tall girl, black eyes, lookediard—"

"Oh, yes. The hostess. I didn't remember She was very pretty, I thought, added Gay.

"Yah," said Paterson grudgingly, she was her that. But looks are cheap. They're a dr market." He drained his drink, thumped the g "What I want, he mused, aloud, "is looks Bernice didn't have the class. She couldn't ev One minute she'd talk like a duchess or some the next minute she'd forget and say 'T]

Street.' "Paterson moodily wagged his sleek head. "No good. Not for me. I'd have let her, goon, anyway. You see the kind of place I've Smart. Smartest supper club in town. Smartest, crowd, and the most refined. And I got to get a] match."

He gazed suddenly at Gay. He stared at her, as though he had not seen her before. And she stared back. She thought, "Why don't I look away? He'll think I'm interested—" But she did not look away. She could not.

Neither of them said anything at all.

Carter Thayer broke the short pause. "Have another little jolt, Billy?"

Paterson's eyes shifted. "No. No thanks. I got to be moving on." He stood up; made as if to Ie table; hesitated. He ignored Gay, speaking ce:

"Who you go

I'm not worryid that Bernice zen, crying for

idly, blowing

r. "Why, Gay, ostess up here? od like a Span

mber her name tay.

was. I'll give a drug on the the glass down. 90ks and class.'t even fake it something, and r 'Thoity-thoid sleek vaselined +t her go pretty I've got here artest, dressiest get a hostess to

save the relessly

-

but quite distinctly to Carter. "If you hear of anybody you think might do," he said, "tell her to see me. I'll pay a hundred a week to the right party."

He nodded, and was off, lounging along the crowded aisle between the fence of chair backs . . . smiling, stopping, shaking hands. ..

-

/ch//END AND BEGINNING

Tuey came out of the theater lobby in the! the throng, Alan and Dolly and Mr. and Mrs

dish; and they halted a moment on the sidewa conference.

"Let's go somewhere and eat," said Alan.

"I knew it, from Dolly. "Alan, you're alwa I never saw such a man."

"We can't," said Bee. "We've got to go home patted her husband's arm. "This ink-stained worked till half past three this morning on that sto—the padlocking of the night clubs, and was up at nine to do his Sunday column, and now he's got to get some sleep.'

"Henpecked, grinned Nick. "As you see."

"And pleased as Punch about it," said Dolly, "That we also see." Her hand found Bee's. "Must you really go home, honey? It's only eleven. We can run up to Reuben's or somewhere and just get a sandwich?"

Bee thought not. And Nick thought not. It was rather embarrassingly evident from their tones and their teasi eyes that they both thought Alan and Dolly should be left alone.

"Well," said Alan to Dolly, not looking at her, "what do you say? It isn't time for little artists to go home yet, is it

"It is, she retorted. "But little artists don't want to go home yet. So where'll we go?"

"They didn't padlock all the night clubs, you know, put in Nick,

the noisy ebb of Mrs. Nick Standewalk and held

lan e always eating.

go home." She—stained wretch that story about

-

"Oh, Alan hates night clubs," said Dolly.

"No, I don't."

"Well, you don't like them much. Every time we've been to one I've had the feeling you were just humoring me—like Daddy taking Junior to the zoo. You wouldn't like them," she argued. "You're too—oh, sort of freshairy and outdoor-esque. "She appealed to the Standishes solemnly. "Isn't he?"

The Standishes solemnly agreed that he was.

"Well," said Alan, "now that we've got that settled—what night clubs aren't padlocked, Nick? Or what zoos have you?"

"Oh—the Montmartre and the Mirador and the Lido and such are still doing business at the old stand. Barney Gallant and Billy Paterson and a few more will still take your year's salary as rent for two chairs and a small ash tray, if you ask them politely—

"Billy Paterson," Dolly interrupted thoughtfully. "Is that the same one who used to sing in vaudeville?"

"And how!" Nick affirmed.

"Let's go there, then, Alan, shall we? I always liked him."—And so they went to Billy Paterson's club.

There was a small white card that stood on its edge between the salt and pepper shakers in the middle of the tiny wall table for two; and when they were seated and settled Alan picked it up. "Announcement!, he read aloud in declamatory style. "To our patrons. On the evening of April second, at twelve o'clock, your new hostess will be formally introduced—" He tossed the card down. "Yes, yes," he said, "but what about nourishment? Waiter! Bring a menu card, will you."

Dolly in turn picked up the announcement idly. She looked at it, then looked across at Alan. "Did you notice her name?"

-

"Yes," he said. "Gay something

"Gay Legendre. Odd:, observed "I never heard of anybody named let the sentence be incomplete. "Did

"No. Only the cousin of Mrs. Li Gay was named. It probably," said cigarettes, "isn't this girl's name, a�. They always pick out blithesome titles don't you know? Cabaret girls and chort always Joy, or Delight, or something equ

The arrival of the waiter with the bi rupted him. "Ah, here we are. What Dolly?"

"A Welsh rarebit. And coffee. Black.

Alan gave this order, and his own. Do! Resting her elbows on the table and absen unbending the little announcement card gers, she watched him until he said, "An fees." At which point, in anticipation of hurriedly jerked her own eyes—her traito adoring eyes—from him.

She was forever doing this. And she susy turously) that Alan did it too. Every now suddenly glancing up at him, she would catch denly glancing away. And then they would both tongue-tied as bashful children, for a moment. a solemn simultaneous effort they would begin facture conversation. Weren't the decorations a Hadn't the day been cold? Wasn't it horrible al thirty-seven entombed miners? Or were there onl seven? .

This utterly ridiculous and puerile procedure h in vogue with them now for some little time a game they played; an emotional hide and seek was, Dolly told herself with exasperation, abso! sense in it; always adding, "But what can I do answer was, "Nothing." She could not put h

"Dolly, watching him, Gay, except—" She'd you, she added.

Leonard's after whom'd Alan, searching for as a matter of fact titles for themselves, chorus girls—they're ig equally chipper, the bill of fare interWhat would you like.

Black."

Dolly watched him absently bending and card in her slim fin, "And two large cofution of his eyes, she ar traitorous, telltale.

d she suspected (rapivery now and again, would catch him sudy would both be silent, a moment. And with vould begin to manulecorations attractive? it horrible about those ere there only twenty

le procedure had been little time. It was lide and seek. There ration, absolutely no hat can I do?" The'd not put her hands

-

on Alan's football shoulders and shake him; she could not say, "Precious goofy, you love me, why don't you tell me you love me?" She could not do any of the bold things she longed to do, say any of the brazen things she yearned to say—because she was not quite sufficiently certain that he did love her.

She thought he did. She believed he did. If her intuition was to be trusted, she knew he did. But he had not said so. Either because it was not true, or because he was afraid of her answer—afraid as only a man can be who has once been hurt by a woman—he had not said so. In Dolly's mind the vote stood: for the first cause, one; for the second cause, ninety-nine. An overwhelming majority. But not unanimous. That single negative vote, that one odd chance, kept her wordless and helpless . . . and sleepless sometimes in the dead of night.

"Penny," said Alan's voice.

She smiled. "For my thoughts? How you squander your money!" She was still bending and unbending the little card in her fingers. She put the edges together with care, and definitely creased it down the middle. "I was thinking it's too bad Bee and Nick couldn't come. If you must know."

"Yeah, agreed Alan. And supplemented with more warmth, "They're great. They're a great team. D in more and more keen about them every time I see 'em."

"I knew you would be."

Alan, a cigarette in his mouth, began thumbing a, patent pocket lighter. He thumbed it easily; then vigorously; then passionately. Then he threw it down, muttering, and seized a folder of matches.

"They seem very happy, he remarked, his cigarette lit.

"They are. They're mad about each other."

"He was married," said Alan, "wasn't he, once before? Didn't you tell me that?"

"Vesg,"

"What became of the first Mrs. Nick?"

-

"Oh, she didn't care anything abou living in Paris for years—and when heing in love with Bee, he took a trip over got a divorce."

Alan chuckled unexpectedly, his eyes"You're a funny little girl, he'said. "Ar

"Why 9"

"Oh, you just are."

She bent toward him, all interest. "Wh

"Well, every time the name Gay or the comes up, you get kind of fusseed—as if y might burst into tears or something."

"Oh, I don't, protested Dolly, pink-che

"Yea, you do. I've noticed it so many stop it, begged Alan. "You're awfully "you do it. But I think it's only fair to all those things—lost their power to hur!

"Oh," said Dolly. There being nothing e just that moment.

"I can talk about Gay," Alan went on the staring down at the cigarette in his fingers, "j talk about anyone else—any very old friend of cs I liked, but hadn't seen for a long time. I can my divorce without any more feeling than as were discussing the time I had my tonsils out it's the same idea. Painful as hell at the time, over now."

Dolly smiled back, but made no reply.

"Haven't you ever seen her since?"she asked, after a meditative moment.

"Never once. I don't think she's in New York," Alan said. "None of the crowd she and I used to run with have seen her for weeks, as near as I can make out. Like you, they're reticent about mentioning her w around—but I've asked, and nobody seems to k thing. I have an idea she's in Chicago. Her pe

t him—she'd been found he was faller there, and they

eyes on Dolly's. "Aren't you?"

"Why, Alan, the word divorce if you thought I—cheeked.

any times. Don't lly cunning when r to tell you that hurt me—months

hing else to say at

t on thoughtfully, ngers, "just as I'd end of mine whom, Ican talk about than as though I sils out. I mean, the time, but—all

hen I'm now anyople live

-

there now, you know. Or maybe she's gone abroad again. She was over for quite a while right after the divorce." He mashed out his cigarette on the plate before him with an air of finality, dismissing the subjec�. "�et's dance."

For some fifteen minutes then they allowed themselves to be churned around the tiny congested floor. They were a little breathless when they went back to their table; a little more breathless, perhaps, than the mere business of stepping and turning in rhythm ought to have made them. Each was exquisitely physically conscious of the other. And for the first few minutes back at the table they had no conversation, and could think of none.

Then Dolly found that her fingers were toying with the little white announcement card again. She let it serve asareopening. "It's about time the new hostess appeared, isn't it?" she said. "It must be almost twelve."

Alan lugged out his watch and consulted it in a serious, brow-knitted fashion. Dolly wanted to laugh aloud, at him and at herself. As though either of them cared at all what time the hostess appeared, if she did appear!—"T?s twelve minutes of, said Alan.

Dolly smiled at the card. "Hostess, she murmured. "I never see that word, or hear it without remembering the one night when I was a hostess—professionally. Did I ever tell you about it?"

"No," said Alan, interested, eager at once.

She'told him, concluding, "That's where I met Jerry Davis."

Alan had been smiling also, regarding her with sympathetic intentness as she talked. At the mention of Jerry's name his smile relaxed, gave way to a speculative grave expression. He put his elbows on the table, joined his finger tips, parted them again and examined his palms closely, folded his fingers finally into one great double fist and propped his chin upon it, before he said, "I had a letter from Jerry today."

Dolly started slightly. Her blue eyes widened, her

-

brows came together in a little ix doubted whether she had heard co letter?" Alan nodded. "He's in Montans as if to ward off questions. "He land adjoining the land of some f: and put up a cabin, and recently tl property. He's got one well that's rels a day, and there'll be more. Gr he's very well and very busy, and his gother cheerful."

"I'm so glad," Dolly said simply. A in all her heart. Yet the little frown w eyes were still perplexed and bothered. "why did he write to youf I can't see never even friends, you and he! You enemies—"

"We were friends at the last," Alan answ "When he was in the hospital we got quite—misjudged him, you see. And I was sor "Stili, began Dolly doubtfully. Shes "I can't understand it. Why, after a year not writing anybody, he should have written fore—before me or anybody—"Vain woman, laughed Alan. "So you be the first consideration?" But there was no away Dolly's honest perplexity; he abandoned the and grew grave again. "I admit it doesn't se logical," he said. "As a matter of fact, Jerryabout—a little business matter."

"Oh," said Dolly, "I see." But she didn't see—quite. Alan shifted in his chair. He folded his arms on the table. He reached to the ash tray fora burnt" ~drew hieroglyphics on the tablecloth. He! room with ingenuous gray eyes and said, "M 7 a mob!" He called Dolly's attention to a gi lace dress and asked if she did not think th

ncredulous frown that yrrectly. "Yow had a

., he went on, hastily, bought a few acres of riend of his out there, 1ey ve found oil on his giving up twenty barreat, isn't it? He says his letter sounded alto

yAnd she was glad, wn was still there, the red. "Alan," she said,'t see—why, you were

You were more like

lan answered evasively.

ot quite chummy. I'd was sorry

She shock her head.

ra year and a half of

e written you first, be

"So you expected to there was no laughing abandoned the attempt.

it doesn't seem quite f fact. Jerry wrote me

ht Match and surveyed the fy God, what irl in a black e girl looked

-

like Bee Standish. He did, in short, all the things a man does when he very much desires the subject changed.

Dolly merely stared at him. She was beginning to see now. Clearly. Dazzlingly.

"Don't you?" demanded Alan.

"Don't I what?"

"Think she looks like Bee?"

Dolly ignored both the question and the girl in the black lace dress. "Alan," she said, "who bought Jerry's business before he left New York? Youdid. Didn't you."

"What in the—"

"It's no use, she cut in. "I know now. I know you did."

Silence. Alan drew more hieroglyphics on the cloth, with more burnt matches. Dolly regarded the changing shots of light in her water glass.

"The letter was about that?" she asked at last.

"Yes."

"How did he find out it was you?"

"Through Parker Lane. Lane went West a month or so ago and it seems he stopped off to see Jerry—he's known where Jerry was, all along—and Jerry got it out of him."

"He broke up your home," Dolly said slowly, musingly.

"He never did you anything but harm, and yet you—" She stopped. "What did you do with the business after you'd bought it?"

"Oh, I sold the presses and equipment. The books I dumped into the good old Hudson." Alan reddened faintly, apparently fearing that this sounded priggish. He grinned. "Of course," he said, "I kept a few copies for my personal edification."

Dolly scarcely listened. But when his voice died out, she heard her own voice quite distinctly. Just a breath of a voice, hers, a broken murmur, but it rang loud in her ears. "Alan—that's the most wonderful thing—I ever heard of." Those were the words. But she might as well have said, "Oh, I love you!"

-

They looked at each other. And their frank and open and steady and unashame of the world, all the sweetness of the world, the glow of all the fires that ever burned, eyes. They said nothing. They needed t

Then Alan laughed aloud, exultantly, so: even in that place of noisy mirth—stared

a "7 rw "se ww

And he swayed toward Dolly across the 1 l board and kissed her quickly on the mouth.

"Come on," he said, "let's get out of he E rose; then sank down, remembering that i) one must pay for food and drink, whether 3 tasted either. "Waiter! Hey! Check.

Dolly knew that the check was paid. She: white wrap was laid over her shoulders; tl ) drew it tight and modishly about her. She ) walked before Alan through the wilderness of l by instinct, and of people whom she did not knew that as she went the band played a sudden: silence and the manager of the place, the dark s] r Paterson stood alone on the dance floor, in the E the spotlight, talking. . . . She knew that the li, outside the main room, "separated from it by a painted velvet screen, was cool and quiet and relieving: smoke and the glare. She knew that while she wa: } for Alan to retrieve his coat and hat, the manag ) somewhere behind the screen rose to a pitch of sl 3 eloquence. She half hearkened. She half heard: "—and here she is, folks! Miss—Gay—Legendre! Give the little girl a big hand!"

They were applauding generously in the room beyond the screen when Alan and Dolly went down the gilded stairs to the outer door, together.

THE END

eyes at last wer d. All the glory ld, a reflection o: ad, were in thei 1 to say nothing so that people—ed at their table e narrow clothec uth.

here." He hal:'t in supper club: er or not one ha: "Please."

she knew that he1 that, rising, she he knew that she's of tables dodgec id not see. She sudden chord fo: "dark sleek Bills, in the circle o: at the little fove)

ted there ar's voice 1oOwman':