It was only a day or two after her arrival in New York that Fuschia Fleming, who had been rehearsing the greater part of the night, opened her sleepy eyes in the hotel chamber to find her maid bending above her with a visiting card in one hand and a perplexed expression upon her face.

"I hated to waken you, Miss Fuschia," she said, "but when I saw the name—"

"What is the name?" Fuschia's voice was drowsily indifferent.

"Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth."

"Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth!" Both indifference and sleepiness were things of the past. Miss Fleming sat up in bed with a spring. "She's in the parlor, isn't she? Here, Martha Mary, hustle about. Get me out my gold-colored kimono with the silver wistaria on it, and some yellow stockings and slippers. Tell her I regret having to keep her waiting, late at rehearsal last night. You know the proper thing. Now, go ahead and do your prettiest and then dance back here and help me get into things."

"Certainly no time wasted," reflected the actress standing before her mirror, winding her long ash blonde hair round and round her head. "I dare say it's a case of 'Gur-rl, what have you done with me husband?' There is only one reply to that. I shall draw myself up haughtily and say, 'Pardon, Madame, it was you who first carelessly mislaid him, not I.' Where the deuce are my hair-pins? She'd never come to my apartments with a cat-o'-nine-tails under her golf cape, or a bottle of acid in her shopping bag. Sure-ly not. They always choose the foyer of the theater for such stunts. Oh, Martha Mary," as that person whom Jim Fleming had once designated as a "vinegar-faced-Sue" returned to the bedchamber. "I can find nothing. Everything has crawled under the bed or the bureau. How is the lady dressed for the part? Handsome, dark garments, rich, dark furs, black veil over face, handkerchief handy?"

"The lady is wearing rose-colored cloth and chinchilla," replied Martha Mary literally.

"Rose color and chinchilla. That is a note out, positively frivolous. Oh, dear me! I am only half put together. You get more worthless every day, Martha Mary. Put on all my moonstone rings, for luck. They may save my life."

When Fuschia entered her temporary drawing-room, Perdita Hepworth was standing with her back to her, gazing from the window out upon the bleak wind-swept streets. March was departing with lion-like roars and buffets and striving bravely but vainly to obscure his ugly countenance in clouds of dust. Hearing a slight sound, she turned and saw advancing down the pleasantly warmed, flower-scented room, a young woman whom she instantly likened to a pale but radiant ray of spring sunshine.

This sunshine, yellow kimono, pale yellow hair, a cheek like the heart of a tea-rose, gold-colored silk stockings and slippers, paused between a jar of white lilacs and a basket of hyacinths. The lion-like roars without seemed suddenly all hollow pretense. Spring had come to New York and involuntarily Perdita smiled in greeting.

"Miss Fleming, please forgive this unseemly early call; but you see it is important, this matter I wish to see you about." Perdita thus opened the conversation.

"She can chew up the scenery about me husband all she wishes," said Fuschia to herself, "if she just lets me look at her. Her pictures give no idea of her. She's red roses and music and emotion. She's poetry and romance. My Lord!"

In spite of Perdita's brave attempt, conversation languished. She appeared to be weighing some matter which lay on her mind. At last she looked up with a slightly ironical smile. "You will think I have come on some affair of state, Miss Fleming, the way I am hesitating—"

Fuschia here made a violent mental protest. "Now don't you begin by telling me that I broke up your home, because I didn't. You broke it yourself."

Mrs. Hepworth made an impatient gesture as if at her own unusual lack of adequate expression.

"Do you play cards at all?" she asked, "bridge or—"

Fuschia could not suppress one stare of surprise. "Play bridge!" she murmured, wondering what that had to do with the matter. "No, I have no card sense. Strange, too, for papa has a lot."

"The reason I asked was this," in rather diffident explanation; "I was wondering if you could appreciate what it means to make an unexpected play which takes several tricks—to play trumps in such a way as to make the other players gasp with surprise, to—"

"Oh, I know what you mean," said Fuschia comprehendingly, a light dawning in her puzzled eyes. "You are talking about playing the game. Why, of course, I understand. That's all there is; that's what I'm on this dizzy old planet for."

But although a basis of mutual agreement and understanding was thus established, Dita seemed still to struggle with an unwonted embarrassment.

It was not, however, within Fuschia to prolong a situation of this kind. She bent forward, her elbows on her knees, her fingers covered with moonstone rings clasped lightly in front of her, her eyes full of a thousand twinkles and the upturned corners of her mouth curving almost to her eyes.

"Let's get down to cases, Mrs. Hepworth, man to man. Is it a go?"

Perdita drew a breath of relief and smiled back. She certainly was not one of the few, the very few, who could resist the twinkles in Fuschia's eyes.

"It's a go," she answered; "then man to man, it is this way. You have made it easy, you see, for me to say the things I wanted to, although I did not know in what feminine phrases I might have to clothe them. But you and I are, at present, very much in the public eye. Now every one is waiting to see what our attitude toward each other will be. It is assumed openly by the newspapers, as you probably know, that there is a sort of woman's war on between us. Now, Miss Fleming, I want—"

"Your husband," supplemented Fuschia mentally. "Well, I haven't got him; never did have him; don't want him."

"—to design your stage costumes and to have it so announced," concluded Perdita.

Then she saw a remarkable change come over the dainty, thistledown Miss Fleming. Her mouth became an almost straight line, the gleam in her eyes was almost uncannily shrewd. She gave Perdita's words a concentrated consideration for a few moments and then nodded two or three times, brief, quick, clean-cut little nods.

"Great!" she said succinctly. Then her mouth curled again, the twinkles, like splintered diamonds, came back to her eyes. She flew across the room and threw her arms about Perdita, enveloping her in a momentary and rose-scented embrace. Her enthusiasm was unrestrained. "The advertisement is above rubies," she cried. "No wonder you are such a success."

"Oh, that is no credit to me," replied Dita carelessly. "I have a sort of sixth sense about clothes, you know. It is my one gift. I know the moment I put eyes on any one exactly how she, it is always she, of course, ought to look. I see colors when I look at people. Women often say to me, 'Oh, I can not wear this or that color,' when it is just the one thing they should wear, it is their mental correspondence."

"And how are you going to dress me?" asked Fuschia with intense interest.

"Principally in gold and silver," Dita answered without hesitation. "You have on the right thing now. Most designers would put you in black, because you are so very fair. They would try to make you striking by force of contrast, but not I. You see very few women of your coloring could stand the dazzle of gold and silver. It would completely eclipse them; but you are mentally dazzling. Your personality is strong enough to reduce anything you wear to its proper place. One must take all those things into account in designing, you know. Now you are quicksilver, sunlight, glimmer of day on speeding waters, and we must accentuate that fact; not ignore it and slur it over."

"It sounds fascinating," said Fuschia. "How sweet of you to do this for me."

"For myself, you mean." Perdita rose. "You'll do, my dear. You're new, you're different. New York will be yours whether you can act or not."

A flame went over Fuschia's face and seemed to pass as swiftly as it had come; but instead, it remained, focused in her eyes.

"I can act," she said briefly, "and, look here, New York may accept me on the magnificent advertising I've had and will continue to have; or New York may accept me on the strength of my wonderful gowns designed by Perdita Hepworth. That's all right, that's as it should be. But I'm going to make New York forget my press notices, and your gowns and Fuschia Fleming, and I'm going to make it sit tight and still in its boxes and orchestra chairs and balcony seats and laugh and cry with the heroine on the stage who shall be the realest thing on earth to them for the time. That's the game for me, Mrs. Hepworth. That's all the game I care a hang about."

"Maudie," said Perdita to Miss Carmine, an hour or two later, "I have just secured a new commission, a big one."

"What?" asked Maud with interest.

"Hepworth and Carmine are to design the costumes that Miss Fuschia Fleming will wear in the repertoire of society dramas in which she will appear after two weeks of Shakespearean rÔles. Paula Tangueray, Mrs. Dane, you know the lot of them."

"Perdita! The cheek of her. To make such a request under the circumstances."

"Maudie! The cheek of me," mocked Dita softly.

"You!" astonishment was beyond all bounds now. "You!"

"Yes. Did you fancy—" there were those deep vibrations in Dita's voice which always bespoke some strong emotion, "that I was going to endure the spectacle of Miss Fleming triumphant 'in our midst,' and every one watching to see how I would take it, and predicting that only one course remained open for me and that was with dignity to ignore the incident? Not so. The world will see, and this, amusingly enough, happens to be a fact, that Miss Fleming and Mrs. Hepworth are excellent friends, that Mrs. Hepworth is one of Miss Fleming's warmest admirers, and that she, still speaking of myself, has assisted in Miss Fleming's unparalleled success in New York by designing for her some of the most wonderful costumes ever seen on the stage."

"Unparalleled success!" scoffed Maud. "It is rather early to predict that. New York is like a cat. You never know which way it will jump."

"It will jump Fuschia Fleming's way," replied Dita confidently. "You haven't met her."

"Is she so beautiful then? As beautiful as you?"

"Oh, no," Perdita was smoothing out her gloves on her knee. She shook her head decidedly. "Nothing like. She isn't beautiful at all. She's just a slender creature with rather colorless blonde cendre hair and blue eyes."

"Oh," Maud was plainly puzzled. "Then what do you mean?"

But Perdita only smiled. "Have you and Wallace made up yet?" she asked with what appeared to the other woman striking irrelevance. "Impertinent, I know; but there's a reason?"

"No-o-o," said Maud reluctantly and evidently wondering if Dita had suddenly lost her mind.

"Then do so at once," advised her business associate. "Do so before he meets Fuschia Fleming."

"From what you say." Miss Carmine's chin was high and haughty. "I see no cause for alarm."

"No?" Perdita tapped the table with her finger-tips, still inscrutably smiling.

Maud rarely permitted herself to become angry, but she did so now. She had never imagined that Perdita could be so aggravating. "Just because Cresswell lost his head about her, you think—" she flashed out.

"He didn't," cried Perdita not with bravado, but with a confidence which Maud realized with surprise was genuine. "I hadn't been with her three minutes before I knew that. But take my advice," again her voice fell to that teasing note. "If you really love Wallace make up your differences with him to-day, to-day, before he, a playwright, meets the actress. Then get a new steel chain, one that he can't chew through, and fasten it securely to his collar."