, sir," Annie informed
him. "It's a place where people with complications go to get rid of
them, Miss Nellie says. The show won't be any good without her, sir. I
wouldn't give two cents to see it."

He sagged down in the seat, a cold perspiration starting out all over
his body.

"When does she go--out there!" he asked, as in a dream.

"First of next week. She goes to Chicago with the company and then
right on out to--to--er--to----"

"Reno," said he, lifelessly.

"Yes, sir."

He did not know how long afterward it was that he heard Phoebe saying
to him, her tired voice barely audible above the clacking of the
wheels:--

"I want a drink of water, daddy."

His voice seemed to come back to him from some far-away place. He
blinked his eyes several times and said, very wanly:--

"You mustn't drink water, dearie. It will make you fat."

CHAPTER VI

THE REVOLVER

He waited until the middle of the week for some sign from her; none
coming, he decided to go once more to her apartment before it was too
late. The many letters he wrote to her during the first days after
learning of her change of plans were never sent. He destroyed them. A
sense of shame, a certain element of pride, held them back. Still, he
argued with no little degree of justice, there were many things to be
decided before she took the long journey--and the short step she was
so plainly contemplating.

It was no more than right that he should make one last and determined
effort to save her from the fate she was so blindly courting. It was
due her. She was his wife. He had promised to cherish and protect her.
If she would not listen to the appeal, at least he would have done his
bounden duty.

There was an ever present, ugly fear, too, that she meant, by some
hook or crook, to rob him of Phoebe.

"And she's as much mine as hers," he declared to himself a thousand
times or more.

Behind everything, yet in plain view, lay his own estimate of
himself--the naked truth--he was "no good!" He had come to the point
of believing it of himself. He was not a success; he was quite the
other thing. But, granting that, he was young and entitled to another
chance. He could work into a partnership with Mr. Davis if given the
time.

Letting the midweek matinee slip by, he made the plunge on a Thursday.
She was to leave New York on Sunday morning; that much he knew from
the daily newspapers, which teemed with Nellie's breakdown and its
lamentable cons