“And I said to him: ‘My deah boy, don’t talk to me as if I were your wife! And don’t imagine you’re the only twin six in town.’ And we settled it right then and there.” The full pouting lips broadened into a reminiscent smile. The pink and white cheeks dimpled. Miss Mariette Mallard, accent on the last syllable, laid her trump card on the table for the benefit of her listener whose black eyes sparkled with gratifying interest. “And then he went out and bought me a big—”

Just what the “big” was remained a question, for Miss Mariette halted as a girl slid into the chair next to hers and stretched out a hand to dust a film of powder from the face of her mirror. They formed a queer assortment, those mirrors, all shapes and sizes, propped against both sides of the rack that ran down the center of the long make-up table.

Above them, on a wire stretching from one dusty white washed wall to the other, was suspended a row of electric lights in a tin reflector. Before them, dumped hodge-podge, were boxes of rouge and mascaro, rabbits’ feet, puffs and eyebrow brushes. Into them gazed as many types as there are flowers of the field, with just two traits in common,—all were slender as birch trees, all young as Eve before the serpent appeared. Except that to most the apple was no longer forbidden fruit.

At the moment there were some sixteen in various [250] stages of preparing for the costume, largely imagination, which the prettiest chorus on Broadway wore in SceneI of “Good Night Cap.” It was one of those musical mÉlanges commonly known as girlie shows, and advertised in red splashes of poster as “A Bevy of Beauties All under Twenty.” Its prescription is filled each season with merely a change of lights and trappings to distinguish it from its predecessor.

The bloods of New York patronize the Summer Garden with a loyalty that brings them back at least once a week. The one theater in town it is in which the chorus fraternizes with the audience, tripping down a runway into the aisles to trill their syncopated love ditties into the ears of selected members, or swinging overhead on ropes of roses, bare knees perilously near bald heads. Buyers, politicians, traveling salesmen, miners and perfectly proper tired business men with their smiling better halves all enter the place with a twinkle of anticipation and come out humming a medley of haunting tunes.

On the night in question, one of early March, Miss Mariette Mallard’s voluminous moleskin wrap was draped over the back of her chair and she pulled it round her with a pretty baby shiver as she scanned the girl who had just come in. Then she winked at the black-eyed one.

“Well,” she observed, forgetting to go on with her story, “how is mamma’s sparkler to-night?”

The girl bit her lip, then turned with a grin that was not in her eyes and flashed under Miss Mariette’s little nose the hand that had dusted the mirror. On its third [251] finger blinked a diamond, the size and brilliance of which was breath taking.

Miss Mallard promptly turned her attention to the black-eyed one. “Gracie deah, suppose you had a block of ice like that—wouldn’t you try to make your clothes live up to it?”

The black-eyed one giggled: “And I wouldn’t be so upstage about it until I did.”

The object of their amusement set her teeth and turned back to the mirror, addressing the reflection: “I pay cash for my clothes. That’s more than some people can say.”

The black-eyed one giggled again. “They look it,” she murmured sweetly.

Miss Mariette indulged in a smile still more saccharine. “They look as if you paid nothing for them, my deah. Take my advice and pay cash to get rid of them.” She gave a dismissing flourish of her small hand and patted her pale blonde ringlets.

The chorus girl of to-day buys her hats on Fifth Avenue and borrows her manner from the same thoroughfare. She never forgets that a lead awaits her if she’s clever enough to look and act the part. Not that Miss Mallard had any ambitions in that direction. She was content to be cute and cuddly and first on the left in the front row. But she did try to live up to the moleskin cloak and the car that called for her every night. Only at unguarded moments did Second Avenue scratch through Fifth. “You don’t know how to manage him, my deah,” she concluded, baby blue eyes fastened on the radiant stone.

[252]
The girl’s lips opened, then shut tight. She had told them where the ring came from—and they didn’t believe her. Besides, if she tried to answer them she’d cry, and she’d die rather than let them see her do that! It was the same struggle she went through every night and two matinÉes a week—sometimes with bravado, more often in choking silence. Somehow they made her ashamed, those two, that for her the apple still hung high on the tree. If they wanted to think some man had given her the diamond, so much the better! It would make her seem popular—less a little fool!

She downed the tears by vigorous motion.... She sprang up—a kick of her heel sent her chair spinning—and ripping open her one-piece serge dress, she tossed it on the hook in the wall where hung a plain brown ulster and imitation seal turban—alley cat caught in the rain, Miss Mariette had christened it. Then she gritted her teeth, pulled the chair back into place and slashed on make-up.

Sallie MacMahon, listed in chorus annals as Zara May, was one of those who merited the splashing announcement of the red posters. Perhaps it was her long mermaid hair with its glisten of sunset on the sea; perhaps the fact that the lashes shading her deep blue eyes were the same gold; perhaps the transparent quality of her skin with the swift play of young blood under the surface; but whatever it was, Sallie’s beauty held a luminous quality Sallie herself did not possess. Sallie was just a girl, with a facility for doing what she was told. The daughter of a Scotch father with somber eyes and an Irish mother with laughing ones, both of [253] whom had sailed the misty river into unknown lands after a stormy sojourn together in this one, she had been left at fifteen to take care of herself, with a love of the beautiful on one hand warring against a sense of economy on the other.

Sallie loved soft furs and clinging silks such as swept into the chorus dressing-room nightly. But she had no desire to follow the tortuous path by which such luxuries are achieved. However, the fact that the Mallard girl and Grace assumed she had done so, did not at all disturb her. It was their ridicule she feared, their jibes at her clothes. Speeding across the stone floor under the Summer Garden stage she tried to bring a smile to her lips. They merely trembled.

There came the march of a military air and the girls filed up the wobbly wooden steps and through a trap door. Sallie fluffed up her abbreviated skirt, brought the smile to her lips, fixed it as if it had been glued there. Her young, elastic body rippled through the number under the changing lights. She loved the jazz, loved the stir of rhythm, and had it not been for the ache in her heart whenever she set foot in the theater, she would have loved the work. She was nineteen. Music was in her blood.

She danced through the varying scenes with swift changes of costume, hurried dabs of powder, and little time to nurse her woes. A number toward the end of ActII was her favorite. It was the one in which the girls trooped down the runway and trilled to some not always embarrassed male occupant of an aisle seat:—

Often as she swayed through it, it never failed to give her a thrill. Likewise she never failed to get what she demanded.

To-night, as she syncopated down the aisle, a light like blue fire darted from her deep eyes. Kindled by the smouldering defiance of earlier evening it was utterly unconscious of seeking an object. But the gentleman in the particular seat that was her territory could scarcely have been expected to know that. To him it constituted challenge.

urged Sallie.

The man’s lips parted. “You just bet I will!” came in a flash of white teeth.

Sallie’s mind was not photographic. It registered no definite impression of the individuals occupying her particular aisle seat. They came and went, vague as shadows. But this man’s response and his quick flashing smile with its personal note, made her suddenly realize that she had been singing to the same pleasant grin every night that week.

She was still wondering about him as Miss Mariette, at the close of the performance, stepped into a short-waisted chiffon dress and, pulling it over slender hips, slipped her arms through the spangled shoulder straps. She and Grace were booked for a party, and the latter [255] emerged like a full-blown rose, black eyes dancing above a gown of American beauty satin. Then both sat down and took some of the make-up off their faces.

Sallie was in the act of pinning on the alley cat.

“Do show him to us, my deah!” persiflaged Miss Mallard. “Don’t be so-er-close, even if he is.”

Sallie jabbed the pin into her head, winced in pain and, with chin trembling and eyes hot with starting tears, hurried into the corridor followed by the familiar titter. Blindly she made her way up the stairs to the stage entrance.

Outside, a blaze of changing lights proclaimed that Broadway was rubbing the sleep from her eyes and preparing to dance. A gold haze lined the sky, veiling the night even to the silver-white buildings that reared their heads high into the heavens. Lined up at the curb was a row of taxis. The modern stage door Johnny no longer stands, bouquet in hand. He remains discreetly in his cab or car and only when the lady of his choice emerges does he do likewise.

As Sallie started to cross the street someone called “Good-evening.” But that being a familiar method of address, she passed on without a glance.

“I say,” pleaded the voice, “won’t you smile at me again?”

Sallie turned then. Descending from a big yellow car which, had she known more of auto aristocracy, would have stamped itself as of prohibitive peerage, was the man of the aisle seat.

He came nearer.

Sallie turned flutteringly on her heel.

[256]
“Wait, please,” he begged and his teeth gleamed as they had in the theater. They were nice teeth in a boyish mouth, and upon Sallie they had a disarming effect. In spite of an instinctive impulse to run, she hesitated. The talon scratches inflicted in the chorus dressing-room were still bleeding and the smile of the man who had ceased to be a shadow was balm.

He reached her, lifted his hat.

Sallie shifted uncertainly from one foot to the other.

“Come for a ride, won’t you?” he asked.

“Oh, I couldn’t,” she answered promptly.

“Why not?”

“I—I just couldn’t, that’s all.”

He gave her a curious, somewhat puzzled look. “Round the park—once?”

“I—I—no, thank you, I couldn’t.”

“Then let me drive you home.”

“I—I don’t live very far. I always walk it.”

“Well, ride it to-night. Please!” Again that disarming gleam.

Sallie looked up with eyes clouded and a tremor on her lips. “It’s nice of you to want to take me, but—”

“But I’ve been coming here every night this week trying to make a hit with you, and until to-night you never even knew I was alive. Don’t you think you ought to be a little kind to a fellow who’s as devoted as that?”

“I—I’d like to, awfully—but—”

“Then what’s to prevent?”

She looked down, tracing a pattern with the toe of her boot.

[257]
“Please—I—thanks just the same,” she brought out finally.

She took a step toward the curb, away from him.

And just then came one of those feathery gusts that send whirling the wheel of fate. Miss Mariette Mallard and Grace issued from the stage door, their exchange of glances telling too plainly that they were still enjoying the laugh at her expense. At the curb waited a limousine quite overshadowed by the gorgeousness of the big yellow touring car. They drew near, still giggling.

Swift as a bird, Sallie veered back to him. Instantly he was at her side.

“You can take me home”—it was breathless—“I’ll let you do that.”

Eagerly he helped her in, took his place at the wheel. Sallie turned with the air of royalty. With the sweetest of smiles, her head inclined in the direction of the two girls. As the car sped round the corner she saw them halt abruptly and, like Lot’s wife, stand rooted where they stopped.

[258]
CHAPTER II

To a woman, the discovery that events do not work out as she had planned comes in the nature of a disappointment. To a man, the same discovery adds zest to the determination to make them do so. The man in the yellow touring car was amazed to find that Sallie actually did permit him to drive her home and no farther. He had anticipated that run round the park at least once—probably twice—possibly three times. He had even anticipated a cozy supper at which, across a table not too wide, he could drink deep of a pair of well-like blue eyes shaded with gold. But Sallie gave him her address, ten blocks from the theater, and though he urged with all the masculine dominance of which he was capable, she got out of the car in front of a brownstone house sagging as if with the weight of its own years.

The man looked up the steep steps to where a flicker of gaslight sifted on the broken mosaics of the vestibule.

“Is this where you live?” he queried, still holding the hand by which he had helped her.

Sallie nodded, adding as she tried to withdraw the hand, “Thanks ever so much.”

“Here—just a minute!” He drew her back. “You haven’t told me your name yet!”

“Zara May.”

“On-the-level name, I mean.”

[259]
“Oh”—she flashed him a smile—“that one’s good enough.”

“Peaches and cream would fit better!” came in quick response.

She jerked her hand away. “Good-night, Mr.—Mr.—”

“Patterson. Jimmie Fowler Patterson. You’ll notice I’m not so stingy as somebody else!”

She caught hold of the rusty iron railing.

He sprang into the car. “Well, I can wait! See you to-morrow, Miss Zara May.”

Two emotions played havoc with her dreams that night—exultation over the girls and fear. As through her narrow rear window she watched the patch of dull blue mellow into dull gray, she assured herself that to-morrow she would do nothing more than walk past the yellow car with a pleasant “Good-evening.”

But of course she didn’t. Not to-morrow—nor any other night that found it waiting at the stage entrance. And that became every night.

In the chorus dressing-room an aura of new interest surrounded her. That car commanded respect. Miss Mariette even restrained her inclination to persiflage until one evening some ten days later when Sallie came in after the final act and caught her hunched on the floor, back up, meowing with all her might while the alley cat reposed over one ear.

All the old wounds tore open. The blood gushed to Sallie’s head. She grabbed the hat and slapped Miss Mariette’s face, leaving the latter too startled to retaliate in kind. And when Mr.Patterson begged her as he [260] did each evening to drive out to supper, she stepped into the car, throat too full for speech.

He gave a broad grin. “Shall we make it up the Drive and back to Montmartre?”

“I’d just rather ride if you don’t mind.”

They spun up Broadway, through Seventy-second Street and into the enveloping shadows of Riverside. The moon was up, a new crescent streaking its modest trail across the water. On the opposite shore the chain of lights was a necklace of clustering jewels laid on the plush of night.

Sallie nestled into the deep leather-cushioned seat, somewhat to the far side. A sharp wind lifted the curls from under the despised turban and sent them flying across the man’s face. He stole a moment to turn and gaze.

“You’re a winner!” he murmured.

Sallie scarcely heard him. She was lost in the intoxication of tearing motor and racing March wind. Never had she experienced anything like it. And gradually the turmoil of it soothed her own. She closed her eyes.

When they opened it was to meet a swift turn of road, the houses mounted to a higher level and before them, far into the star-eyed night, a stretch of wooded walk through which the Hudson shimmered.

“What’s this?” she asked, hand grasping his coat sleeve as if to stop the onward rush.

“Lafayette Boulevard. You’ve been up here—haven’t you?”

“Never!”

[261]
He slowed down, eyes mocking her.

“Honestly! I’ve never even heard of it.”

“Good Lord!” he whistled and stared at her.

“How long have you been in the show business?”

“About a year.”

“Well, what have you been doing all that time?”

“Working, most of it.”

“But after working hours?”

“Oh, home right after the show. I’m pretty tired then.”

He gave another low whistle, still regarding her curiously, that puzzled, half-skeptical expression creeping into his eyes.

“And Sundays?”

“I visit the girls I used to work with.”

“Where?”

“You mean where did I work?”

He nodded, still with that curious measuring of her.

“In Brooklyn—in a department store. I was at the perfumery. And one day Miss Barton, Bessie Barton—ever hear of her?”

“Rather! Peach of a voice—in ‘Kiss Me Again.’”

“Yes. She was playing over there last year and she came in to buy some French extract—it’s awfully expensive—”

“I know.”

“I waited on her. And after she’d bought a big bottle—it was eight-eighty an ounce—she asked me if I’d ever wanted to go on the stage. She said I was—” Sallie paused.

[262]
“Go on,” he put in quickly. “She said you were a beauty who didn’t belong behind a counter.”

“How did you know?” came wonderingly.

“I don’t need blinders to make me see straight,” he remarked succinctly.

She gave an embarrassed, stammering laugh. “Well—you—you’re right. That’s what she did say—and she’d have her manager give me a job if I wanted it. So I went with them—twenty-five a week. It was a lot more than I was getting at the store. And when she closed, they took me on at the Summer Garden.”

“And you still go round with the Brooklyn crowd?”

Some note in his voice put her on the defensive.

“They’re my old friends—why shouldn’t I?”

He stared at her again. “Queer!” he remarked to himself.

They dashed up a hill.

“I guess we’d better be going back,” she sighed regretfully.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like this?”

“It—it’s wonderful!” Luxuriously she nestled down, eyes half closing again.

“Then have a heart! I’ve been jitneying you from the theater for two solid weeks! Be a little sympathetic, won’t you?”

She laughed, a ringing laugh free as the March wind. “You must think I’m an awful grafter.”

“I think you’re a sweetness.”

The laugh died down. “I guess we’d better be going back.”

[263]
They swung round. “All right. But we’ll stop at Arrowhead first.”

“What’s Arrowhead?”

Once more that swift quizzical look, then his head went back with a long chuckle. “By George, you are cute!”

“What’s so funny about my asking?”

“It’s called Arrowhead Inn, sweetness—and we’re going there for supper.”

“Oh!”

“Now I guess you think you’re not hungry?”

“No—I am hungry.”

Her prompt and unexpected reply pleased him hugely.

“Right! There you are!”

They were flying up a drive, round a grass plot and under a porte-cochÈre. Sallie saw a house girdled with glass that glowed, warm and alluring.

She went into the hall while her host parked the car. A mirror on the wall reflected a face very different from the one she saw habitually in the jagged glass of the dressing-table or the mottled one above her washstand. Its eyes were glistening, red lips were laughing, and at one corner a dimple danced. The blood surged under the smooth skin and went singing through every vein.

To a rotund observer standing nearby, the girl in the mirror looked like a golden-haired sprite. To Sallie she looked nothing more than happy. She proceeded to powder her nose critically and straighten the alley cat on the shining curls. She was still engaged in the process when Mr.James Patterson came in and bore her off under the rotund one’s fat nose. Mr.Patterson [264] had already achieved a proprietory air that prohibited trespassing under penalty of the law.

He refused the first table offered, selecting one close against the window with an intimate little lamp shedding its blush over the cloth. Sallie had never felt so important, not even the night of her stage debut, for then she had been conscious solely of the fact that she was dancing with no skirt on before a lot of people.

The head-waiter helped her out of the ulster. Mr. Patterson then seated himself and for the first time Sallie saw him under revealing electricity.

His hair, parted at the side and brushed straight from his forehead, gave evidence of having been in boyhood the color affectionately known as “carrots.” But frequent use of water and military brushes had charitably darkened it. Remnants of freckles lingered where no amount of hatless motoring could promote more than one coat of tan. Above them gray eyes, not so young as they might have been, searched a world with which they were well acquainted. Smiling, they were a boy’s. In repose, as old as any frequenter’s of stage doors.

Sallie’s gaze settled, not on his features but on his clothes. Patch pockets slanted across the coat. The waistcoat was high and of the same dark blue material threaded with a hairline of white. From the sleeves she thought rather too short, he shook down blue silk shirt cuffs matched by a soft collar. His blue Persian tie was held in an immaculate four-in-hand by a small pearl scarfpin. The correctness, the perfection of detail, were to Sallie positively thrilling. As he picked up the menu she noticed that his hands were wide and muscular [265] with no shine on the nails. She was glad he wasn’t a dude.

He proceeded to order with the casual ease of one who knows the chef’s best dishes. Sallie pulled off her gloves, crossed her arms on the table, leaned forward to listen with a kind of awe. He turned back and as he did so his glance fell on her hand. It riveted there, then slowly traveled upward accompanied by the same long low whistle he had emitted as they drove uptown.

“Whew, what a stone!”

“Yes,” replied Sallie. “It used to be my mother’s.”

He stared. After which came a knowing twinkle to his eyes and a laugh, equally knowing, to his lips. He said nothing.

“Honestly it was,” Sallie protested.

His stare probed her—then came a faint flash of resentment. “I wasn’t born yesterday—not quite,” he announced.

Tears started to Sallie’s eyes. “Please—please believe me!”

“Your mother owned a stone like that and you had to work in a department store?”

“It does sound funny. But it’s true! We never had any money after my father died. Nor before, either. He just saved and saved, and then when he was gone mother just spent and spent. She went crazy spending. She said he never gave us enough to eat when he was alive and she was going to make the best of it now that he was dead. So she went to the savings bank and took out every cent and had a wonderful time—for a while. [266] Hats and dresses and movies every night. She was awfully pretty—”

“I believe it,” came vehemently.

“And she never did have a decent thing to wear while my father was living. Then one day she came home with this ring. ‘Baby,’ she said—she always called me her baby—‘there’s not much left and before it’s all gone, I want to be sure you’re fixed. If I put it in the bank I’ll take it out again, so this way we’ll always have something we can hock if we need to.’”

He chuckled. “And did you ever need to?”

“Often.”

Unwittingly, perhaps, his gaze shifted from the diamond to her dress and hat. She needed no intuition to interpret that look. Experience had taught her exactly what it meant. And where defiance had met the girls in the dressing-room, a wave of shame now swept over her.

Gazing at him in his immaculate perfection, her fingers twitched to toss the alley cat out of the window. Yet she could not apologize for it. She couldn’t explain that, being her father’s daughter, she was banking such of her earnings as could be spared against the day when the sapphire sparkle would fade from her eyes.

As the ’busboy shook out the glistening white napkin, placing it across her knees, she felt an absurd inclination to slide under the table.

Mr.Patterson’s attention, however, had turned to the silver dish of frogs’ legs submitted for approval. He regarded them critically, nodded to the waiter, and Sallie’s discomfort vanished in the thrill of a new experience, though she wished he had ordered a nice thick steak.

[267]
When they were once more gliding down the Drive he leaned over, quickly freeing one hand, and gave hers a squeeze.

“You’re an adorable infant!” he whispered. “Don’t know just what to make of you, but you’ve got me going!”

Sallie looked up a little uncertainly. “My right name’s Sallie MacMahon,” she stammered.

“I don’t care what it is,” came tenderly. “My name for you is the same as your mother’s—‘Baby!’”

[268]
CHAPTER III

“Gracie deah—will you gaze!”

Miss Mallard’s wide, wondering orbs, accompanied by Grace’s, turned toward the door. Sallie MacMahon had just entered, resplendent in spring outfit. Above slim ankles billowed a skirt of silk the color of her eyes. The ankles ended in slippers mounted with buckles of cut steel. Her arms gleamed white through transparent clinging sleeves. A necklace of pearls clasped her throat and over the golden head brimmed a wide hat weighted with roses.

She disrobed nonchalantly, hanging her garments against the sheet that ran round the wall for their protection. She pretended not to see the nudges of the girls but her heart sang a paean of triumph.

Now they would stop laughing at her!

Now they would treat her with respect!

Yea—weep for her, ye wise ones! Sallie’s day had come. She had fallen from grace. Worse, actually reveled in her downfall! That very morning, without a struggle, she had gone to the bank and wantonly depleted her little horde. There had followed a wild debauch of spending such as her own mother had indulged in years before. Silks, laces, chiffons, feathers! Shades of Scotland, the Irish had won out!

And having recklessly started at high speed, she could not stop. She had no desire to. Ridicule she might have endured indefinitely, but nightly to sit opposite to [269] Mr.James Fowler Patterson in his perfectly tailored clothes, conscious of the variety and extent of them, that had been the straw that broke the backbone of resistance.

Once and once only had Mr.Jimmie essayed the rÔle of godfather. Reaching home one evening after a long drive in the moonlight, he had followed her up the ladder-like steps to the dim vestibule. Standing there, he had clasped quickly round her wrist a narrow glittering bracelet.

“To match the ring,” he had whispered.

Sallie’s gaze had fastened on the jewels that laughed up through semi-darkness.

“Oh—I—couldn’t!” she breathed at last. And don’t imagine it was easy.

“Please! Just because I want you to.”

“But I—I couldn’t, Jimmie.”

“But if I ask you? I’m crazy about you, Baby. Never was so keen on a girl in my life.”

Sallie gulped hard and, without looking at it, unclasped the clinging circlet.

“Please,” he protested as she handed it back. “Please—dear!”

She shook her head decisively.

“But I want to see you in pretty things. I want you to have them.”

“Thanks, Jimmie,—for wanting to give it to me. But you mustn’t—ever do that again. It wouldn’t be right for me to take it.”

And Jimmie had been forced to content himself with flowers and kid gloves and perfume—French stuff at eight-eighty an ounce.

[270]
That phrase of his, however—“I want to see you in pretty things”—clung to her consciousness. She wanted him to see her in them. She wanted to see herself in them. She wanted those girls to see her in them.

After which the savings bank simply flew to meet her.

“Well,” observed Miss Mallard, still devouring the new costume, “I’m glad you’re learning how to handle him.”

Sallie slipped into her chair.

“May we inspect the dog collar, my deah?” Miss Mallard pursued.

With large indifference Sallie handed over the necklace and watched the blue eyes widen. Not hers to inform the lady that it had been purchased at a near-pearl establishment, guaranteeing that “Our pearls rival the real.”

Miss Mariette fingered it lovingly, even to the tiny barrel of brilliants that formed the clasp. “Atta boy!” she breathed and let fall upon its possessor a look approaching homage.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” Sallie found herself saying, drunk with the dazzle of scoring at last against her enemies, “I’m going to get a car of my own soon.” And promptly wondered how she was going to get it.

But feminine imagination, given full rein, took the bit between its teeth and galloped beyond Sallie’s control. She spoke of champagne supper parties and a house on Long Island and sables, with the largesse of an “Arabian Nights.” She tasted the sweets of seeing baby blue eyes and impudent black ones dilate with envy as the other girls gathered round. She swept on, heedless of sharp [271] turns ahead, and not until the callboy shouted the half hour did she halt.

At the curb that night she found a gray roadster barking its haste to be off like a pert pomeranian. Mr.J.F. Patterson stepped out, then stopped short with a gasp as he took in the glory of her. She gave him her hand—and waited. To her amazement he said not a word, merely helped her into the car. It snorted and raced up Broadway. Still not a word! She snuggled into the low seat, turned to look up at him. He was frowning.

“What’s the matter, Jimmie?”

“Nothing.”

“Something is.”

“Nothing, I tell you.” His tone was brusque. The frown settled deeper, bringing brows together.

Sallie’s eyes filled. She had pictured something so different—Jimmie bounding with delight when he saw her! Jimmie covering her with admiration!

But his mood did not change. Throughout the ride he brooded, silent, absorbed—though she tried desperately to make conversation.

“Is this a new car, Jimmie?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you ever come in it before?”

“In the repair shop.”

“Oh!”

Silence.

“I like it, Jimmie.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. It’s so—so cozy.”

“Is it?”

[272]
Silence.

“Montgomery’s laid up, Jimmie. And the new lead’s made a big hit.”

“Has he?”

Silence—a long one.

“Jimmie—I—I don’t want any supper.”

“Why?”

“I—I think I want to go home.”

“Just as you say.”

“Jimmie—what—what’s wrong?”

His eyes scanned the beauty of her, steel buckles, silken dress, rose-laden hat. They ended on the glossy pearls and his lips which had opened for speech snapped shut.

He drove her home, without a word lifted his cap.

“Jimmie—please—please don’t act that way.”

“What way?”

“So—so queer.”

He gave a short laugh.

She clapped a hand over her mouth, stared at him, eyes swimming, then fled up the steps.

The following night Mr.Patterson was late for the first time. He swung round the corner just as Sallie appeared. She was wearing a violet suit, fluffy lace collar and cuffs, and a hat of violets. They made her eyes the same color. During a night of tearful and bewildered groping she had arrived at a conclusion. Jimmie hadn’t liked the way she looked! He wasn’t pleased with her dress or hat or something. Maybe he didn’t think they were becoming and hadn’t wanted to hurt her feelings. A lighter color, perhaps, something gayer! [273] After which she rolled over with relief, stole a few hours’ sleep, and later embarked on another shopping tour.

But the violet, apparently, made no more satisfactory impression than the blue. He handed her almost roughly into the car. They shot like a cannon ball into the darkness.

There were no stars. The moon had reached the full, dwindled and slipped round to smile upon the other side of the world.

Sallie gulped, groped for a fitting subject and finally burst out:

“Jimmie, tell me about yourself. You never have told me much.”

“Nothing to tell.”

“How does it feel to have so much money?” she proceeded for want of something better to say.

The effect was electric. He turned on her. The car jerked to the other side of the road. “You ought to know!”

“I? Stop kidding!”

“Yes, you!”

“But—”

“Look as if you’d come into a Rockefeller income!”

“Well, I haven’t.”

“No?”

“You know it.”

“I don’t know anything about women.”

“Well, you ought to know all about me.”

“Yes—I ought to.” He gave the same ugly laugh of the night before but in his eyes was real pain. “But who knows what to expect of a chorus queen.”

[274]
“Jimmie!”

“Oh, what’s the use?” came in husky desperation. “Let’s be merry!”

Sallie stared, choked and bewildered, into the darkness. She didn’t know how to answer, how to act. This new Jimmie, this—this nasty one! He was a stranger. Small teeth settled into her lower lip. She felt like slipping to the floor of the car and crying her eyes out.

For three nights they followed the same program—Sallie bewitching in a new costume chosen tearfully to conciliate the mysterious male—he taciturn, unresponsive, answering her labored conversation with husky monosyllables or hard cynicism that hurt without enlightening. Twice during those three days it drizzled and, instead of suggesting supper in the neighborhood as was their habit in bad weather, he drove the short ten blocks to the weary brownstone house and left her there.

“As if he was anxious to get rid of me,” sobbed Sallie into her pillow.

To dust and ashes in her mouth turned the sweets of her triumph over the girls. Though she continued to weave stories for their benefit, to elaborate on gifts in the past and the car in the future, to flash her diamond and twirl her pearls, the tang had gone out of it.

By Friday she felt she couldn’t stand it another minute. What had she done? Under the glimmering stars she gazed up first in mute pleading, then—

“Jimmie,” she choked, “take me home. I—I—guess I’d better—”

The roadster snarled at the tug that sent it round the corner.

[275]
“Oh—another date!”

“Maybe!” His tone had brought defiance into hers.

“H’m! Thought so!”

“You—you’re horrid!”

“And he’s all to the good—what?”

“Who?”

“Well—can’t blame you! What chance has a mean little bracelet against a string of oyster tears like that?” The volcano which had been rumbling all week sent up a sudden blinding glare. “Gad, what an ass I’ve been!” it spat out.

“Don’t talk like that—don’t!”

“I mean it,—a saphead! Swallowed that diamond yarn whole—hook, line and sinker.”

“It wasn’t a yarn.”

“You’ll tell me next your mother bought the pearls, too.”

“No—I did.”

The volcano roared a warning. “God!” A pause while his breath caught.

“It’s true, I tell you! I bought them myself—they’re imitation.”

He flung back his head. His laugh frightened her.

“Oh—won’t you believe me?”

“No!”

“Won’t you—please?”

“And I put you above them—way on top.” The volcano erupted with thunderous crash. “But you’re like the rest of them! Price—a string of pearls—a diamond! Rotten—that’s what—! Sit down! Sit down, I say!! I’ll get you home quick enough!”

[276]
White and terrified, she subsided. Words rushed to her lips, clung there.

He crashed on.

“But you did put it over! Had me going so that I’d have staked my life on you. Got me with the baby stare stuff. ‘Baby’—huh! It’s a lesson—I won’t be such a damn fool next time!”

“Jimmie,” the voice struggled to keep steady—“I swear to you—!”

“I wouldn’t believe you on a stack of Bibles! Down on your luck—thought you had an easy mark! Then something better—pearls!—came along—”

“I—I’ll never forgive—you!”

“That’s right! Injured innocence—”

“I—I could die this minute!”

“It’s tough, though, when the first time a man really—cares—more than he ever thought—” The words halted painfully.

“Oh, won’t you listen? Jimmie—you—you had so much—”

“But the other fellow’s got more! Like all the rest—”

They stopped with a jump that made the roadster snort in protest.

“You—you don’t understand.” The sobs clamored to her lips. “To-morrow—please—please listen—”

She sprang out of the car and up the steps, clinging to the iron rail.

But to-morrow when she hurried out of the stage entrance, eyes darting to the curb, Mr.James Fowler Patterson was not there.