At four o'clock, Garry once more asleep to the sound of her calming voice, she ran out for a brief visit to Miss Pim's. In front of the door was an automobile that she recognized—in the heavy mediocrity of the parlor, Albert Edward Sassoon. He came languidly to meet her (since her first reproof he had given up his pasha pose), unruffled and docile, assuming the rÔle of good fellowship, despite the fretting of the spirit he had endured.

"Oh, is that you?" she remarked nonchalantly, and gave him a limp hand, arranging her toque in the mirror while listening to his Christmas greetings.

"The humblest and the most patient of your admirers, pretty tyrant!" he said, his tired eyes scanning her with mock humility.

"You are lucky to find me; waiting long?"

As she continued standing, without a move to be seated, he drew from his pocket two jewel-cases, and said, as he moved toward the sofa:

"I am going to let you choose, Miss Dodo, so that you may be sure"—he paused, and added with slow silky emphasis—"to get just what you want!"

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

"First, please!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You ran no risk!" she said scornfully.

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

"Then why offer it?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well?"

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

She took off the bracelet immediately.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And he?" she cried, delighted.

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

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

"Yes, I like that!"

"And which is it to be?"

"The bracelet, please!"

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

"You see how domesticated I am!"

"You behave very well!"

"Grant me one favor, then!"

"What?"

"To see your room," he said eagerly.

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

"Well, for once! But why?"

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

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

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

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

But all at once she rose anxiously.

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

"Yes, he came!"

"You saw him? What did you say?"

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

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

"No!"

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

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

"Twelve to twelve forty-five.—Why?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Many presents?" he asked slowly.

She nodded gaily.

"Heaps!"

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

"My present."

"Really?" she said, clasping her hands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Does it?" she said, suddenly pliant.

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

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

"I will believe!" he said gravely.

Then he chuckled at this bit of boy-and-girl sentiment, and she laughed back. It was so good to be there—so soul-satisfying!

A little before nine, with a promise to drop in later for a few minutes, she went back to keep her appointment with Massingale. But she was conscious of a little regret, an unwillingness to leave the quiet moods into which she had come. Then, there would have to be explanations, something invented,—for she could not tell him the truth,—and the thought of complaints and replies, discussion and fencing, all the nervous play and struggle of the last weeks repeated, fretted her and left her impatient. But when she had waited in her room until nine, and another half-hour had dragged on without his coming, she was a bit alarmed. She went slowly to the telephone, hesitating and deliberating. Then she stopped, shook her head and returned.

All at once the door of Winona's room opened, and the tall dark figure of the girl remained in the opening, silently, her hand on the knob, hesitating.

Dodo gave a little exclamation and drew back against the table, her head thrown back, proud, wounded and unrelenting.

This silent confrontation lasted a long moment before Winona said slowly:

"Won't you let me come in?"

Dodo was human, and the offense against her had been the blackest in the Salamander code. She felt no softness in her heart. After what she had done, the old confidential relations could never be renewed: what was the use of pretending? So she answered coldly:

"Why? There was no excuse for what you did—absolutely none!"

Winona, very calm, reflected a moment; then she answered abruptly:

"I know! I'm not asking forgiveness!" And, with a decision that astonished Dodo, she entered, saying, "No one will come—for half an hour at least? I've got something I must talk out, you're the only human being, Dodo—I must talk to some one, or I shall go mad!"

The obstinate reckless force in her words and gestures completed Dodo's astonishment. Instead of a suppliant, Winona had assumed control of the situation. She hesitated, on the point of an angry refusal. But Winona had not come to ask for forgiveness—for what then? She turned on her heel, sat down and folded her arms aggressively, looking her sternest. Winona immediately placed herself before her, never avoiding her gaze, speaking abruptly, as if in a hurry, with hard cruel notes in her voice:

"Dodo, you were the only true friend I had in the world; you did everything for me; and I tried to take from you a man who means nothing to you. You have a dozen,—twenty, if you wish,—and I had none! I was desperate! I'm saying no more—what's the use? You wouldn't forgive me—I wouldn't if I were you; and, if you did, would that change matters? No! Some day—you will see matters differently." She stopped at an angry gesture of negation from the seated girl, and repeated, with a smile full of bitterness: "Some day—yes, remember what I say!" For a moment, through the hardness of her mood, a little bit of the old Winona appeared, gentle and tender, as she looked down with the first trace of remorse; but she crushed it immediately, and continued almost mechanically, as if reciting a piece committed to memory:

"What I tell you now, I tell you because you are the only one I can trust, and because, no matter what's happened, you are the one I want to understand. I have been married for five years!"

At this incredible announcement Dodo let her arms fall, half rising from her seat, open-mouthed.

"Married!"

"Five years!" Winona repeated, shrugging her shoulders. "Legally, that's all. Don't interrupt me; I want to get it over. I lived in a God-forsaken fishing village on the Maine coast—God-forsaken eight months of the year, waking up in the summer for a few city folks, second-class, who'd come down for three months, four months, to keep us going the rest of the year. Father was a decent sort, sea captain, fussing about a couple of cat-boats in the summer, lazy, but kind. My mother was a devil if ever there was one; but she worked hard, washing, cooking. She couldn't read or write. Why he married her—don't know! Because she got him with her good looks, probably, the looks she passed down to my sister and me! There were eight in the family, and we were the eldest—village belles. Morals weren't any too strict there; lord, why should they be? With everything gone to rot, no hope, no life, just existing, dragging through one month after another—sleet, ice and wind, and nothing ahead but to get old! All right, when you didn't know that something else existed over on the mainland! That was the trouble! They educated us—sent us over for a year's high school at New Bedford, to stay with an aunt.

"New Bedford! Lord, I thought it was a wonderland then; Boston and New York couldn't be any finer. Then she brought us back, to help in the living, to wait on the table when the boarders came, to end up by marrying—work for some man who'd sit around, to be fed and clothed, to have his house cleaned—children and all the rest."

She stopped a moment, frowning, and Dodo, overwhelmed at this picture of isolation and drudgery, that started before her eyes in the gesture and the voice of the girl, who seemed to have returned to it all, exclaimed:

"But why tell me?"

Without noticing the interruption, Winona continued, speaking as if to herself, seemingly unconscious of Dodo's presence:

"New Bedford and summer boarders! That was the whole trouble! I was eighteen, sister twenty, and the village belles! We used to get out of the windows, nights, and steal off for a dance, every chance we got. Lord! it was innocent enough, considering what the other girls were doing; but she—the mother—whenever she'd catch us, she used to go stark out of her mind, swear we were disgracing her, bringing shame on the family, insinuating—well, everything! That wasn't all! She tied us up and beat us with a strap—yes, just that!—until she couldn't beat or shriek at us any more. But that didn't stop us! It only made us hate everything—her, the home, the life! Once she beat my sister so that they had to call in a doctor. The next week she ran off—disappeared." Winona drew a long breath, and her arm swept toward the trackless city, lowering at their window-sides: "Never a word. God knows! The worst, I guess—here, perhaps—somewhere!

"She wanted me to go with her; I hadn't the nerve. Besides, there was a city fellow, clerk in a shoe store, who was taken with me, and I thought—I was sure—would marry me and get me out of it. But nothing ever came of that. After my sister went, she, the mother, never beat me again. Father had had some words with her, I guess. Only it was worse! She had bars put in my window, and she never let me out of her sight in summer. When she went to bed she locked me in herself. She swore she'd keep me, at least, an honest girl. Two years of that. God knows how many times I thought of ending it all!

"Then there was an old fellow from the city, who had come down ten years before, and stayed. Been a gentleman, or something near it. Drink was the trouble—but a quiet sort of an old bachelor. Took over the little ramshackle store, living by himself with a regiment of cats. There'd been something back in his life—scandal about something or other: none of us ever got the truth, but it took the ambition out of him. He didn't care. He rather liked the old hole, I think. The store, you know, was the social center. Anyhow, he got sort of hold of himself, and prospered.

"Now, what I did, I did myself. I made him fall in love with me—oh, it wasn't difficult! I'd known for a long time what was back of his eyes; only—well, I was the belle, and every one was after me, and he'd sense enough to know that a prize like that wasn't for him, at fifty-five. Well, the rest isn't important; besides, it was easy. He got infatuated, as I meant, and when it was time I made a bargain. I had talked him into believing I would have a career; only it wasn't that—I wanted to get away! And one afternoon in December, with the snow piling up against the door, when we were alone in his store, I made my bargain—over the counter just like any other sale.

"He was to supply me with money for three years, and at the end of that time, if I was a success, he was to join me; if I failed, I was to go back, forget and take up the old life again. It sounds queer perhaps; as a matter of fact, I played many scenes before I got him to that. I was clever then; I was only twenty-one! Then—well, I'd put the longing for me into him, and it was a bargain like any other. I wanted five years, but he stuck for three. I wanted an engagement only, but, though he was crazy for me, he was too canny. So we compromised: I met him in Boston, and we were married secretly, and I left him the same day. He took me to the train and put me on board, shaking like a fever, looking at me with eyes big as saucers.

"That was four years ago. I did not go back, and he stopped sending me money. I wrote him a hundred lies—told him I must have another year by myself, that I had a big opportunity, that I was sure to succeed, that he had not given me enough time, every excuse. But he stopped my money short, told me when I was ready I'd got to come to him—"

She stopped, drew in her breath, and then burst out fiercely:

"God! I may be a wicked woman, but how I have waited, how I have prayed, to be delivered from him! Yes, prayed on my knees for him to die—to make me free, to give me a chance! But what's the use? I thought I was so clever! Clever?... I'm a stupid little fool! Career? I haven't the ghost of a show! I know it now! There's no more hoping! I've had chance after chance; what good did they do me? That last one—that opened my eyes! Blainey's right; he didn't mince words. It was what I needed; it convinced me! But, God! if he would only die!"

Dodo had sat breathlessly, even shrinking back in her chair, before these passions in the raw, flung out without pretense of concealment, horror-stricken.

"But what will you do then?" she cried, terrified at the expression in Winona's eyes.

The girl's eyes came to hers, cold, resolved, disdainful; but she did not reply. A horrible thought suddenly possessed Dodo, as of an ominous echo out of her own past.

"You won't go back!" she cried, shuddering.

"Go back to that? To that loneliness, that starvation, that slavery, after knowing this?" she cried furiously, clenching her fist and starting back. Then she caught herself, looked away, and presently turned, calm, with a light of bitter mockery on her set face. "No! That is one thing I won't do!"

She dropped her fist, which had been pressed to her throat, with a short rough gesture of finality, and went directly to her door.

"Whether you come to forgive me or not," she said, "if I ever can help you, Dodo, save you from anything, come to me!"

And without waiting for an answer, she closed and locked the door.

For minute on minute Dodo remained as she had sprung up, her chin in her hand, her knuckles pressed tensely against the sharp contact of her teeth, thinking, hesitating, torn by conflicting impulses. Had Winona dramatized her story, as she herself had done a hundred times? Was it all true, or only half true? If it were true, then what had she sought with Peavey, if not to be his wife—what, then? Only Peavey could tell her, make her certain of the truth or falsity of this story. And yet, there were accents, cries of the soul, despair of the eyes, that were too poignantly felt to be counterfeited! Dodo tiptoed to the door, listening. From the other side came the regular tread of a pacing step, regular and nervous; but of weeping no sound! She remained still a moment, her hand pressed to her breast, irresistibly drawn to belief. Had Winona opened the door at the moment, she would have caught her in her arms.

Then she remembered Lindaberry, staring into the horror of the night—into the long wakeful darkness; and she said to herself, as she departed hurriedly:

"To-morrow I will go to her. It can not be a lie!"

She found Lindaberry flushed with a sudden fever, that burned brightly on his worn cheeks and in the luminous brilliant eyes, which scarcely recognized her. Doctor Lampson was there. It was an attack of influenza, brought on by exposure and the drain on his vitality, which might be serious in his present condition.

She remained obstinately all night, sharing the watches with Clarice. The fever, which flared up fiercely at first, subsided somewhat with the coming of the day, leaving him quiet, but in a dangerously weak condition. When again she had the opportunity to return to her room, she remembered Winona. The fear of what might happen to the wasted man at whose bedside she had watched, the cleansing of the spirit which the single thought of death had brought, had washed away all bitterness. She opened the door with longing, her arms ready. The room was empty, the bed untouched! In the center a trunk stood locked and corded. When she returned again in the afternoon, even the trunk had disappeared. Miss Pim, who arrived with professional, calculating eye, answered her outpouring of questions by a magnificent gesture of disdain.

"Said she was going to a house-party—for a week. That's what she said! H'm, I've got the trunk, if I haven't got two weeks' board! We shall see what we shall see! I have my suspicions!"