Jim Dyckman had many notes from Kedzie, gushing, all adjectives and adverbs, capitalized and underscored. He left them about carelessly, or locked them up and left the key. If he had not done that the lock on his desk was one that could be opened with a hairpin or with a penknife or with almost any key of a proper size.

There was no one to care except his valet. Dallam cared and read and made notes. He was horrified at the thought of Dyckman's marrying a movie actress. He would have preferred any intrigue to that disgrace. It would mean the loss of a good position, too, for while Dyckman was an easy boss, if he were going to be an easy marrier as well, Dallam had too much self-respect to countenance a marriage beneath them.

If he could only have known of Gilfoyle's existence and his quests, how the two of them could have collaborated!

But Dallam's interest in life woke anew when one evening, as he was putting away the clothes Dyckman had thrown off, he searched his master's coat and found a letter from Mrs. Cheever.

DEAR OLD JIM,—What's happent you? I haven't seen you for ages. Couldn't you spare this evening to me? I'm alone—as always—and lonelier than usual. Do take pity on

Your devoted CHARITY C.

That note, so lightly written in seeming, had been torn from a desperate heart and written in tears and blood.

Since she had learned that her husband really loved Zada and that she was going to mother him a child, Charity had been unable to adjust her soul to the new problem.

The Reverend Doctor Mosely had promised her advice, but the poor man could not match his counsel with the situation. He did not believe in divorce, and yet he did not approve of illegal infants. How happy he could have been with either problem, with t'other away! In his dilemma he simply avoided Charity and turned his attention to the more regular chores of his parish.

Charity understood his silence, and it served to deepen her own perplexity. She was sure of only one thing—that she was caged and forgotten.

Cheever came home less and less, and he was evidently so harrowed with his own situation that Charity felt almost more sorry for him than angry at him. She imagined that he must be enduring no little from the whims and terrors of Zada. He was evidently afraid to speak to Charity. To ask for her mercy was contrary to all his nature. He never dreamed that the dictagraph had brought her with him when he learned of Zada's intensely interesting condition, and her exceedingly onerous demands. He did not dare ask Charity for a divorce in order that he might legitimize this byblow of his. He could imagine only that she would use the information for some ruinous vengeance. So he dallied with his fate in dismal irresolution.

Charity had his woes to bear as well as her own. She knew that she had lost him forever. The coquetries she had used to win him back were impossible even to attempt. He had no use for her forgiveness or her charms. He was a mere specter in her home, doomed for his sins to walk the night.

In despising herself she rendered herself lonelier. She had not even herself for companion. Her heart had always been eager with love and eager for it. The spirit that impelled her to endure hardships in order to expend her surplusage of love was unemployed now. She had feasted upon love, and now she starved.

Cheever had been a passionate courtier and, while he was interested, a fiery devotee. When he abandoned her she suffered with the devastation that deserted wives and recent widows endure but must not speak of. It meant terribly much to Charity Coe to be left alone. It was dangerous to herself, her creeds, her ideals.

She began to be more afraid of being alone than of any other fear. She grew resentful toward the conventions that held her. She was like a tigress in a wicker cage, growing hungrier, lither, more gracefully fierce.

People who do not use their beauty lose it, and Charity had lost much of hers in her vigils and labors in the hospitals, and it had waned in her humiliations of Cheever's preference for another woman. Her jealous shame at being disprized and notoriously neglected had given her wanness and bitterness, instead of warmth and sweetness.

But now the wish to be loved brought back loveliness. She did not know how beautiful she was again. She thought that she wanted to see Jim Dyckman merely because she wanted to be flattered and because—as women say in such moods—men are so much more sensible than women. Often they mean more sensitive. Charity did not know that it was love, not friendship, that she required when at last she wrote to Jim Dyckman and begged him to call on her.

The note struck him hard. It puzzled him by its tone. And he, remembering how vainly he had pursued her, forgot her disdain and recalled only how worthy of pursuit she was. He hated himself for his disloyalty to Anita in comparing his fiancee with Charity, and he cursed himself for finding Charity infinitely Anita's superior in every way. But he hated and cursed in vain.

Kedzie, or “Anita,” as he called her, was an outsider, a pretty thing like a geisha, fascinating by her oddity and her foreignness, but, after all, an alien who could interest one only temporarily. There was something transient about Kedzie in his heart, and he had felt it vaguely the moment he found himself pledged to her forever. But Charity—he had loved her from perambulator days. She was his tradition. His thoughts and desires had always come home to Charity.

Yet he was astonished at the sudden upheaval of his old passion. It shook off the new affair as a volcano burns away the weeds that have grown about its crater. He supposed that Charity wanted to take up the moving-picture scheme in earnest, and he repented the fact that he had gone to the studio for information and had come away with a flirtation.

One thing was certain: he must not fail to answer Charity's summons. He had an engagement with Kedzie, but he called her up and told her the politest lie he could concoct. Then he made himself ready and put on his festival attire.

Charity had grown sick of having people say, “How pale you are!” “You've lost flesh, haven't you?” “Have you been ill, dear?”—those tactless observations that so many people feel it necessary to make, as if there were no mirrors or scales or symptoms for one's information and distress.

Annoyed by these conversational harrowers, Charity had finally gone to her dressmaker, Dutilh, and asked him to save her from vegetation! He saw that she was a young woman in sore need of a compliment, and he flattered her lavishly. He did more for her improvement in five minutes than six doctors, seventeen clergymen, and thirty financiers could have done. A compliment in time is a heart-stimulant with no acetanilid reaction. Also he told her how wonderful she had been in the past, recalling by its name and by the name of its French author many a gown she had worn, as one would tell a great actress what rÔles he had seen her in.

He clothed her with praise and encouragement, threw a mantle of crimson velvet about her. And she crimsoned with pride, and her hard, thin lips velveted with beauty.

She responded so heartily that he was enabled to sell her a gown of very sumptuous mode, its colors laid on as with the long sweeps of a Sargent's brush. A good deal of flesh was not left to the imagination; as in a Sargent painting, the throat, shoulders, and arms were part of the color scheme. It was a gown to stride in, to stand still in, in an attitude of heroic repose, or to recline in with a Parthenonian grandeur.

This gown did not fit her perfectly, just as it came from Paris, but it revealed its possibilities and restored her shaken self-confidence immeasurably. If women—or their husbands—could afford it, they would find perhaps more consolation, restoration, and exaltation at the dressmakers' than at—it would be sacrilege to say where.

By the time Charity's new gown was ready for the last fitting Charity had lost her start, and when Dutilh went into the room where she had dressed he was aghast at the difference. On the first day the gown had thrilled her to a collaboration with it. Now she hardly stood up in it. She drooped with exaggerated awkwardness, shrugged her shoulders with sarcasm, and made a face of disgust.

Dutilh tried to mask his disappointment with anger. When Charity groaned, “Aren't we awful—this dress and I?” he retorted: “You are, but don't blame the gown. For God's sake, do something for the dress. It would do wonders for you if you would help it!” He believed in a golden rule for his wares: do for your clothes what you would have them do for you.

He threatened not to let Charity have the gown at all at any price. He ordered her to take it off. She refused. In the excitement of the battle she grew more animated. Then he whirled her to a mirror and said:

“Look like that, and you're a made woman.”

She was startled by the vivacity, the authority she saw in her features so long dispirited. She caught the trick of the expression. And actors know that one's expression can control one's moods almost as much as one's moods control one's expressions.

So she persuaded Dutilh to sell her the dress. When she got it she did not know just when to wear it, for she was going out but rarely, and then she did not want to be conspicuous. She decided to make Jim Dyckman's call the occasion for the launching of the gown. His name came up long before she had put it on to be locked in for the evening.

When she thrust her arms forward like a diver and entered the gown by way of the fourth dimension her maid cried out with pride, and, standing with her fingertips scattered over her face, wept tears down to her knuckles. She welcomed the prodigal back to beauty.

“Oh, ma'am, but it's good to see you lookin' lovely again!”

While she bent to the engagement of the hooks Charity feasted on her reflection in the cheval-glass. She was afraid that she was a little too much dressed up and a little too much undressed. There in Dutilh's shop, with the models and the assistants about, she was but a lay figure, a clothes-horse. At the opera she would have been one of a thousand shoulder-showing women. For a descent upon one poor caller, and a former lover at that, the costume frightened her.

But it was too late to change, and she caught up a scarf of gossamer and twined it round her neck to serve as a mitigation.

Hearing her footsteps on the stairs at last, Dyckman hurried to meet her. As she swept into the room she collided with him, softly, fragrantly. They both laughed nervously, they were both a little influenced.

She found the drawing-room too formal and led him into the library. She pointed him to a great chair and seated herself on the corner of a leather divan nearly as big as a touring-car. In the dark, hard frame she looked richer than ever. He could not help seeing how much more important she was than his Anita.

Anita was pretty and peachy, delicious, kissable, huggable, a pleasant armful, a lapload of girlish mischief. Charity was beautiful, noble, perilous, a woman to live for, fight for, die for. Kedzie was to Charity as Rosalind to Isolde.

It was time for Jim to play Tristan, but he had no more blank verse in him than a polo score-card. Yet the simple marks on such a form stand for tremendous energy and the utmost thrill.

“Well, how are you, anyway, Charity? How goes it with you?” he said. “Gee! but you look great to-night. What's the matter with you? You're stunning!”

Charity laughed uncannily. “You're the only one that thinks so, Jim.”

“I always did admire you more than anybody else could; but, good Lord! everybody must have eyes.”

“I'm afraid so,” said Charity. “But you're the only one that has imagination about me.”

“Bosh!”

“My husband can't see me at all.”

“Oh, him!” Jim growled. “What's he up to now?”

“I don't know,” said Charity. “I hardly ever see him. He's chucked me for good.”

Jim studied her with idolatry and with the intolerant ferocity of a priest for the indifferent or the skeptical. The idol made her plaint to her solitary worshiper.

“I'm horribly lonely, Jim. I don't go anywhere, meet anybody, do anything but mope. Nobody comes to see me or take me out. Even you kept away from me till I had to send for you.”

“You ordered me off the premises in Newport, if you remember.”

“Yes, I did, but I didn't realize that I was mistreating the only admirer I had.”

This was rather startling in its possible implications. It scared Dyckman. He gazed at her until her eyes met his. There was something in them that made him look away. Then he heard the gasp of a little sob, and she began to cry.

“Why, Charity!” he said. “Why, Charity Coe!”

She smiled at the pet name and the tenderness in his voice, and her tears stopped.

“Jim,” she said, “I told Doctor Mosely all about my affairs, and I simply spoiled his day for him and he dropped me. So I think I'll tell you.”

“Go to the other extreme, eh?” said Jim.

“Yes, I'm between the devil and the high-Church. I've no doubt I'm to blame, but I can't seem to stand the punishment with no change in sight. I've tried to, but I've got to the end of my string and—well—whether you can help me or not—I've got to talk or die. Do you mind if I run on?”

“God bless you, I'd be tickled to death.”

“It will probably only ruin your evening.”

“Help yourself. I'd rather have you wreck all my evenings than—than—”

He had begun well, which was more than usual. She did not expect him to finish. She thanked him with a look of more than gratitude.

“Jim,” she said, “I've found out that my husband is—well—there's a certain ex-dancer named L'Etoile, and he—she—they—”

Instead of being astounded, Dyckman was glum.

“Oh, you've found that out at last, have you? Maybe you'll learn before long that there's trouble in France. But of course you know that. You were over there. Why, before you came back he was dragging that animal around with him. I saw him with her.”

“You knew it as long ago as that?”

“Everybody knew it.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Because I'm a low-lived coward, I suppose. I tried to a dozen times, but somehow I couldn't. By gad! I came near writing you an anonymous letter. I couldn't seem to stoop to that, though, and I couldn't seem to rise to telling you out and out. And now that you know, what are you going to do about it?”

“That's what I don't know. Doctor Mosely wanted me to try to get him back.”

“Doctor Mosely's got softening of the brain. To think of your trying to persuade a man to live with you! You of all people, and him of all people! Agh! If you got him, what would you have? And how long would you keep him? You can't make a household pet out of a laughing hyena. Chuck him, I say.”

“But that means the divorce-court, Jim.”

“What of it? It's cleaner and sweeter than this arrangement.”

“But the newspapers?”

“Ah, what do you care about them? They'd only publish what everybody that knows you knows already. And what's the diff' if a lot of strangers find out that you're too decent to tolerate that man's behavior? Somebody is always roasting even the President, but he gets along somehow. A lot of good people oppose divorce, but I was reading that the best people used to oppose anesthetics and education and republics. It's absolutely no argument against a thing to say that a lot of the best people think it is outrageous. They've always fought everything, especially freedom for the women. They said it was dangerous for you to select your husbands, or manage your property, or learn to read, or go out to work, or vote, or be in a profession—or even be a war nurse. The hatred of divorce is all of a piece with the same old habit good people have of trying to mind other people's business for 'em.”

“But Doctor Mosely says that marriage is a sacrament.”

“Well, if a marriage like yours is a sacrament, give me a nice, decent white-slave market.”

“That's the way it seems to me, but the Church, especially our Church, is so ferocious. Doctor Mosely preached a sermon against divorce and remarriage, and it was frightful what he said about women who change husbands. I'm afraid of it, Jim. I can't face the abuse and the newspapers, and I can't face the loneliness, either. I'm desperately lonely.”

“For him?” Jim groaned.

“No, I've got over loving him. I'll never endure him again, especially now that she has a better right to him.”

She could not bring herself at first to tell him what she knew of Zada, but at length she confessed that she had listened to the dictagraph and had heard that Zada was to be a mother. Dyckman was dumfounded; then he snarled:

“Thank God it's not you that's going to be—for him—Well, don't you call that divorce enough? How can you call your marriage a sacrament when he has gone and made a real sacrament with another woman? It takes two to keep a sacrament, doesn't it? Or does it? I don't think I know what a sacrament is. But I tell you, there was never a plainer duty in the world. Turn him over to his Zada. She's the worst woman in town, and she's too good for him, at that. I don't see how you can hesitate! How long can you stand it?”

“I don't know. I'm ready to die now. I'd rather die. I'd better die.”

And once more she was weeping, now merely a lonely little girl. He could not resist the impulse to go to her side. He dropped down by her and patted her wrist gawkily. She caught his hand and clenched it with strange power. He could tell by her throat that her heart was leaping like a wild bird against a cage.

His own heart beat about his breast like a bird that has been set frantic by another bird, and his soul ached for her. He yearned to put his long arm about her and hold her tight, but he could not.

He had never seen her so. He could not understand what it was that made a darkling mist of her eyes and gave her parted lips such an impatient ecstasy of pain.

Suddenly, with an intuition unusual to him, he understood. He shrank from her, but not with contempt or blame. There was something divine about his merciful comprehension, but his only human response was a most ungodly wrath. He got to his feet, muttering:

“I ought to kill him. Maybe I will. I've got to beat him within an inch of his life.”

Charity was dazed by his abrupt revolt. “What do you mean, Jim? Who is it you want to beat?”

He laughed, a bloodthirsty laugh. “I'll find him!”

He rushed out into the hall, caught up his hat and coat, and was gone. Charity was bewildered out of her wits. She could not imagine what had maddened him. She only knew that Dyckman also had abandoned her. He would find Cheever and fight him as one stag another. And the only result would be the death of one or both and a far more odious disgrace than the scandal she had determined to avoid.