ep into the
intoxication of the shops. And several times they had gone off, a bit
defiantly, on little orgies. They would go to the matinee, and then have
a chocolate ice-cream soda at Huyler's, and called that "having a fling."
All this, of course, had been impossible when Charles-Norton had been
about. But why? Oh, because he worked so hard, and there wasn't much,
there wasn't so much----

Dolly paused and blushed. "Oh, that money," she said deprecatingly;
"that horrid, horrid mon----"

She rose to her feet to a sudden new thought and went into her room,
where from beneath ribbons, stockings, gloves, and theater-programmes,
she drew out of a drawer a little yellow book and a longer, more narrow,
green one.

When she returned, she was a bit pale, and sank rather limply into her
chair. "Ooh," she exclaimed disconsolately; "ooh, now I've _got_ to get
to him; get to him _soon_!"

Go to him. But where--how--where?

She knew where he was now, it is true--but only relatively. The first
report of his antics had come from a little town in the California
foothills; the second from a summer resort in a Valley of the Californian
Sierra. He was being reported pretty well all over the United States now,
but the first news in all probability were the only valuable clew. They
were desolately vague though. A man who flies covers much ground. Where
did he sleep? Where was his lair--or his nest, rather? It was sleeping,
not flying, that he was to be caught. How could she locate him? It would
take time, to do this, and money. And the check-book--oh, Lordie, that
check-book!

Little Dolly, always at the bottom a pretty level-headed creature, had
become wonderfully patient in the past month. Patient with a
determination fixed as a star, as a law of Nature; a determination which
was stronger far than herself; which was outside herself; which she could
feel, almost, a huge pressure behind her, as of great reservoirs filled
through trickling aeons; and which astonished her. She had written of it,
once, to her aunt.

"Dear Dolly," had answered this Darwinian lady; "you are right. It is not
of you. It is of all women that have gone before you, of the millions and
millions of women who have fought, and plotted, and intrigued in order to
keep alive the spark of Life and hand it down to you. It is, Dolly, the
Persistence of Woman; the inexorable persistence of Woman, Dolly, holding
Man. Holding Man, Dolly, in spite of his superior physica