ote: "I
have been making a fool of myself. I'll not come again until I am all
right. Be patient with me. I don't think this will occur again." She
first wrote "happen." She scratched it out and put "occur" in its
place. Not that Moldini would have noted the slip; simply that she
would not permit herself the satisfaction of the false and
self-excusing "happen." It had not been a "happen." It had been a
deliberate folly, a lapse to the Mildred she had buried the day she
sent Donald Keith away. When the note was on its way, she threw out
all her medicines, and broke the new spraying apparatus Hicks had
instructed her to buy.

She went back to the Rivi regime. A week passed, and she was little
better. Two weeks, and she began to mend. But it was six weeks before
the last traces of her folly disappeared. Moldini said not a word,
gave no sign. Once more her life went on in uneventful, unbroken
routine--diet, exercise, singing--singing, exercise, diet--no
distractions except an occasional visit to the opera with Moldini, and
she was hating opera now. All her enthusiasm was gone. She simply
worked doggedly, drudged, slaved.

When the days began to grow warm, Mrs. Belloc said: "I suppose you'll
soon be off to the country? Are you going to visit Mrs. Brindley?"

"No," said Mildred.

"Then come with me."

"Thank you, but I can't do it."

"But you've got to rest somewhere."

"Rest?" said Mildred. "Why should I rest?"

Mrs. Belloc started to protest, then abruptly changed. "Come to think
of it, why should you? You're in perfect health, and it'll be time
enough to rest when you 'get there.'"

"I'm tired through and through," said Mildred, "but it isn't the kind
of tired that could be rested except by throwing up this frightful
nightmare of a career."

"And you can't do that."

"I won't," said Mildred, her lips compressed and her eyes narrowed.

She and Moldini--and fat, funny little Mrs. Moldini--went to the
mountains. And she worked on. She would listen to none of the
suggestions about the dangers of keeping too steadily at it, about
working oneself into a state of staleness, about the imperative demands
of the artistic temperament for rest, change, variety. "It may be so,"
she said to Mrs. Brindley. "But I've gone mad. I can no more drop this
routine than--than you could take it up and keep to it for a week."

"I'll admit I couldn't," said Cyrilla. "And Mildred, you're making a
mistake."