ul waste of good material
not to have an audience. But she would "use the scene" afterward. She
remembered hearing a great actress tell how she visited hospitals for
consumptives, and even ran up to Davos one winter, when she was preparing
to play _La Dame aux Camelias_. Theo would have done all that if she had
been an actress. She was fond of realism in every form, and did not stick
at gruesomeness.

"A grass widow?" exclaimed Carmen eagerly.

Theo shrugged her shoulders. "Really, I can't tell you."

Carmen supposed that she knew little of Mrs. May, and had met her for the
first time at Santa Barbara with Nick. With Nick--motoring! The thought
gave Carmen a strange sensation, as if her blood had turned to little
cold, sharp crystals freezing in her veins.

"Not very young, I suppose?" she hazarded, her lips so dry that she had to
touch them with her tongue. But that was dry, too.

"Oh, about twenty-three or four, and looks nineteen."

There was no hope, then! Nick was with a woman, beautiful, young,
presumably a widow, and evidently in love with him, as Miss Dene said that
she would be here at Rushing River Camp if Nick had come. A deadly
sickness caught Carmen by the throat. Her love for Nick was one with her
life, and had been for years. Always she had believed that some day she
would be happy with Nick, would have him for her own. Anything else would
be impossible--too bad to be true. Even when he went East without asking
her to marry him, though she was free, she had assured herself that he
loved her. Had he not as much as said that the anniversary of her
husband's death was not a lucky night to choose for love-making? Carmen
had made certain that she was the only woman in Nick's life; and he had
laughed when she hinted that "some lovely lady" might persuade him to stay
in New York.

"Where is Mrs. May now?" she asked sharply, past caring much whether or no
Miss Dene saw her agony.

"In San Francisco--unless she's gone to the Yosemite Valley with Mr.
Hilliard."

"With him! Why should she go everywhere with him?"

Theo laughed. "Because she likes his society, I suppose, and he likes
hers. He is supposed to be her unpaid, amateur guide, I believe, and she
trots her maid about with her, to play propriety. Also a cat. Don't you
think a black cat a charmingly original chaperon?"

Carmen did not answer. Anguish and rage in her heart were like vitriol
dashed on a raw wound. No wonder Nick had not written! And