ey don't put their money into tinsel and see it fade."

"Well, what else? Did Charlie Grant love me?"

"Yes. No doubt of it."

"But he loved Bessie afterwards."

"Yes. She lived the thing through with him. She built up something, I
fancy. He probably remembered you as I did, all pink ribbons and fluff;
but she helped him rear his house of life."

"And my husband didn't love me and I didn't love my husband," the old
lady mused. "Well, Billy, it's almost the end of the play. I wish I
understood it better. And I've written a naughty book, and I'm going to
be comfortable on the money from it. And you wish I hadn't, don't you?"

He saw how frail she looked and answered mercifully,--

"I don't care much about the book, dear. Don't let's talk of that."

"You wish I hadn't written it!"

"I wish you hadn't been so infernally bored as to think of writing it."

"And I'll bet a dollar you wish you'd come back and found me reconciled
to life and death, and reading daily texts out of little pious books,
and knitting mufflers for sailors, instead of seething with all sorts of
untimely devilishnesses. Don't you, Billy?"

What Billy thought he would not tell himself, and he said with an
extreme honesty,--

"You're the greatest old girl there is, Florrie, or ever was, or ever
will be."

"Ah, well!" she sighed, and laughed a little. "I can't help wishing
there weren't so many good folks. It makes me uncommonly lonesome. For
you're good, too, Billy, you sinner, you!"

He read the gleam in her eyes, the reckless courage, the unquenched love
of life; after all, there was more youth in her still than there had
ever been in him or in a hundred like him. He laughed, and said,--

"Oh, I do delight in you!"

XXIV

It was the early twilight, and MacLeod was going to Electra to say
good-by. But first he tapped at Rose's door. He had seen her from time
to time through the day, and nothing of significance had passed between
them. That unbroken level had been exciting to her. She knew he had
things to say, and that he would not go leaving them unspoken; delay was
only the withholding of bad news. Now she came to the door, a fan in her
hand and the summer night reasonably accounting for the breathlessness
she felt. Her pallor made a white spot in the dusk; she was like a
ghost, with all the life drained out of her. MacLeod stepped inside and
closed the door.

"Hot!" he breathed, taking a place by the window.

She could n