his philanderings, to be faithless to
Sohlberg. Stephanie, on the other hand, had the strange feeling that
affection was not necessarily identified with physical loyalty, and
that she could be fond of Cowperwood and still deceive him--a fact
which was based on her lack as yet of a true enthusiasm for him. She
loved him and she didn't. Her attitude was not necessarily identified
with her heavy, lizardish animality, though that had something to do
with it; but rather with a vague, kindly generosity which permitted her
to feel that it was hard to break with Gardner Knowles and Lane Cross
after they had been so nice to her. Gardner Knowles had sung her
praises here, there, and everywhere, and was attempting to spread her
fame among the legitimate theatrical enterprises which came to the city
in order that she might be taken up and made into a significant figure.
Lane Cross was wildly fond of her in an inadequate way which made it
hard to break with him, and yet certain that she would eventually.
There was still another man--a young playwright and poet by the name of
Forbes Gurney--tall, fair, passionate--who had newly arrived on the
scene and was courting her, or, rather, being courted by her at odd
moments, for her time was her own. In her artistically errant way she
had refused to go to school like her sister, and was idling about,
developing, as she phrased it, her artistic possibilities.

Cowperwood, as was natural, heard much of her stage life. At first he
took all this palaver with a grain of salt, the babbling of an ardent
nature interested in the flighty romance of the studio world. By
degrees, however, he became curious as to the freedom of her actions,
the ease with which she drifted from place to place--Lane Cross's
studio; Bliss Bridge's bachelor rooms, where he appeared always to be
receiving his theatrical friends of the Garrick Players; Mr. Gardner
Knowles's home on the near North Side, where he was frequently
entertaining a party after the theater. It seemed to Cowperwood, to say
the least, that Stephanie was leading a rather free and inconsequential
existence, and yet it reflected her exactly--the color of her soul.
But he began to doubt and wonder.

"Where were you, Stephanie, yesterday?" he would ask, when they met for
lunch, or in the evenings early, or when she called at his new offices
on the North Side, as she sometimes did to walk or drive with him.

"Oh, yesterday morning I was at Lane Cros