When the beautiful, young wife of a multi-millionaire takes advantage of her husband's absence on a prolonged and unavoidable business trip to embark upon a rather bizarre and eccentric venture of her own, it is to be expected the situation will be hugely discussed, especially in its three-fold phases—the lady first, the exact relations existing between husband and wife next, and third, the business itself.

Perhaps in this case the business should be put first, above the lady, and above any sentimental interest in marital misunderstandings, for Perdita's skill in "bedecking and bedraping" was well known among her sisters, whose ideals in bedecking were those of Paris, and who had no Greek longings to be "noble and nude and antique." And had they not for the past two years enviously regarded Maud Carmine—who had been as a walking mannequin among them, the living, breathing advertisement of Perdita's abilities.

Therefore from the very first business bade fair to engulf the new firm and sweep the two partners off their feet, and if the list of those who daily assembled in "Hepworth and Carmine's" reception-rooms were to be published, it would look like a social registry or a page from Who's Who; that is, a page with all of the masculine names carefully culled.

There were elderly ladies and young girls, and ladies in all the waning stages between the two. The elderly and waning ones all hoped before Mrs. Hepworth got through with them to look like the young girls, and the young girls, with all the enthusiasm of youth, hoped to look like Perdita Hepworth.

There arrived then, one morning, at this palace of hope, Mrs. Willoughby Hewston, who, as she stepped from her motor, glanced nervously right and left and ascended the steps of the house Perdita and Maud had taken just off the Avenue with an agility of which her best friends would not have considered her capable. This nervousness, this hurry was due to the fact that only the day before she had mentioned her intention to her husband, with the result that she was thunderously ordered not to go near the place, under penalty of his worse than censure. He gave her to understand that this would be something too terrible for her imagination even to apprehend. Consequently, Mrs. Hewston wasted no time in getting to Hepworth and Carmine's as early as possible the next morning. She would have been less than woman had she not done so.

The reception-room was spacious, sunny and restful, depending for its effect upon beautiful woods and long, unbroken lines; for color, there was the hint of ivory and tea-green, ineffably serene, and there Mrs. Hewston awaited Dita, her agitation subsiding somewhat under the calm influence of the place.

But when Dita appeared it returned in full force. "Oh, my dear," she exclaimed, "what a charming spot this is! How original! How daring of you and Maud! Oh, my dear, if Willoughby knew I was here!" She raised her hands with a gesture full of meaning. "You know that he is in such a state anyway over those newspaper articles."

"What newspaper articles?" asked Perdita. "Do you mean those that have appeared about all this?" she waved her hand comprehensively about her.

"Haven't you seen them?" Mrs. Hewston looked frightened. "Oh, my dear child, how very stupid of me. Why, why did I mention them? I supposed, of course, that you knew. But if you do not, please do not ask me anything more, for I never, never will be the bearer of bad news."

Dita stared at her in puzzled amazement for a moment and then she took her firmly by the shoulders. "Look here, Mrs. Hewston, you are frightening me dreadfully. I haven't an idea what you are talking about. Now you must tell me, indeed you must. Do you not see the state of mind in which you leave me unless you do?"

"Oh, my dear," Mrs. Hewston shook her handkerchief out of her bag, evidently preparing for its possible use. "I didn't mean to frighten you, and you shouldn't allow yourself to be so easily upset. Now, understand, no one was hurt, but those dreadful papers yesterday were full of a motor accident which occurred in California."

"Cresswell's car?" interrupted Dita quickly. "Was he—" She was about to say "injured," but Mrs. Hewston took the word from her mouth, or rather, substituted another for it.

"Alone? No, dear," shaking her head a little as at the regrettable, but to be expected frailties of men. "He was not alone. He was driving the car, it seems, with a beautiful young actress by his side. She must be a very—er—persuasive person, too, because the papers said that she is to appear here this spring in some superb production or other, and they strongly insinuated that Cress' money is behind the whole thing. But you see, that, as I said, there's nothing in it all, nothing really to worry over."

"I see," said Dita, but slowly and without enthusiasm.

"And now, my dear," Mrs. Hewston had suddenly grown quite brisk, "let's forget all this and talk of something that is more interesting to you, because it's in your line. Perdita," in her most wheedling and cooing tones, "I want you to make me lovely."

"You are lovely, Mrs. Hewston."

"Oh, in a middle-aged, broad, pink kind of way, but I want you to make me look slender and lissome and girlish without all this awful dieting and exercise and these dreadfully tight corsets that make one feel as if one were nothing more nor less than blanc-mange in a tin mold. And you know you do come out of them with your flesh all fluted, just like the blanc-mange when it's set."

"You shall be quite lissome, I promise you that," said Dita consolingly, if rather absently. "Come to me again early next week and I shall have some designs for you to consider, beautiful, long folds and all that. But I can't perform miracles, you know, and you'll have to diet a little and exercise; yes, and wear the boned corset; you don't want to look like a—"

"Do not say it!" cried Mrs. Hewston nervously. "I am sure you are going to say either 'whale' or 'tub,' and I can't stand it. That's what those awful corsettiÈres always say when I protest the least bit against their tortures.

"And Perdita, one thing more—my chin. I always say the chin is the greatest give-away a woman's got. She can get around anything else, but, no matter what she does, that chin sticks out like a cliff and reveals every year she's lived. Of course, you may try to draw off attention with a diamond dog collar or jeweled black velvets, but at the best they're only poor, miserable makeshifts; and one must wear evening dress no matter whether one has rolls of flesh or a gridiron of bones. If you don't, people either think you come from the woods or have something worse than bones or superfluous flesh to conceal. Just look at Willoughby!" Mrs. Hewston's emotions overcame her here and she dabbed her eyes carefully with her handkerchief. "He is fat as a pig. He shuffles and hobbles about with the gout. He eats anything he pleases, and never thinks of cultivating a pleasant expression. Yet if I should die, he could marry again without difficulty. Oh, it's a hard world for us women! But really, I must go, dear. Just look out and see if you see Willoughby by chance, either up or down the street."

As soon as she was assured of safety and had departed, Perdita, who, fortunately for herself and her customers, had no other appointments for the morning, sent for the papers of the day before and carefully considered the incident of Mr. Hepworth, Miss Fuschia Fleming and the motor-car as set forth in the various journals.

"And so," said Perdita to herself with glooming eyes, when she had finished an exhausting perusal, "he is going to back this deserving young adventuress, who has, no doubt, played upon his sympathies, in a great spectacular presentation this spring, and in New York. Well, there will be something else spectacular. I will make this venture of ours a stupendous success now or I will know the reason why. Where on earth is Maud? She is never about when I really need her."

She frowned a moment over Maud's delinquency and then happened to remember that Miss Carmine had expressed an intention of being present at a rehearsal of one of Wallace Martin's plays. Dita then decided on the moment to drive to the theater and consult with her partner at once on the new and spectacular policy of their house which she was mentally outlining.

But first, before starting, she thoughtfully selected some of a number of photographs of herself and also of Maud. "I suppose I shall have a dreadful time persuading her," she reflected as she drove through the streets. "She has bred in the bone those old-fashioned ideals of New York when it lived in Bleecker and Houston Streets."

But curiously enough, while events of one character had led Perdita strongly to consider the adoption of a certain line of action, circumstances of a widely differing nature had impelled Maud practically to the same conclusion. Which only goes to show how clever a weaver is Fate and how wonderfully she contrasts and combines all her various threads.

For two or three hours Maud had been sitting in a dimly-lighted, empty playhouse, watching the rather dreary and disillusionizing progress of Martin's latest play.

It was an odd thing, she mournfully reflected, that Wallace never got himself, his own, bubbling, merry, joyous self, full of quirks and quips, into his plays. They would seem to have been written by a secondary personality, for they were all, without exception, intensely serious and depressing, dealing with problems of the most complex and dun-colored character.

Maud was extremely practical. She never dreamed of buoying up her spirits with any ambrosial reflections that this latest offering was "a distinct contribution to the more serious drama." Neither did she attempt to convince herself that there were enough high-browed folk in the town to keep the play on for, peradventure, three nights. No, she simply, and with her usual common sense, reserved judgment until the third act, and then after a moment of wonder that Wallace had found a firm of managers willing to undertake the production, with all the expense entailed, when they had just one chance in a million to win (in her opinion, at least), she turned to more practical issues.

"Dita and I," she remarked mentally, "have got to make a stupendous success if I want to marry Wallace, which I do, and he is going to continue to write plays, which he is. But I'll have a frightful time persuading Dita to run her business along the lines of twentieth century advertising. She has all sorts of ante-bellum ideas about stately procedure and measured methods, derived, of course, from those generations of lazy southern aristocrats."

While she mused, amid the terrific racket of moving things about the stage in preparation for the fourth act, she felt a light touch upon her shoulder, and looked up to see Perdita, pale but determined, standing beside her.

"I'll just slip into this seat beside you," said Mrs. Hepworth, suiting the action to the word. "I want to talk to you a few minutes. Now, Maudie, I know that you will not like it, but we've been doing awfully well lately, and I think it would be a good idea to put what we've made in advertisement. Of course, there's a lot we can get without paying for it. The Sunday newspapers will print pages about us, especially—especially if we let them have some of our most stunning pictures and allow those interviews where the artists sit and make sketches of you."

Maud looked at her business partner as one who, bidden to rub a magic ring on his finger and wish, sees his wish come true. Here was Perdita approaching her tactfully, and timidly entreating her to do the very thing that was in her mind to accomplish. She could not grasp it, but sat staring at her companion in an amazement so profound that it bereft her of speech.

Perdita misinterpreted the silence. "I've got to make a red-and-yellow success," she exclaimed with emotion. "I've—I've just got to be in the newspapers. Don't take it in this cold, reproving way."

"My dear Perdita," Maud spoke with crisp distinctness. "I'm not! It's your attitude of mind, not your sentiments, that surprises me. The latter are my own. You," she continued virtuously, "are probably actuated by your vanity; I, by my heart. Look at that!" she waved one hand toward the stage, "or rather don't look at it. Now let us come to an understanding. You know that I have always loved Wallace. You know that he has lately loved me. You also know what it costs me a year to be one of the best-dressed women in New York and maintain my newly acquired reputation for good looks; consequently the business has to make handsome returns. We live in the twentieth century under artificial conditions, and it's no use pretending it's Arcadia and the simple life. It's not. We're hothouse blossoms, Perdita, products of this great forcing bed, New York, and we might just as well adapt ourselves to conservatory conditions. Wallace wouldn't look at me if I were a hardy annual. He didn't when I was what God and nature made me. But Wallace suits me, child though he is, in many ways, and I can do a great deal with him. I may even," but Maud's tone had lost its high confidence and was a trifle dubious now, "I may even make a playwright of him."

"Why, here he is now with—with Eugene Gresham," interrupted Perdita. This was but the second time Perdita had seen Eugene since his return a few days before.

Out from the wings stepped the two men and then clambered over the footlights and the orchestra space, and hastened down the aisle to join Mrs. Hepworth and Miss Carmine, who had now a number of large photographs spread over their knees, intently studying them.

"Good morning," Wallace shook hands exuberantly with both women. "Went splendidly, didn't it? We're going to have the first act over again."

"Very impressive, very," said Gresham, who looked in the best of health and spirits.

Maud cast one withering look at him, but it glanced lightly off, turned aside by his smile. He saw it, however, and as quickly as possible got into a seat on the other side of Perdita.

"Have you seen the papers?" he asked happily. "Blessings on Miss Fuschia Fleming. I shall do my humble best to keep the ball rolling. As soon as she appears in New York, I'm going to put in a request to do her portrait. Something bizarre, weird and splotchily thrilling, you know. Quite violent. That will keep a crowd around it from dawn to dark as soon as it's exhibited. It doesn't make the least difference whether she has any ability or not. She may be, and probably is, the most awkward, scrawny and nasal of western actresses; what of it? With Hepworth for her angel and Gresham for her painter, her vogue is secure. And Perdita, Rosita, your freedom is that much nearer."

"Eugene," Perdita's eyes flashed, "I think it extremely bad taste, even vulgar, of you to talk in that vein."

And Eugene hastened to retrieve his blunder, and soon Perdita, who was never long impervious to his spell, was smiling once more.

Miss Carmine, however, was of sterner stuff. She did not wince, although she saw that there was no remedy for Wallace's malady but the knife, and he, unwittingly, wasted no time in precipitating his destiny.

"What are you doing with all those photographs of yourself and Mrs. Hepworth?" he asked.

"We are going to give them to some reporters, who are getting up stories for the Sunday papers."

"Maud!" Martin spoke in the deep, pained tones of his leading man. "Maud, I have said nothing. In fact I admired and approved when you and Mrs. Hepworth went into this business venture. But such methods for you, for her! Do you not feel that you owe something to yourselves, and that she at least owes something to Hepworth? Oh, of what are you thinking?"

"Money," said Maud succinctly. "Something you evidently are not thinking of." She glanced toward the stage.

"I hope not," he answered stiffly. "Art—"

"Art, art! Don't prate about art." Maud did not intend to spare the knife. "Art must be an individual expression and your play is simply hash seasoned with reminiscences. Oh, dear, dear Wallace, you can write a good play. I know you can, when you will write as Wallace Martin, and not after Sudermann, Ibsen, Hauptmann, Shaw. Look at this act. Wallace, tell me, is there no other way of picturing the gay, irresponsible life than by a costume ball in an artist's studio? Must the vie de BohÈme always be thus presented? Then why does the lover in a problem play usually have to be a Russian prince in Moujik costume? And the heroine's midnight visit to his apartments! Couldn't you, wouldn't they allow you, to write just one play without it? And need the lady, after her past has been discovered and fully discussed, always go out into the tempest in search of her better self, and slam the door behind her?"

"Maud! Maud! You—you are pulling down the pillars of the temple," gasped Martin. "It's blasphemous! Every one says the play is good. You can not judge from a rehearsal. Let us change the subject," with dignity. "Since you have not hesitated to criticize me, I feel that I am justified in again urging you not to go into these gaudy advertising methods. Willoughby Hewston seems to feel that Cresswell was terribly chagrined at his wife's going into business. And truly, you should urge her to show some consideration for him."

"A fig for Willoughby Hewston." Maud fumbled in her bag and drew forth an envelope. "Here is a letter I got from Cresswell yesterday. He congratulates me on the enterprise we have shown, and says that he is delighted that Dita's interests have found so congenial and healthful a channel in which to flow."