uch I
cared for Tony. And even that shouldn't have made you hate me
because--you won."

"Never mind why I hated you. I don't any more. Will you shake hands with
me, Carson, so we can begin again?"

Dick pulled himself weakly up on the pillow. Their hands met.

"Hang it, Massey," Dick said. "I am afraid I am going to like you. I've
heard you were hypnotic. I believe on my soul you came down here to make
me like you? Did you?"

But Alan only smiled his ironic, noncommital smile and remarked it was
time for the invalid to take a nap. He had had enough conversation for
the first attempt.

Dick soon drifted off to sleep but Alan Massey prowled the streets of the
Mexican city far into the night, with tireless, driven feet. The demons
were after him again.

And far away in another city whose bright lights glow all night Tony
Holiday was still playing Madge to packed houses, happy in her triumph
but with heart very pitiful for her beloved Miss Clay whose sorrow and
continued illness had made possible the fruition of her own eager hopes.
Tony was sadly lonely without Alan, thought of him far more often and
with deeper affection even than she had while she had him at her beck and
call in the city, loved him with a new kind of love for his generous
kindness to Dick. She made up her mind that he had cleared the shield
forever by this splendid act and saw no reason why she should keep him
any longer on probation. Surely she knew by this time that he was a man
even a Holiday might be proud to marry.

She wrote this decision to her uncle and asked to be relieved from
her promise.

"I am sorry," she wrote, "if you cannot approve but I cannot help it. I
love him and I am going to be engaged to him as soon as he comes back to
New York if he wants it. I am afraid I would have married him and gone
to Mexico with him, given up the play and broken my promise to you, if he
would have let me. It goes that far and deep with me.

"People are crazy over his pictures. The exhibition came off last week
and they say he is one of the greatest living painters with a wonderful
future ahead of him. I am so proud and happy. He is fine everyway now,
has really sloughed off the past just as he promised he would. So please,
dear Uncle Phil, forgive me if I do what you don't want me to. I have to
marry him. In my heart I am married to him already."

And this was the letter Philip Holiday found at his place at breakfast on
the morning of the day