e
been a mistake, a ghastly mistake," she insisted almost passionately.
"Some day we shall laugh over it together as we laughed over my jealousy
of Abby. He never loved Abby, not for a minute, and yet I imagined that
he did and suffered agony because of it." And her taxicab went on
merrily between the cheerful crowds on the pavements, gliding among
gorgeous motor cars and carriages drawn by high-stepping horses and
pedlers' carts drawn by horses that stepped high no longer, among rich
people and poor people, among surfeited people and hungry people, among
gay people and sad people, among contented people and rebellious
people--among all these, who hid their happiness or their sorrow under
the mask of their features, her cab spun onward bearing her lightly on
the most reckless act of her life.

At the door of the apartment house she was told that Miss Oldcastle
could not be seen, but, after sending up her card and waiting a few
moments in the hall before a desk which reminded her of a gilded
squirrel-cage, she was escorted to the elevator and borne upward to the
ninth landing. Here, in response to the tinkle of a little bell outside
of a door, she was ushered into a reception room which was so bare alike
of unnecessary furniture and of the Victorian tradition to which she was
accustomed, that for an instant she stood confused by the very
strangeness of her surroundings. Then a charming voice, with what
sounded to her ears as an affected precision of speech, said: "Mrs.
Treadwell, this is so good of you!" and, turning, she found herself face
to face with the other woman in Oliver's life.

"I saw you at the play last night," the voice went on, "and I hoped to
get a chance to speak to you, but the reporters simply invaded my
dressing-room. Won't you sit here in the sunshine? Shall I close the
window, or, like myself, are you a worshipper of the sun?"

"Oh, no, leave it open. I like it." At any other moment she would have
been afraid of an open window in February; but it seemed to her now that
if she could not feel the air in her face she should faint. With the
first sight of Margaret Oldcastle, as she looked into that smiling
face, in which the inextinguishable youth was less a period of life than
an attribute of spirit, she realized that she was fighting not a woman,
but the very structure of life. The glamour of the footlights had
contributed nothing to the flame-like personality of the actress. In her
simple frock of