Phyllis was perfectly all right the next day. She stayed in the hammock because Allan made her, and she confessed to a shadow of a headache, but altogether, she said, her accident was worth much less fuss than was made over it. The rehearsals swept relentlessly on, past all stemming. Clarence was getting thinner under the strain, which was very becoming, and pleased him exceedingly.

Joy, too, was a little affected by the current of things. In all Clarence's off moments he was either with her or trying to be, and she could not at all make him out. If he had been anybody else she would have thought he was very much in earnest about trying to make her marry him. But, then, John, when she came to think of it, could have been described the same way. A bit of Gail's careless wisdom, dropped one day at rehearsal, gave her a clue to things. Gail had been stating to one of the teachers, who played Fleta, one of the leaders of the chorus, that she'd had four proposals that summer. Gail's attitude of cynical frankness about her desire to collect scalps was something to make the average person gasp. She really meant it. She was, as Joy had discovered by this time, quite without malice—also quite without considerateness.

"It isn't difficult," said Gail to the stiffening teacher. "Competition is the soul of trade. If I can give the poor souls an idea that other men want me—quite flaunt them, you know—they all come bounding up to want me, too. It's very cheering, don't you think, to have a faithful hound or so about?"

Fortunately the teacher was called away by the exigencies of her part, just at that moment. Joy, who was not easily shocked by Gail, having spent nearly four weeks in her immediate vicinity now, lingered. She had an inquiring mind.

"Do you think that really is true, Gail, or were you just trying to shock Miss Archinard?" she asked.

Gail laughed, her peculiar short, low laugh, that, like everything she said and did, had something a little mocking in it. It was curiously at variance with her boyishness. You could not say she was masculine, but there was a something stripped away from her which most people class as feminineness. Joy wondered if it was softness she missed—pity, perhaps, or tenderness. She was, at least, brilliant to the last degree when she talked, though it was a perfectly useless brilliance. Gail's life had no other end than amusing herself with whatever persons or things came her way. If they could be laughed at or employed in her service that was all she wanted.

"Shocking Miss Archinard is a pathetic sort of performance," said Gail. "Any child can do it. You doubtless do yourself. Joy, she probably thinks your coloring too vivid for ladylikeness. Why, I'm perfectly willing to shock her—it's more interesting than talking to her as an equal—but I merely told the truth. You never in the world would have robbed me of the faithful Tiddy who now crawls at your feet, if he hadn't seen John and Clarence running frantically in your direction."

That principle, it dawned on Joy, could be extended. Probably John and Clarence kept each other interested. There was a great deal to learn about men, but on the other hand, there seemed to be a few broad elementary rules to follow—if you were the kind of person who could be cold-blooded enough to follow them.

"But don't you ever feel badly when you think how they get hurt?" she asked Gail a little timidly.

"Everybody gets hurt once or twice that way," said Gail placidly. "I might as well have the satisfaction of doing it as some other girl." She looked reflectively across at her week-end man, who was just now wrestling with his solo, and obviously wanted to get back to her. "Besides—if you don't hurt you get hurt.... Oh, I was a good, sweet, unselfish, considerate young thing once. I wasted much valuable time trying to be as nice as I could be.... Then I got hurt, and I decided that there wasn't anything in this consideration game. People seem to like me just as well now I'm perfectly selfish as they did when I wasn't."

She laughed a little again, and lifted an eyebrow imperceptibly toward Private Willis, who promptly lost a bar of his solo.

It was a difficult statement to correct without being rude. Joy let it go. For the first time in her acquaintance with Gail she had the key. She felt sorry for Gail for a moment—for that far-off childish Gail who had been so badly hurt that she hadn't ever dared let herself feel again. She did not know such a great deal about living herself, but she felt that Gail was wrong—that it was better to let things come to you and hurt you, if they would, and go on living, being a complete human being, no matter what happened to you.

Then Gail spoke again, and Joy discovered that it was difficult to go on being sorry for her—for the present her, that is.

"When you go back to your well-known grandparents," she stated with a frankness which had ceased to mislead Joy, "I shall make a final effort to ensnare John. He doesn't approve of me, but that will make life still more exciting. You don't mind, my child, do you?"

Joy laughed.

"You may have him—if you can get him!" she answered very gallantly considering the circumstances.

What Gail said showed her something with a certainty which had been lacking before. John had never belonged to Gail. If Joy herself hadn't been so entirely in love with John she might have been made surer of him. But it is very hard to be positive of getting anything you want too intensely.

As she rested silent a moment John himself came up beside her.

"Tired, kiddie?" he said with the affectionate note in his voice that he always had when he used the little name he had for her. "You should have farmed out that sewing."

"Do you mean to say you took a bundle of those gauze frocks to do, Joy?" demanded Gail.

Joy nodded. Gail made her feel, as usual, as if she had been silly and imposed upon. The seminary girls were crowding their time as it was to get in the rehearsals, and the Principal had stated with finality that it would be impossible to give them time extra to work on their costumes. The mothers of some of them had been written home to and had responded, but some others of the girls had no one who could or would do the sewing, so Joy had volunteered, together with Phyllis, to run up the five or six of them that had to be done. She was a little tired.

"I shall come over tomorrow morning and hide them," John threatened. But he smiled approvingly at her as he said it, and she knew that he liked her having done it. She knew well enough the long hours he spent with his charity patients, and all the things he did for the people in the village—things he never spoke of.

She thought with a pang that was not a selfish one of John's lot, if he did finally marry Gail. She did not think he could be happy with a girl who would never try to make him so. His mother's affection for him was irresponsible enough, but it was very real and selfless. You couldn't imagine Gail married to John.

"It'll be too late to hide them," she answered him brightly, coming out of her muse with an effort. "They're all done. There wasn't much work on them, comparatively."

"Good morrow, good mother,
Good mother, good morrow!
By some means or other,
Pray banish your sorrow!"

sang Tiddy, frisking gently up to her. "It's our turn next, Joy. Clarence says he thinks we ought to emigrate in a body to the Opry House, and go through this thing right."

John moaned.

"Clarence is always having unnecessary thoughts of that sort. To hear him talk, you would think we had spent the last two weeks going through it wrong."

"So we have," said Clarence. "Come now—all out. We are going over to rehearse on the august boards of the opera house, and then we are going home for brief bites, and then we are going back for a dress rehearsal. Tomorrow night is the night, and may the Lord have mercy on your souls!"

At this reminder Clarence's weary company bestirred itself. The principals had been rehearsing, as usual, at the Hewitt house. They were to meet the chorus, it appeared, at the village opera house, and go through the whole thing there with the orchestra of tomorrow night; a kind-hearted orchestra which was willing to rehearse twice.

"Why any of us ever began this thing, I don't see," growled John, as he deftly captured Joy, having made a neat flank movement which prevented Clarence from getting her. "Do you know, Joy"—he was putting her cloak on for her in the hall by this time—"I've seen about half as much of you as I would if I hadn't been lured into this. The rest of this week, after tomorrow night, you are going to have to spend exclusively in spoiling me. I'm twice as deserving as a high-school girl, and three times as deserving as Clarence and Tiddy. And I've more right to you, besides."

"If you want rights, sometimes you have to take them," said Joy demurely.

He laughed.

"Is that a suggestion? If so, it's an excellent one. Consider yourself thoroughly taken. You are not to be discovered in corners with Clarence, nor showing Tiddy how his steps should go."

But Joy only laughed.

There was little time for discussion after that. They rehearsed steadily, with the frenzied feeling of unpreparedness that only amateurs can fully know, till it was more than time for the "brief bite" of Clarence's description. Then the choruses were shepherded over to the Hewitt house and the Maddox house respectively, and fed, Clarence and Tiddy standing over them to see that no time was wasted.

Then they went back, and went through the whole opera. The audience consisted of a few carefully chosen relatives who had insisted on being there, including the Harrington children. Phyllis was letting them see the dress rehearsal instead of the real performance, because the latter was to end with a dance, and there would have been some difficulty in tearing Philip away while things were still going on. The dress rehearsal promised to be over by nine-thirty, for they had started at six, and were sweeping through without a break, happily unconscious that Clarence intended them to do it all over again with all the mistakes severely corrected, as soon as they had ended the final chorus.

"Gail, that isn't the way to do it," Clarence called to her sharply, as she danced in with the minimum of effort, in the "Good morrow, good mother" song that she had with Joy and Tiddy, respectively Iolanthe and Strephon. "Pick up your feet. You'll be down over that garland in the corner if you don't look out."

"I'll pick them up tomorrow night," said Gail, pausing to answer him. "No use putting all this work on rehearsal."

She was undoubtedly right. And undoubtedly the garland had no business to swing so loose, as Clarence himself afterwards admitted.

But the fact remained. As Gail stepped reluctantly back, and recommenced her song, her high-heeled slipper caught in the swinging garland, and she came down flat, with the ankle badly turned under her.

The opera stopped short while the others crowded around her and tried to find out how badly she was hurt. She sat up straight and tried to smile-Gail disliked having or showing feelings of any sort—but she was white with the pain, and when she tried to stand on the ankle it hurt her, as she admitted.

They carried her off the stage in a chair, and John, who was donning his robes in the other dressing-room, was hurried over to see how badly she was hurt.

"Don't stop for me, Clarence," Gail ordered. "On with the dance, let Joy be unrefined. That is, if she can. I know you're hungering to lash your wretched infant-school forward."

Clarence remarked that she was plucky, patted her shoulder, and went thankfully off to put his chorus through an evolution or so while he could.

John, meanwhile, with Phyllis' help, took off the pretty pink satin slipper, with its rosette, and the pink silk stocking, and found that Gail's ankle was badly sprained. They did it up properly, and Phyllis took Gail home.

"Now what shall we do?" demanded Clarence at the end of the act, pushing the Lord Chancellor's wig to one side, and staring around him.

"What about Gail's guest, the one that's coming down tomorrow?" offered Tiddy.

"We have her cast, anyway," Clarence answered dolefully.

"She's played Celia, the one that's a sort of lieutenant-fairy, before, and I remember the time I had getting her to memorize her words—not a long part at all. She could no more play Phyllis than I can."

"Were you talking about the part, or about me?"' asked Phyllis Harrington, coming in again.

"How is Gail?" asked everybody.

"Ask John," said Phyllis. "Her ankle seems to be hurting her badly, poor girl. I hope it will be all right tomorrow night. I made her go to bed, and her mother is sworn to make her stay there. I'll go through her part for her now, Clarence, if it will be any help."

Clarence stared at her.

"Can you?" he asked.

"Well, I know the words," said Phyllis. "And I don't think she will be able to rehearse again. It will be as much as she can do to get up tomorrow night and go through it."

John shook his head. "I'm afraid she won't be able to do even that," he said.

"Then you'll have to take the part, Phyllis!" said Clarence with a sudden decision. "Never mind dressing now. Take your hat off and see what you can do."

"Understand, I'm only holding it," said Phyllis, but she would have been more than human if she had not flushed a little with pleasure at the idea.

They began rehearsals again, and this time the opera went through with scarcely a hitch. The little chorus girls had come to adore Phyllis by this time, the boys were fond of her—there was scarcely one of the cast whom she had not helped over or through or under some one of the little hitches incident to private theatricals—and the whole cast was on its tiptoes to see her through. There was a new feeling in the thing, that Clarence noticed directly.

"By Jove, we ought to have insisted on her doing it from the first," he told Tiddy, his lieutenant, under his breath. "I could have gotten twice as much work out of 'em.'

"Who'd have broken the news to Cousin?" he wanted to know.

Clarence eyed him with the detached interest that was his, and meditated with a certain amusement on the changeableness of college boys. Two weeks before Tiddy would have lowered his voice in reverence at Gail's name. Then he glanced across at Joy, sitting close by Phyllis in her gauzes, with her wonderful bronze-gold hair hanging around her like a mantle, and conceded within himself that it was not so surprising after all.

Sure enough, Gail was unable to bear much weight on her foot by the next day. She insisted on being dressed and driven down to the hurried last rehearsal on the afternoon of the performance. But she could not walk without support.

"You'll have to take it, Phyllis," she conceded. "I shall look as beautiful as I can, and sit in the audience and hate you."

"You ought to," said Phyllis mournfully. "I know if it were I in your place, I couldn't bear to come down and look at you."

"I have to, anyway, on account of Laura," said Gail. Miss Ward had come, and was at that moment getting out of her wraps preparatory to meeting the cast and rehearsing.

As Phyllis left her to go into the dressing-room and introduce the stranger, whom she had met, to the others, she heard Joy cry out in surprise.

"Why, I know you—at least I've seen you, only you don't remember me," Joy was saying impulsively.

Laura Ward, in the act of slipping off her coat, stopped in surprise.

"Why, I have seen you" she said. "Where was it?"

"I was posing for the Morrows," explained Joy. "You ran in and got some fixative. They had me for their mural decorations——"

"Joy!" called somebody in the tone of imperative need which is almost as summoning as a telephone bell, and Joy dashed off, holding up her green water-weeds with one hand and her draperies with the other. The meeting with Laura Ward seemed a pleasant sort of crowning to the day. She was the very same vivid, gipsy-looking girl who had dashed into the Morrow studio for a moment, and who had seemed to stand, to Joy then, for all the kinds of girl she had wanted to be and couldn't. And now she seemed just a pleasant person like oneself. Joy had caught up to her. It was like an omen.

"What is it?" she called dutifully as she ran.

She found no opportunity to see more of Miss Ward. She wanted to, for she was sure she was going to like her. She had always wanted to.

"It's a good audience," breathed Clarence over her shoulder, as they looked through peep-holes in the curtain. "All the sisters and cousins and aunts have turned up. I say, Joy, the Fairy Queen was good for ten tickets at least. There's a row of her dear ones right across from aisle to aisle."

The moment of the play had come all too swiftly, and in ten nerve-shattering minutes the curtain would go up. Ten minutes after that Joy would be rising out of a trap-door, in the character of a fairy who had spent the last twenty years at the bottom of a stream; incidentally she would be acting for the first time in her life. There was enough to be excited over; and yet it was none of these things that excited her—it was the curious note in Clarence Rutherford's voice as he spoke his trivial words in her ear.

She moved away from him automatically. She was a little tired, tonight, of his persistent flirtation. It was all very well for a while, but surely—surely, she thought, it was time he'd had enough of it; and she went back off the stage, looking, though she scarcely acknowledged it to herself, for John. She felt as if she wanted to see as much of him as she could.

He ought to have been in his dressing-room, but he was not. He was looking for her, she almost thought, for he came quickly toward her with his face lighted.

"I'm so glad I found you before the thing commenced, kiddie," he said. "I just wanted to tell you that you're not to be frightened. Do you hear? I forbid you to be frightened." He smiled down at her protectingly. "You say you always do as I tell you—so you must this time. I know you're going to make a howling success of the opera.... My dear, don't look so worried about it all!"

They were in a little dim passage where no one was likely to come, and he drew her close to him, and kept his arm around her.

"Do I look worried?" she answered simply. "I wasn't thinking about 'Iolanthe' so much. I suppose I'm tired with rehearsals, for it seems to me as if something I didn't like was going to happen.... John, I never asked you before, but I feel so little and lonesome tonight, and suddenly far away from everybody. Please say that you haven't minded all the naughty things I've done—that you like me, and forgive me, and——"

"Like you and forgive you, foolish child! ... I don't know that I like you...." He looked down at her, laughingly. "And I have nothing to forgive you for. Why, Joy, it goes a great deal further than that. I thought you knew how much I cared for you."

She clung to him, there in her green and white draperies, with her gold hair falling over them. She could scarcely believe the thing his words and voice said, but it was there to believe. She gave a little shiver and clung closer to him.

"You—care?"

"Of course I care!"

He released her enough to lift up her flushed little face, and bend down and kiss it. "You knew that a long time ago. Kiddie——"

It was just then that the call-bell rang.

She hurried to her place, her heart beating and her cheeks burning under the rouge. She was nearly sure that she had won—that the wishing ring had given her what she had asked of it. John had not said, "You and I are lovers, and we are going to be married" in so many words—but his voice—and his touch—and his laughing certainty——

She was very happy, so happy that she went through the opera in the state of some one drugged to ecstasy. She sang and danced and laughed, and helped Phyllis whenever she could in her difficult task of assuming a leading part at one day's notice, and felt as if the play had carried her into a veritable fairyland. Tiddy forgot half of his lines, the first time he spoke with her, watching her brilliant eyes and vividness, and she laughed and pulled him through. She was like a flame throughout the performance. Phyllis did wonders, considering the short time she had had in which to prepare, and the performance generally was so good that even the people who were in it were surprised.

When it was safely over, and the dance was beginning—the dance was taking place at the Hewitt house—Joy flung herself down for a moment behind the curtains of the little alcove she knew so well by now, and caught her breath. She was hiding a little. She still had a curious reluctance to see Clarence again, and she felt as if she did not want to see John, either, for a little while. Because the next time she saw him she would probably know whether she was right or wrong. She was nearly certain she was right, but there was a little shivering possibility that she might not be. There was always Gail!...

"Sorcerette, dear!" said Clarence's voice wooingly in the dim doorway.

He had changed back to evening clothes, and looked very handsome, if a little theatrical, for the black was not quite yet off his brows and lashes. He, too, looked excited.

"Come out and dance, Joy of my life," he said.

"I'm—I'm waiting for John," she stammered. She still did not want to go with him.

"John's otherwise engaged," Clarence informed her coolly. "Did you think Gail intended to go without one kind word the whole evening? Not so! Come, or I'll think you mean to be highly impolite."

The same reluctance still held Joy's feet, and she did not like the insinuation, but there really seemed no way out.

"Cheer up, Sorcerette, dear," he said in her ear, as he swept her away. "'Get happy, chile, ain't you done got me?'"

She did not talk. She did not feel like it. She merely danced lightly on with Clarence, letting him say what he pleased.

"Do you remember the first time we danced together, Joy, the first time you ever danced with any one? I have always been so glad I was the first man you ever danced with."

"Why?" she asked absently. She wanted to get away, to get back to John Hewitt.

His arms tightened.

"Why? You know perfectly well why. You have got me—do you know it? From the very first minute I ever saw you."

She smiled up at him, and shook her head.

"You make love beautifully," she heard herself saying coolly. "But you really shouldn't make it to your host's fiancÉe in his house. It isn't done."

"Don't you suppose I know that?" answered Clarence tempestuously. "Joy Havenith, do you mean to say that you think I'm doing the ordinary love-making one does in any conservatory?"

She smiled a little. He was more like the Clarence she usually knew, and she did not take it at all seriously.

"Why, you do it better than most," she said. "Go on. I like it."

If there was one thing she knew well, it was Clarence's love-making. Indeed, she had come to the point where Clarence's remarks scarcely constituted love-making at all in her eyes. They were merely his kind of manners, and she was a little tired of them.

"Good heavens! How on earth am I going to convince you?" she heard him say, with a little surprise. This was not the kind of thing he said ordinarily. "Joy, I fell in love with you, the real kind of love, the first night I saw you. You've known it all along. I wish you'd stop pretending not to—I'm getting tired of it. I want to marry you—I'd marry you tonight if you said the word. I'll come over and get you tomorrow and marry you if you'll let me. I don't suppose you will. But I do expect to keep on at you till you do.... Good heaven, child, haven't you seen I was in earnest?" he broke off at the expression of her wide-open eyes.

Joy believed in love at first sight, as she had every personal reason to, but in spite of Clarence's intensity she was not quite convinced. She looked up at him. He was white, and his mouth was tense. And he was holding her like a vise. He was in earnest.

"Maybe—maybe you think you do mean it now." she said breathlessly. "If you do—I'm sorry for you. It isn't nice to be in love unless the other person is, too."

"What do you know about it?" he burst out angrily. "You aren't in love with that virtuous citizen of yours, whether or not he is with you. Let him go back to Gail. She's been considering one of her tame cats for a year, and she'd about decided to marry him when you came along and broke it up. You'd sweep any man off his feet. You and I belong together, Joy darling. I'm going to marry you, if you were engaged to the whole College of Surgeons."

"The dance is over," said Joy a little faintly.

"Then come over here where it's quiet. I haven't finished."

"Oh, please no—" cried Joy, freeing herself from his hold eagerly. This was getting unexpectedly like earnest, and it had been a shock. She did not want to hear any more about how Clarence felt.

She hurried across the floor without waiting for him, to where Allan and Phyllis were still standing together. They had stolen a dance with each other—they danced together altogether too much for married people, anyway, Mrs. Hewitt said.

The atmosphere of happiness and serenity that was about Phyllis was something Joy could always rest in thankfully. Her own moods alternated so that Phyllis' calmness was an especial comfort.

"I—I'm so tired," she said wistfully. "Couldn't we go soon?"

"I should think we could," said Phyllis willingly, while Allan seconded the motion with joy.

"There's no place like home," he said. "I've been considering the fact that it was getting on for four, and that I have an appointment at ten tomorrow, for a half-hour. Go get your wraps, Phyllis, my darling, and I'll get John, as my share of the bargain. We'll be awaiting you happily in a dark corner of the porch."

Joy wanted to flee from Clarence. And she looked forward happily to being with John on the back seat of the motor, and talking over the evening with him. She would learn, perhaps, just what he had meant when he had seen her last. Her heart beat hard with the excitement of the thought. She was nearly sure—dear wishing ring!

She slipped off, after speaking to Mrs. Hewitt, and saw Allan and John moving off together to the men's cloak-room.

She sang softly to herself as she put on her cloak. She would be with John again in a moment. He had smiled at her as he passed out of sight. What were Clarences and such small things? This was a wonderful world.

She and Phyllis came down the stairs together as unobtrusively as they could, so as not to betray to the rest that they were going. She had forgotten about Gail.

But Gail was the first thing she saw—half-lying on a couch in a dark corner of the hall, holding court with Laura Ward. There were two or three men around them, and they were laughing and talking together. Joy waved her hand as they passed, and Gail looked up from her laughter.

"Farewell, my dears, until tomorrow! Good-by, Joy. It was a well-done opera, even if I was sitting in the audience being fiendishly jealous.... Oh, I forgot to tell you that I have learned your dark secret, my child! I think you're the most ingenious little wretch that ever lived. Till tomorrow! I'm going to give a tea—be prepared!"

She looked at Laura Ward and laughed again.