"Two--girls," Magsie said with barely perceptible hesitation.

"Grown?" pursued the visitor.

"Ye-es, I believe so." Magsie was too clever to multiply unnecessary untruths. She began to dress.

"What are you doing this afternoon?" asked Billy. "I have the Butlers' car for the day. Joe brought it into town to be fixed, and can't drive it out until tomorrow. We might do something. It's a gorgeous car."

"I'm not doing one thing in the world. Where's Joe?"

"Joe Pickering?" asked Billy. "Oh, he's gone off with some men for some golf and poker. We might find someone, and go on a party.

Where could we go--Long Beach? It's going to be stifling hot."

"Stay and have lunch with me," said Magsie.

"I can't to-day. I'm lunching with a theatrical man at Sherry's. I tell you I'm in deadly earnest. I'm going to break in! Suppose I come here for you at just three. Meanwhile, you think up someone.

How about Bryan Masters?"

Magsie made a face.

"Well," said Billy, departing, "you think of someone, and I will.

Perhaps the Royces would go--a nice little early party. The worst of it is, no one's in town!"

She ran downstairs and jumped into the beautiful car.

"Sherry's, please, Hungerford," said Billy easily. "And then you might get your lunch, and come for me sharp at half-past two."

The man touched his hat. Billy leaned back against the rich leather upholstery luxuriously; she was absolutely content. Joe was quiet and away, dear little old Breck was in seventh heaven down on the cool seash.o.r.e, and there was a prospect of a party to- night. As they rolled smoothly downtown the pa.s.sing throng might well have envied the complacent little figure in coffee-colored madras with the big heron feather in her hat.

When Billy was gone, Magsie, with a thoughtful face and compressed lips, took two packages of letters from her desk and wrapped them for posting. She fell into deep musing for a few minutes before she wrote Rachael's name on the wrapper, but after that she dressed with her usual care, and carried the package to the elevator boy for mailing. As she came back to her rooms a caller was announced and followed her name into Magsie's apartment almost immediately. Magsie, with a pang of consternation, found herself facing Richie Gardiner's mother.

Anna would never have permitted this, was Magsie's first resentful thought, but Anna was on a vacation, and the elevator boy could not be expected to discriminate.

"Good morning, Mrs. Gardiner," said Magsie; "you'll excuse my dressing all over the place, but I have no maid this week. How's Richie?"

Mrs. Gardiner was oblivious of anything amiss. She sat down, first removing a filmy scarf of Magsie's from a chair, and smiled, the little muscle-twitching smile of a person in pain, as if she hardly heard Magsie's easy talk.

"He doesn't seem to get better, Miss Clay," said she, almost snorting in her violent effort to breathe quietly. "Doctor doesn't say he gets worse, but of course he don't fool me--I know my boy's pretty sick."

The agony of helpless motherhood was not all lost upon Magsie, even though it was displayed by a large, plain woman in preposterous clothes, strangely introduced into her pretty rooms, and a most incongruous figure there.

"What a SHAME!" she said warmly.

"It's a shame to anyone that knew Rich as I did a few years ago,"

his mother said. "There wasn't a brighter nor a hardier child. It wasn't until we came to this city that he begun to give way--and what wonder? It'd kill a horse to live in this place. I wish to G.o.d that I had got him out of it when he had that first spell. I may be--I don't know, but I may be too late now." Tears came to her eyes, the hard tears of a proud and suffering woman. She took out a folded handkerchief and pressed it unashamedly to her eyes.

"But he wouldn't go," she resumed, clearing her throat. "He was going to stay here, live or die. And Miss Clay, YOU know why!" She stopped short, a terrible look upon Magsie.

"I?" faltered Magsie, coloring, and feeling as if she would cry herself.

"You kept him," said his mother. "He hung round you like a bee round a rose--poor, sick boy that he was! He's losing sleep now because he can't get you out of his thoughts."

She stopped again, and Magsie hung her head.

"I'm sorry," she said slowly. And with the childish words came childish tears. "I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Gardiner," stammered Magsie. "I know--I've known all along--how Richie feels to me. I suppose I could have stopped him, got him to go away, perhaps, in time. But--but I've been unhappy myself, Mrs. Gardiner. A person-- I love has been cruel to me. I don't know what I'm going to do. I worry and worry!" Magsie was frankly crying now. "I wish there was something I could do for Richie, but I can't tell him I care!" she sobbed.

Both women sat in miserable silence for a moment, then Richard Gardiner's mother said: "It wouldn't do you any harm to just--if you would--to just see him, would it? Don't say anything about this other man. Could you do that? Couldn't you let him think that maybe if he went away and came back all well you'd--you might-- there might be some chance for him? Doctor says he's got to go away AT ONCE if he's going to get well."

The anguish in her voice and manner reached Magsie at last. There was nothing cruel about the little actress, however sordid her ambitions and however selfish her plans.

"Could you get him away, now?" she said almost timidly. "Is he strong enough to go?"

"That's what Doctor says; he ought to go away TO-DAY, but--but he won't lissen to me," his mother answered with trembling lips.

"He's all I have. I just live for Rich. I loved his father, and when d.i.c.k was killed I had only him."

"I'll go see him," said Magsie in sudden generous impulse. "I'll tell him to take care of himself. It's simply wicked of him to throw his life away like this."

"Miss Clay," said Mrs. Gardiner with a break in her strong, deep voice, "if you do that--may the Lord send you the happiness you give my boy!" She began to cry again.

"Why, Mrs. Gardiner," said Magsie in a hurt, childish voice, "I LIKE Richie!"

"Well, he likes you all right," said his mother on a long, quivering breath. With big, coa.r.s.e, tender fingers she helped Magsie with the last hooks and bands of her toilette. "If you ain't as pretty and dainty as a little wax doll!" she observed admiringly. Magsie merely sighed in answer. Wax dolls had their troubles!

But she liked the doglike devotion of Richie's big mother, and the beautiful car--Richie's car. Perhaps the hurt to her heart and her pride had altered Magsie's sense of values. At all events, she did not even shrink from Richie to-day.

She sat down beside the white bed, beside the bony form that the counterpane revealed in outline, and smiled at Richie's dark, thin eager face and sunken, adoring eyes. She laid her warm, plump little hand between his long, thin fingers. After a while the nurse timidly suggested the detested milk; Richie drank it dutifully for Magsie.

They were left together in the cool, airy, orderly room, and in low, confidential tones they talked. Magsie was well aware that the big doctors themselves would not interrupt this talk, that the nurses and the mother were keeping guard outside the door. Richie was conscious of nothing but Magsie.

In this hour the girl thought of the stormy years that were past and the stormy future. She had played her last card in the game for Warren Gregory's love. The letters, without an additional word, were gone to Rachael. If Rachael chose to use them against Warren, then the road for Magsie, if long, was un.o.bstructed. But suppose Rachael, with that baffling superiority of hers, decided not to use them?

Magsie had seriously considered and seriously abandoned the idea of holding out several letters from the packages, but the letters, as legal doc.u.ments, had no value to anyone but Rachael. If Rachael chose to forgive and ignore the writing of them, they were so much waste paper, and Magsie had no more hold over Warren than any other young woman of his acquaintance.

But Magsie was more or less committed to a complete change. The break with Bowman could not be avoided without great awkwardness now. She despised herself for having so simply accepted a bank account from Warren, yet what else could she do? Magsie had wanted money all her life, and when that money was gone---Richie was falling into a doze, his hand still tightly clasping hers. She slipped to her knees beside the bed, and as he lazily opened his eyes she gave him a smile that turned the room to Heaven for him.

When a nurse peeped cautiously in, a warning nod from Magsie sent the surprised and delighted woman away again with the great news.

Mr. Gardiner was asleep!

The clock struck twelve, struck one, still Magsie knelt by the bedside, watching the sleeping face. Outside the city was silent under the summer sun. In the great hospital feet cheeped along wide corridors, now and then a door was opened or closed. There was no other sound.

Magsie eyed her charge affectionately. When he had come to her dressing-room in former days trying to ignore his cough, trying to take her about and to order her suppers as the other men did, he had been vaguely irritating; but here in this plain little bed, so boyish, so dependent, so appreciative, he seemed more attractive than he ever had before. Whatever there was maternal in Magsie rose to meet his need. She could not but be impressed by the royal solicitude that surrounded the heir to the "Little d.i.c.k Mine."

Mrs. Richard Gardiner would be something of a personage, thought Magsie dreamily. He might not live long!

Of course, that was calculating and despicable; she was not the woman to marry where she did not love! But then she really did love Richie in a way. And Richie loved her--no question of that!

Loved her more than Warren did for all his letters and gifts, she decided resentfully.

When Richie wakened, bewildered, at one o'clock, Magsie was still there. She insisted that he drink more milk before a word was said. Then they talked again, Magsie in a new mood of reluctance and gentleness, Richie half wild with rising hope and joy.

"And you would want me to marry you, feeling this way?" Magsie faltered.

"Oh, Magsie!" he whispered.