Miss Clay smiled and drew on her gloves. The interview was over.

"There is really nothing to thank me, for," she said. "The favor is on the other side. It is I who am lucky. The perfect understudy like a becoming hat is hard to find, but when found is absolutely beyond price.

May I send you a pa.s.s for to-morrow night to the 'End of the Rainbow'?

Perhaps you would like to see it again and play 'Madge' with me from a box. The pa.s.s will admit two. Bring one of the lovers if you like."

Tony wired her uncle that night. In the morning mail arrived Max Hempel's contract as Miss Clay had promised. Tony regarded it with superst.i.tious awe. It was the first contract she had ever seen in her life, much less had offered for her signature. The terms were, generous--appallingly so it seemed to the girl who knew little of such things and was not inclined to over-rate her powers financially speaking. She wisely took the contract over to the school and got the manager's advice to "Go ahead."

"We've nothing comparable to offer you, Miss Tony. With Hempel and Miss Clay both behind you you are practically made. You are a lucky little lady. I know a dozen experienced actresses in this city who would give their best cigarette cases to be in your shoes."

Arrived home at the Hostelry, armed with this approval, Tony found her Uncle's answering wire bidding her do as she thought best and sending heartiest love and congratulations. Dear Uncle Phil!

And then she sat down and signed the impressive doc.u.ment that made her Carol Clay's understudy and a real wage-earning person.

All the afternoon she spent in long, delicious, dreamless slumber. At five she was wakened by the maid bringing a letter from Alan, a wonderful, extravagant lover-note such as only he could pen. Later she bathed and dressed, donning the white and silver gown she had worn the night when she had first admitted to Alan in Carlotta's garden that she loved him, first took his kisses. It was rather a sacred little gown to Tony, sacred to Alan and her own surrender to love. He called it her starlight dress and loved it especially because it brought out the springlike, virginal quality of her youth and loveliness as her other more sophisticated gowns did not. Tony wore it for Alan to-night, wanted him to think her lovely, to love her immensely. She wanted to taste all life's joy at once, have a perfect deluge of happiness. Youth must be served.

Alan, graceful for being forgiven so easily, fell in with her mood and was at his best, courtly, considerate, adoring. He exerted all the magic of his not inconsiderable charm to make Tony forget that other unfortunate night when he had appeared in other, less attractive colors. And Tony was ready enough to forget beneath his worshiping green eyes and under the spell of his wonderful voice. She meant to shut out the unwelcome guests of fear and doubt from her heart, let love alone have sway.

They dined at a gorgeous restaurant in a great hotel. Tony reveled in the splendor and richness of the setting, delighted in the flawless service, the perfection of the strange and delectable viands which Alan ordered for their consumption. Particularly she delighted in Alan himself and the way he fitted into the richness and luxury. It was his rightful setting.

She could not imagine him in any of the shabby restaurants where she and d.i.c.k had often dined so contentedly. Alan was a born aristocrat, patrician of the patricians. His looks, his manner, everything about him betrayed it. Most of all it was revealed in the way the waiters scurried to do his bidding, bowed obsequiously before him, recognized him as the authentic master, lord of the purple.

"So Carson really has gone to Mexico," Alan murmured as they dallied over their salads, looking mostly into each other's eyes.

"Yes, he went yesterday. I hated to have him go. It is awfully disagreeable and dangerous down there they say. He might get a fever or get killed or something." Tony absent-mindedly nibbling a piece of roll already saw d.i.c.k in her mind's eye the victim of an a.s.sa.s.sin's blade.

"No such luck!" thought Alan Ma.s.sey bitterly. The thought brought a flash of venom into his eyes which Tony unluckily caught.

"Alan! Why do you hate d.i.c.k so? He never did you any harm."

Tony Holiday did not know what outrageous injury d.i.c.k had done his cousin, Alan Ma.s.sey.

Alan was already suavely master of himself, the venom expunged from his eyes.

"Why wouldn't I hate him, _Antoinetta mia_? You are half in love with him."

"I am not," denied Tony indignantly. "He is just like Lar--." She broke off abruptly, remembering d.i.c.k's flare of resentment at that familiar formula, remembering too the kiss she had given him in the dimly-lit hall in the Hostelry, the kiss which had not been precisely such a one as she would have given Larry.

Alan's face darkened again.

"Oh, yes, you are. You are blushing."

"I am not." Then putting her hands up to her face and feeling it warm she changed her tactics. "Well, what, if I am? I do care a lot about d.i.c.k. I found out the other night that I cared a whole lot more than I knew. It isn't like caring for Larry and Ted. It's different. For after all he isn't my brother--never was--never will be. I'm a wretched flirt, Alan. You know it as well as I do. I've let d.i.c.k keep on loving me, knowing all the time I didn't mean to marry him. And I'm not a bit sure I am going to marry you either."

"Tony!"

"Well, anyway not for a long, long time. I want to go on the stage. I can't put all of myself into my work and give it to you at the same time.

I don't want to get married. I don't dare to. I don't dare even let myself care too much. I want to be free."

"You want to be loved."

"Of course. Every woman does."

Alan made an impatient gesture.

"I don't mean lip-worship. You are a woman, not a piece of statuary. Come on now. Let's dance."

They danced. In her lover's arms, their feet keeping time to the syncopated, stirring rhythms of the violins, their hearts beating to a mightier harmony of nature's own brewing, Tony Holiday was far from being a piece of statuary. She was all woman, a woman very much alive and very much in love.

Alan bent over her.

"Tony, belovedest. There are more things than art in the world," he said softly. "Don't you know it, feel it? There is life. And life is bigger than your work or mine. We're both artists, but we'll be bigger artists together. Marry me now. Don't make me wait. Don't make yourself wait. You want it as much as I do. Say yes, sweetheart," he implored.

Tony shook her head vehemently. She was afraid. She knew that just now all her dreams of success in her chosen art, all her love for the dear ones at home were as nothing in comparison with this greater thing which Alan called life and which she felt surging mightily within her. But she also knew that this way lay madness, disloyalty, regret. She must be strong, strong for Alan as well as for herself.

"Not yet," she whispered back. "Be patient, Alan. I love you, dear. Wait."

The music came to an end. Many eyes followed the two as they went back to their places at the table. They were incomparable artists. It was worth missing one's own dance to see them have theirs. Aside from his wonderful dancing and striking personality Alan was at all times a marked figure, attracting attention wherever he went and whatever he did. The public knew he had a superlative fortune which he spent magnificently as a prince, and that he had a superlative gift which for all they were aware he had flung wantonly away as soon as the money came into his hands.

Moreover he was even more interesting because of his superlatively bad reputation which still followed him. The public would have found it hard to believe that at last Alan Ma.s.sey was leading the most temperate and arduous of lives and devoting himself exclusively to one woman whom he treated as reverently as if she were a G.o.ddess. The gazes focussed upon Alan now inevitably included the girl with him, as lovely and young as spring itself.

"Who was she?" they asked each other. "What was a girl like that doing in Alan Ma.s.sey's society?" To most of the observers it meant but one thing, eventually if not now. Even the most cynical and world-hardened thought it a pity, and these would have been confounded if they could have heard just now his pa.s.sionate plea for marriage. One did not a.s.sociate marriage with Alan Ma.s.sey. One had not a.s.sociated it too much with his mother, one recalled.

CHAPTER XXVII

TROUBLED WATERS

Ted Holiday drifted into Berry's to buy floral offerings for the reigning G.o.ddess who chanced still to be pretty Elsie Hathaway. Things had gone on gayly since that night a month ago when he had stolen that impudent kiss beneath the crescent moon. Not that there was anything at all serious about the affair. College coquettes must have lovers, and Ted Holiday would not have been himself if there had not been a pretty sweetheart on hand.

By this time Ted had far outdistanced the other claimants for Elsie's favor. But the victory had come high. His bank account was again sadly humble in porportions and his bills at Berry's and at the candy shops were things not to be looked into too closely. Nevertheless he was in a gala humor that November morning. Aside from chronic financial complications things were going very well with him. He was working just hard enough to satisfy his newly-awakened common sense or conscience, or whatever it was that was operating. He was having a jolly good time with Elsie and basket ball and other things and college life didn't seem quite such a bore and burden as it had hitherto. Moreover Uncle Phil had just written that he would waive the ten dollar automobile tax for December in consideration of the approach of Christmas, possibly also in consideration of his nephew's fairly creditable showing on the new leaf of the ledger though he did not say so. In any case it was a jolly old world if anybody asked Ted Holiday that morning as he entered Berry's.

He made straight for Madeline as he invariably did. He was always friendly and gay and casual with her, always careful to let no one suspect he had ever known her any more intimately than at present--not because he cared on his own account--Ted Holiday was no sn.o.b. But because he had sense to see it was better for Madeline herself.

He was genuinely sorry for the girl. He could not help seeing how her despondency grew upon her from week to week and that she appeared miserably sick as well as unhappy. She looked worse than usual to-day, he thought, white and heavy-eyed and unmistakably heavy-hearted. It troubled him to see her so. Ted had the kindest heart in the world and always wanted every one else to be as blithely content with life as he was himself. Accordingly now under cover of his purchase of chrysanthemums for Elsie he managed to get in a word in her ear.

"You look as if you needed cheering up a bit. How about the movies to-night? Charlie's on. He'll fix you."

"No, thank you, I couldn't." The girl's voice was also prudently low, and she busied herself with the flowers instead of looking at Ted as she spoke.

"Why not?" he challenged, always impelled to insistence by denial.

"Because I--" And then to Ted's consternation the flowers flew out of her hands, scattering in all directions, her face went chalky white and she fell forward in a heavy faint in Ted Holiday's arms.

Ted got her to a chair, ordered another clerk to get water and spirits of ammonia quick. His arm was still around her when Patrick Berry strayed in from the back room. Berry's eyes narrowed. He looked the girl over from head to foot, surveyed Ted Holiday also with sharp scrutiny and knitted brows. The clerk returned with water and dashed off for the ammonia as ordered. Madeline's eyes opened slowly, meeting Ted's anxious blue ones as he bent over her.

"Ted!" she gasped. "Oh, Ted!"