n't be here always," said he crossly--and she knew he was
suspecting what she really must be thinking.

"I wasn't complaining," replied she sweetly. "You know I
understand about business."

"Yes, I know," said he, with his air of generosity that always
made her feel grateful. "I always feel perfectly free about you."

"I should say!" laughed she. "You know I don't care what happens
so long as you succeed." Since their talk in Broadway that first
evening in New York she had instinctively never said "we."

When they were at the table at Rector's and he had taken a few
more drinks, he became voluble and plausible on the subject of
the trifling importance of his setback as a playwright. It was
the worst possible time of year; the managers were stocked up;
his play would have to be rewritten to suit some particular
star; a place on a newspaper, especially such an influential
paper as the _Herald_, would be of use to him in interesting
managers. She listened and looked convinced, and strove to
convince herself that she believed. But there was no gray in her
eyes, only the deepest hue of violets.

Next day they took a suite of two rooms and a bath in a
pretentious old house in West Forty-fourth Street near Long Acre
Square. She insisted that she preferred another much sunnier and
quieter suite with no bath but only a stationary washstand; it
was to be had for ten dollars a week. But he laughed at her as
too economical in her ideas, and decided for the eighteen-dollar
rooms. Also he went with her to buy clothes, made her spend
nearly a hundred dollars where she would have spent less than
twenty-five. "I prefer to make most of my things," declared she.
"And I've all the time in the world." He would not have it. In
her leisure time she must read and amuse herself and keep
herself up to the mark, especially physically. "I'm proud of
your looks," said he. "They belong to me, don't they? Well, take
care of my property, Miss."

She looked at him vaguely--a look of distance, of parting, of
pain. Then she flung herself into his arms with a hysterical
cry--and shut her eyes tight against the beckoning figure
calling her away. "No! No!" she murmured. "I belong here--_here!_"

"What are you saying?" he asked.

"Nothing--nothing," she replied.

CHAPTER XXV

AT the hotel they had been Mr. and Mrs. Spenser. When they
moved, he tried to devise some way round this; but it was
necessary that they have h