It only took a minute, but in that minute--in that minute, Mag, I had the rose diamond clutched safe in my fingers; I was on the top of the big trunk and out of the window.

Oh, the feel of that beautiful thing in my hand! I'd 'a' loved it if it hadn't been worth a penny, but as it was I adored it. I slipped the chain under my collar, and the diamond slid down my neck, and I felt its kiss on my skin. I flew down the black corridor, b.u.mping into scenery and nearly tripping two stage carpenters. I heard Ginger, the call-boy, ahead of me and dodged behind some properties just in time.

He went whistling past and I got to the stage door.

I pulled it open tenderly, cautiously, and turned to shut it after me.

And--

And something held it open in spite of me.

No--no, Mag, it wasn't a man. It was a memory. It rose up there and hit me right over the heart--the memory of Nancy Olden's happiness the first time she'd come in this very door, feeling that she actually had a right to use a stage: entrance, feeling that she belonged, she--Nancy--to this wonderland of the stage!

You must never tell Tom, Mag, promise! He wouldn't see. He couldn't understand. I couldn't make him know what I felt any more than I'd dare tell him what I did.

I shut the door.

But not behind me. I shut it on the street and--Mag, I shut for ever another door, too; the old door that opens out on Crooked Street. With my hand on my heart, that was beating as though it would burst, I flew back again through the black corridor, through the wings and out to Obermuller's office. With both my hands I ripped open the neck of my dress, and, pulling the chain with that great diamond hanging to it, I broke it with a tug, and threw the whole thing down on the desk in front of him.

"For G.o.d's sake!" I yelled. "Don't make it so easy for me to steal!"

I don't know what happened for a minute. I could see his face change half a dozen ways in as many seconds. He took it up in his fingers at last. It swung there at the end of the slender little broken chain like a great drop of shining water, blushing and sparkling and trembling.

His hands trembled, too, and he looked up at last from the diamond to my face.

"It's worth at least fifty thousand, you know--valued at that."

I didn't answer.

He got up and came over to where I had thrown myself on a bench.

"What's the matter, Olden? Don't I pay you enough?"

"I want to see Tom," I begged. "It's so long since he--He's up at--at--in the country."

"Sing Sing?"

I nodded.

"You poor little devil!"

That finished me. I'm not used to being pitied. I sobbed and sobbed as though some dam had broken inside of me. You see, Mag, I knew in that minute that I'd been afraid, deathly afraid of Fred Obermuller's face, when it's scornful and sarcastic, and of his voice, when it cuts the flesh of self-conceit off your very bones. And the contrast--well, it was too much for me.

But something came quick to sober me.

It was Gray. She stormed in, followed by Lord Harold and Topham, and half the company.

"The diamond, the rose diamond!" she shrieked. "It's gone! And the carpenters say that new girl Olden came flying from the direction of my dressing-room. I'll hold you responsible--"

"Hush-sh!" Obermuller lifted his hands and nodded over toward me.

"Olden!" she squealed. "Grab her, Topham. I'll bet she stole that diamond, and she can't have got rid of it yet."

Topham jumped toward me, but Obermuller stopped him.

"You'd win only half your bet, my Lady," Obermuller said softly. "She did get hold of the Gray rose, worth fifty thousand dollars, in spite of all your precautions--"

The world seemed to fall away from me. I looked up at him. I couldn't believe he'd go back on me.

"--And she brought it straight to me, as I had asked her to, and promised to raise her salary if she'd win out. For I knew that unless I proved to you it could be stolen, you'd never agree to hire a detective to watch those things, which will get us all into trouble some day. Here! Scoot out o' this. It's nearly time for your number."

He pa.s.sed the diamond over to her, and they all left the office.

So did I; but he held out his hand as I pa.s.sed. "It goes--that about a raise for you, Olden. Now earn it."

Isn't he white, Mag--white clean through, that big fellow Obermuller?

VI.

I got into the train, Mag, the happiest girl in all the country. I'd a big basket of things for Tom. I was got up in my Sunday best, for I wanted to make a hit with some fellow with a key up there, who'd make things soft and easy for my Tommy.

I had so much to tell him. I knew just how I'd take off every member of the company to amuse him. I had memorized every joke I'd heard since I'd got behind the curtain--not very hard for me; things always had a way of sticking in my mind. I knew the newest songs in town, and the choruses of all the old ones. I could show him the latest tricks with cards--I'd got those at first hand from Professor Haughwout. You know how great Tom is on tricks. I could explain the disappearing woman mystery, and the mirror cabinet. I knew the clog dance that Dewitt and Daniels do. I had pictures of the trained seals, the great elephant act, Mademoiselle Picotte doing her great tight-rope dance, and the Brothers Borodini in their pyramid tumbling.

Yes, it was a whole vaudeville show, with refreshments between the acts, that I was taking up to Tom Dorgan. I don't care much for a lot of that truck--funny, isn't it, how you get to turn up your nose at the things you'd have given a finger for once upon a time? But Tom--oh, I'd got everything pat for him--my big, handsome Tom Dorgan in stripes--with his curls all shaved off--ugh!

I'd got just so far in my thoughts, sitting there in the train, when I gave a shiver. I thought for a minute it was at the idea of my Tom with one of those bare, round convict-heads on him, that look like fat skeleton faces. But it wasn't. It was--

Guess, Mag.

Moriway.

Both of us thought the same thing of each other for the first second that our eyes met. I could see that. He thought I was caught at last.

And I thought he'd been sharp once too often.

And, Mag, it would be hard to say which of us would have been happier if it had been the truth. Oh, to meet Moriway, bound sure enough for Sing Sing!

He got up and came over to me, smiling wickedly. He took the seat behind me, and leaning forward, said softly:

"Is Miss Omar engaged to read to some invalid up at Sing Sing? And for how long a term--I should say, engagement?"

I'd got through shivering by then. I was ready for him. I turned and looked at him in that very polite, distant sort o' way Gray uses in her act when the Charity superintendent speaks to her. It's the only decent thing she does; chances are that that's how Lord Gray's mother looks at her.

"You know my sister, Mr.--Mr.--" I asked humbly.

He looked at me, perplexed for just a second.

"Sister be hanged!" he said at last. "I know you, Nat, and I'm glad to my finger-tips that you've got it in the neck, in spite of all your smartness."