Tony slept late next morning and when she did open her eyes they fell upon a huge florist box by the door and a special delivery letter on top of it. The maid had set the two in an hour ago and tiptoed away lest she waken the weary little sleeper.

Tony got up and opened the box. Roses—dozens of them, worth the price of a month's wages to many a worker in the city! Frail, exquisite, shell-pink beauties, with gold at their hearts! Tony adored roses but she almost hated these because it seemed to her Alan was bribing her forgiveness by playing upon her worship of their beauty and fragrance.

Still kneeling by the flowers she glanced at the clock. Ten-thirty! Dick was already miles away on his hateful journey, had gone sad and hopeless because she loved Alan Massey. Why did it have to be so? Why was love so perverse and unreasonable a thing? Alan was not worthy to touch Dick's hand, though in his arrogance he affected to despise the other. But it was Alan she loved, not Dick. There must be something wrong with her, dreadfully wrong that it should be so. After last night there could be no doubt of that.

She sat down on the floor, opened Alan's letter, despised herself for letting its author's spell creep over her anew with every word. It was an abject plea for mercy, for forgiveness, for restoration to favor. It had been a devil of jealousy that had possessed him, he had not known what he was doing. Surely she must know that he would not willingly harm or hurt or anger her in any way. He loved her too much. Carson had behaved like a man. Alan would apologize to him if the other man would accept the apology. It was Tony really who had driven him mad by being so much kinder to the other than to himself. She must realize what he was, not drive him too far.

"I am sending you roses," he ended. "Please don't throw them away as you did the others. Keep them and let them plead for me. And don't ah Tony, don't ever, ever say again what you said last night, that you never wanted to see me again! You don't mean it, I know. But don't say it. It kills me to hear you. If you throw me over I'll blow my brains out as sure as I am a living man this moment. But you won't, you cannot, Tony dearest. You will forgive me, stand by me, rotten as I am. You are mine. You love me. You won't push me down to Hell."

It was a cowardly letter Tony thought, a letter calculated to frighten her, bring her to subjection again as well as to gratify the writer's own Byronic instinct for pose. He had behaved badly. He acknowledged it but claimed forgiveness on the grounds of love, his love for her which had been goaded to mad jealousy by her thoughtless unkindness, her love for him which would not desert him no matter what he did.

But pose or not, Tony was obliged to admit there was some truth in it all. Perhaps it was all true-too true. Even if he did not resort to the pistol as he threatened he would find other means of slaying his soul if not his body if she forsook him now. She could not do it. As he said she loved him too well. She had gone too far in the path to turn back now.

Ah why, why had she let it go so far? Why had she not listened to Dick, to Uncle Phil, to Carlotta, even to Miss Lottie? They had all told her there was no happiness for her in loving Alan Massey. She knew it herself better than any of them could possibly know it. And yet she had to go on, for his sake, for her own because she loved him.

By this time she was no longer angry or resentful. She was just sorry—sorry for Alan—sorry for herself. She knew just as she had known all along that last night's incident would not really make any difference. It would be put away in time with all the other things she had to forgive. She had eaten her pomegranate seeds. She could not escape the dark kingdom. She did not wish to.

Later came violets from Dick which she put in a vase on her desk beside Uncle Phil's picture. But it was the fragrance and color of Alan's roses that filled the room, and presently she sat down and wrote her ill-behaved lover a sweet, forgiving little note. She was sorry if she had been unkind. She had not meant to be. As for what happened it was too late to worry about it now. They had best forget it, if they could. He couldn't very well apologize to Dick in person because he was already on his way to Mexico. There was no need of any penance. Of course she forgave him, knew he had not meant to hurt her, though he had horribly. If he cared to do so he might take her to dinner tomorrow night—somewhere where they could dance. And in conclusion she was always his, Tony Holiday.

Both Dick and Alan were driven out of her mind later that day by the delightful and exciting interview over the tea table with Carol Clay. Miss Clay was a charming hostess, drew the girl out without appearing to do so, got her to talk naturally about many things, her life with her father at army barracks, and with her uncle on her beloved Hill, of her friends and brothers, her college life, of books and plays. Plays took them to the Killarney Rose and once more Miss Clay expressed her pleasure in the girl's rendering of one of her own favorite roles.

"You acted as if you had been playing Rose all your life," she added with a smile.

"Maybe I have," said Tony. "Rose is—a good deal like me. Maybe that is why I loved playing her so."

"I shouldn't wonder. You are a real little actress, my dear. I wonder if you are ready to pay the price of it. It is bitterly hard work and it means giving up half the things women care for."

The speaker's lovely eyes shadowed a little. Tony wondered what Carol Clay had given up, was giving up for her art to bring that look into them.

"I am not afraid. I am willing to work. I love it. And I—I am willing to give up a good deal."

"Lovers?" smiled Miss Clay.

"Must I? I thought actresses always had lovers, at least worshipers.
Can't I keep the lovers, Miss Clay?" There was a flash of mischief in
Tony's eyes as she asked the important question.

"Better stick to worshipers. Lovers are risky. Husbands—fatal."

Tony laughed outright at that.

"I am willing to postpone the fatality," she murmured.

"I am glad to hear it for I lured you here to take you into a deep-laid plot. I suppose you did not suspect that it was Max Hempel who sent me to see you play Rose?"

"Mr. Hempel? I thought he had forgotten me."

"He never forgets any one in whom he is interested. He has had his eye on you ever since he saw you play Rosalind. He told me when he came back from that trip that I had a rival coming on."

"Oh, no!" Tony objected even in jest to such desecration.

"Oh, yes," smiled her hostess. "Max Hempel is a brutally frank person. He never spares one the truth, even the disagreeable truth. He has had his eye out for a new ingÉnue for a long time. IngÉnues do get old—at least older you know."

"Not you," denied Tony.

"Even I, in time. I grant you not yet. It takes a degree of age and sophistication to play youth and innocence. We do it better as a rule at thirty than at twenty. We are far enough away from it to stand off and observe how it behaves and can imitate it better than if we still had it. That is one reason I was interested in your Rose last night. You played like a little girl as Rose should. You looked like a little girl. But you couldn't have given it that delightfully sure touch if you hadn't been a little bit grown up. Do you understand?"

Tony nodded.

"I think so. You see I am—a little bit grown up."

"Don't grow up any more. You are adorable as you are. But to business.
Have you seen my Madge?"

"In the 'End of the Rainbow?' Yes, indeed. I love it. You like the part too, don't you? You play it as if you did."

"I do. I like it better than any I have had since Rose. Did it occur to you that you would like to play Madge yourself?"

Tony blushed ingenuously.

"Well, yes, it did," she admitted half shyly. "Of course, I knew I couldn't play it as you did. It takes years of experience and a real art like yours to do it like that, but I did think I'd like to try it and see what I could do."

Miss Clay nodded, well pleased.

"Of course you did. Why not? It is your kind of a role, just as Rose is. You and I are the same types. Mr. Hempel has said that all along, ever since he saw your Rosalind. But I won't keep you in suspense. The long and short of all this preliminary is—how would you like to be my understudy for Madge?"

"Oh, Miss Clay!" Tony gasped. "Do you think I could?"

"I know you could, my dear. I knew it all the time while I was watching you play Rose. Mr. Hempel has known it even longer. I went to see Rose to find out if there was a Madge in you. There is. I told Mr. Hempel so this morning. He is brewing his contracts now so be prepared. Will you try it?"

"I'd love to if you and Mr. Hempel think I can. I promised Uncle Phil I would take a year of the school work though. Will I have to drop that?"

"I think so—most of it at least. You would have to be at the rehearsals usually which are in the morning. You might have to play Madge quite often then. There are reasons why I have to be away a great deal just now." Again the shadow, darkened the star's eyes and a droop came to her mouth. "It isn't even so impossible that you would be called upon to play before the real Broadway audience in fact. Understudies sometimes do you know."

Miss Clay was smiling now, but the shadow in her eyes had not lifted Tony saw.

"I am particularly anxious to get a good understudy started in immediately," the actress continued. "The one I had was impossible, did not get the spirit of the thing at all. It is absolutely essential to have some one ready and at once. My little daughter is in a sanitarium dying with an incurable heart leakage. There will be a time—probably within the next two months—when I shall have to be away."

Tony put out her hand and let it rest upon the other woman's. There was compassion in her young eyes.

"I am so sorry," she said simply. "I didn't know you had a daughter. Of course, I did know you weren't really Miss Clay, that you were Mrs. Somebody, but I didn't think of your having children. Somehow we don't remember actresses may be mothers too."

"The actresses remember it—sometimes," said Miss Clay with a tremulous little smile. "It isn't easy to laugh when your heart is heavy, Miss Antoinette. It is all I can do to go on with 'Madge' sometimes. I just have to forget—make myself forget I am a mother and a wife. Captain Carey, my husband, is in the British Army. He is in Flanders now, or was when I last heard."

"Oh, I don't see how you can do it—play, I mean," sighed Tony aghast at this new picture the actress's words brought up.

"One learns, my dear. One has to. An actress is two distinct persons.
One of her belongs to the public. The other is just a plain woman.
Sometimes I feel as if I were far more the first than I am the second.
There wouldn't be any more contracts if I were not. But never mind that.
To come back to you. Mr. Hempel will send you a contract to-morrow. Will
you sign it?"

"Yes, if Uncle Phil is willing. I'll wire him to-night. I am almost positive he will say yes. He is very reasonable and he will see what a wonderful, wonderful chance this is for me. I can't thank you enough, Miss Clay. It all takes my breath away. But I am grateful and so happy; you can't imagine it."

Miss Clay smiled and drew on her gloves. The interview was over.

"There is really nothing to thank me, for," she said. "The favor is on the other side. It is I who am lucky. The perfect understudy like a becoming hat is hard to find, but when found is absolutely beyond price. May I send you a pass for to-morrow night to the 'End of the Rainbow'? Perhaps you would like to see it again and play 'Madge' with me from a box. The pass will admit two. Bring one of the lovers if you like."

Tony wired her uncle that night. In the morning mail arrived Max Hempel's contract as Miss Clay had promised. Tony regarded it with superstitious awe. It was the first contract she had ever seen in her life, much less had offered for her signature. The terms were, generous—appallingly so it seemed to the girl who knew little of such things and was not inclined to over-rate her powers financially speaking. She wisely took the contract over to the school and got the manager's advice to "Go ahead."

"We've nothing comparable to offer you, Miss Tony. With Hempel and Miss Clay both behind you you are practically made. You are a lucky little lady. I know a dozen experienced actresses in this city who would give their best cigarette cases to be in your shoes."

Arrived home at the Hostelry, armed with this approval, Tony found her Uncle's answering wire bidding her do as she thought best and sending heartiest love and congratulations. Dear Uncle Phil!

And then she sat down and signed the impressive document that made her
Carol Clay's understudy and a real wage-earning person.

All the afternoon she spent in long, delicious, dreamless slumber. At five she was wakened by the maid bringing a letter from Alan, a wonderful, extravagant lover-note such as only he could pen. Later she bathed and dressed, donning the white and silver gown she had worn the night when she had first admitted to Alan in Carlotta's garden that she loved him, first took his kisses. It was rather a sacred little gown to Tony, sacred to Alan and her own surrender to love. He called it her starlight dress and loved it especially because it brought out the springlike, virginal quality of her youth and loveliness as her other more sophisticated gowns did not. Tony wore it for Alan to-night, wanted him to think her lovely, to love her immensely. She wanted to taste all life's joy at once, have a perfect deluge of happiness. Youth must be served.

Alan, graceful for being forgiven so easily, fell in with her mood and was at his best, courtly, considerate, adoring. He exerted all the magic of his not inconsiderable charm to make Tony forget that other unfortunate night when he had appeared in other, less attractive colors. And Tony was ready enough to forget beneath his worshiping green eyes and under the spell of his wonderful voice. She meant to shut out the unwelcome guests of fear and doubt from her heart, let love alone have sway.

They dined at a gorgeous restaurant in a great hotel. Tony reveled in the splendor and richness of the setting, delighted in the flawless service, the perfection of the strange and delectable viands which Alan ordered for their consumption. Particularly she delighted in Alan himself and the way he fitted into the richness and luxury. It was his rightful setting. She could not imagine him in any of the shabby restaurants where she and Dick had often dined so contentedly. Alan was a born aristocrat, patrician of the patricians. His looks, his manner, everything about him betrayed it. Most of all it was revealed in the way the waiters scurried to do his bidding, bowed obsequiously before him, recognized him as the authentic master, lord of the purple.

"So Carson really has gone to Mexico," Alan murmured as they dallied over their salads, looking mostly into each other's eyes.

"Yes, he went yesterday. I hated to have him go. It is awfully disagreeable and dangerous down there they say. He might get a fever or get killed or something." Tony absent-mindedly nibbling a piece of roll already saw Dick in her mind's eye the victim of an assassin's blade.

"No such luck!" thought Alan Massey bitterly. The thought brought a flash of venom into his eyes which Tony unluckily caught.

"Alan! Why do you hate Dick so? He never did you any harm."

Tony Holiday did not know what outrageous injury Dick had done his cousin, Alan Massey.

Alan was already suavely master of himself, the venom expunged from his eyes.

"Why wouldn't I hate him, Antoinetta mia? You are half in love with him."

"I am not," denied Tony indignantly. "He is just like Lar—." She broke off abruptly, remembering Dick's flare of resentment at that familiar formula, remembering too the kiss she had given him in the dimly-lit hall in the Hostelry, the kiss which had not been precisely such a one as she would have given Larry.

Alan's face darkened again.

"Oh, yes, you are. You are blushing."

"I am not." Then putting her hands up to her face and feeling it warm she changed her tactics. "Well, what, if I am? I do care a lot about Dick. I found out the other night that I cared a whole lot more than I knew. It isn't like caring for Larry and Ted. It's different. For after all he isn't my brother—never was—never will be. I'm a wretched flirt, Alan. You know it as well as I do. I've let Dick keep on loving me, knowing all the time I didn't mean to marry him. And I'm not a bit sure I am going to marry you either."

"Tony!"

"Well, anyway not for a long, long time. I want to go on the stage. I can't put all of myself into my work and give it to you at the same time. I don't want to get married. I don't dare to. I don't dare even let myself care too much. I want to be free."

"You want to be loved."

"Of course. Every woman does."

Alan made an impatient gesture.

"I don't mean lip-worship. You are a woman, not a piece of statuary. Come on now. Let's dance."

They danced. In her lover's arms, their feet keeping time to the syncopated, stirring rhythms of the violins, their hearts beating to a mightier harmony of nature's own brewing, Tony Holiday was far from being a piece of statuary. She was all woman, a woman very much alive and very much in love.

Alan bent over her.

"Tony, belovedest. There are more things than art in the world," he said softly. "Don't you know it, feel it? There is life. And life is bigger than your work or mine. We're both artists, but we'll be bigger artists together. Marry me now. Don't make me wait. Don't make yourself wait. You want it as much as I do. Say yes, sweetheart," he implored.

Tony shook her head vehemently. She was afraid. She knew that just now all her dreams of success in her chosen art, all her love for the dear ones at home were as nothing in comparison with this greater thing which Alan called life and which she felt surging mightily within her. But she also knew that this way lay madness, disloyalty, regret. She must be strong, strong for Alan as well as for herself.

"Not yet," she whispered back. "Be patient, Alan. I love you, dear. Wait."

The music came to an end. Many eyes followed the two as they went back to their places at the table. They were incomparable artists. It was worth missing one's own dance to see them have theirs. Aside from his wonderful dancing and striking personality Alan was at all times a marked figure, attracting attention wherever he went and whatever he did. The public knew he had a superlative fortune which he spent magnificently as a prince, and that he had a superlative gift which for all they were aware he had flung wantonly away as soon as the money came into his hands. Moreover he was even more interesting because of his superlatively bad reputation which still followed him. The public would have found it hard to believe that at last Alan Massey was leading the most temperate and arduous of lives and devoting himself exclusively to one woman whom he treated as reverently as if she were a goddess. The gazes focussed upon Alan now inevitably included the girl with him, as lovely and young as spring itself.

"Who was she?" they asked each other. "What was a girl like that doing in Alan Massey's society?" To most of the observers it meant but one thing, eventually if not now. Even the most cynical and world-hardened thought it a pity, and these would have been confounded if they could have heard just now his passionate plea for marriage. One did not associate marriage with Alan Massey. One had not associated it too much with his mother, one recalled.