Gne 
 
 GIRL FROM 
 HIS TOWN 
 
 MAR IB \5\N VORST
 
 355D
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN
 
 THE 
 
 GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 By 
 MARIE VAN VORST 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
 
 F. GRAHAM COOTES 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS 
 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 COPYRIGHT 1910 
 THE BOBBS-MERRIU. COMPANY 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 BRAUNWORTH & CO. 
 
 BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS 
 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I DAN BLAIR 1 
 
 II THE DUCHESS APPROVES ... 21 
 
 III THE BLAIRTOWN SOLOIST ... 28 
 
 IV IN THE CORAL ROOM .... 31 
 V AT THE CARLTON 47 
 
 VI GALOREY SEEKS ADVICE . ... 55 
 
 VII AT THE STAGE ENTRANCE ... 70 
 
 VIII DAN'S SIMPLICITY 76 
 
 IX DISAPPOINTMENT ..... 85 
 
 X THE BOY FROM MY TOWN ... 94 
 
 XI EUGGLES GIVES A DINNER . . . 109 
 
 XII THE GREEN KNIGHT . . . .128 
 
 XIII THE FACE OF LETTY LANE ... 135 
 
 XIV FROM INDIA'S CORAL STRANDS . . 155 
 XV GALORE Y GIVES ADVICE .... 174 
 
 XVI THE MUSICALS PROGRAM . . . 187 
 
 XVII LETTY LANE SINGS 199 
 
 XVIII A WOMAN'S WAY .; ... 207 
 
 XIX DAN AWAKES 214 
 
 XX A HAND CLASP 225 
 
 XXI RUGGLES RETURNS . ... 231 
 
 2133469
 
 CONTENTS Continued 
 
 CHAPTER FAGK 
 
 XXII WHAT WILL You TAKE? . . . .234 
 
 XXIII IN THE SUNSET GLOW . . . .242 
 
 XXIV EUGGLES' OFFER 250 
 
 XXV LETTY LANE RUNS AWAY ... 268 
 
 XXVI WHITE AND CORAL .... 274 
 
 XXVII AT MAXIM'S 290 
 
 XXVIII SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ... 299 
 
 XXIX THE PICTURE OF IT ALL . . . 304 
 
 XXX SODA WATER FOUNTAIN GIRL . . . 309 
 
 XXXI IN REALITY . . . . . .315 
 
 XXXII THE PRINCE ACCEPTS . . . .319 
 
 XXXIII THE THINGS ABOVE GROUND . . 322
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 BWT. T CAUF.
 
 THE 
 GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 DAN BLAIR 
 
 THE fact that much he said, because of his 
 unconscionable slang, was incomprehensible 
 did not take from the charm of his conversation 
 as far as the Duchess of Breakwater was con- 
 cerned. The brightness of his expression, his 
 quick, clear look upon them, his beautiful young 
 smile, his not too frequent laugh, his "new gay- 
 ness," as the duchess called his high spirits, his 
 supernal youth, his difference, credited him with 
 what nine-tenths of the human race lack 
 charm. 
 
 His tone was not too crudely western ; neither 
 
 did he suggest the ultra East with which they 
 
 were familiar. American women went down well 
 
 enough with them, but American men were un- 
 
 1
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 popular, and when the visitor arrived, Lady Ga- 
 lorey did not even announce him to the party 
 gathered for "the first shoot." 
 
 The others were in the armory when the ninth 
 gun, a young chap, six feet of him, blond as the 
 wheat, cleanly set up and very good to look at, 
 came in with Lily, Duchess of Breakwater. 
 Lady Galorey, his hostess, greeted them. 
 
 "Oh, here you are, are you? Lord Mersey, 
 Sir John Fairthrope." She mumbled the rest 
 of the names of her companions as though she 
 did not want them understood, then waved to- 
 ward the young chap, calling him Mr. Dan 
 Blair, and he, as she hesitated, added : 
 
 "From Blairtown, Montana." 
 
 "And give him a gun, will you, Gordon?" 
 Lady Galorey spoke to her husband. 
 
 "I discovered Mr. Blair, Edie," the duchess 
 announced, "and he didn't even know there was 
 a shoot on for to-day. Fancy !" 
 
 "I guess," Dan Blair said pleasantly, "I'll 
 just take a gun out of this bunch," and he chose
 
 DAN BLAIR 
 
 one at random from several indicated to him by 
 the gamekeeper. "I get my best luck when I go 
 it blind. Right! Thanks. That's so, Lady 
 Galorey, I didn't know there was to be any shoot- 
 ing until the duchess let it out." 
 
 To himself he thought with good-natured 
 amusement, "Afraid I'll spoil their game record, 
 maybe!" and went out along with them, follow- 
 ing the insular noblemen like a ray of sun, smil- 
 ing on the pretty woman who had discovered him 
 in the grounds where he had been poking about 
 by himself. 
 
 "Where, in Heaven's name, did you 'corral' 
 word of his own the dear boy^Edith? How 
 did he get to Osdene Park, or in fact anywhere, 
 just as he is, fresh as from Eden?" 
 
 "Thought I'd let him take you by surprise, 
 dearest. Where'd you find Dan?" 
 
 "Down by the garden house feeding the rab- 
 bits, on his knees like a little boy, his hands full 
 of lettuces. I'd just come a cropper myself on 
 the mare. She fell, I'm sorry to say, Edie, and 
 3
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 hacked her knees quite a lot. One of those dis- 
 guised ditches, you know. I was coming along 
 leading her when I ran on your friend." 
 
 The young duchess was slender as a willow, 
 very brunette, with a beautiful, discontented 
 face. 
 
 "I'm going to show Dan Blair off," Lady Ga- 
 lorey responded, "going to give the debutantes a 
 chance." 
 
 Placidly nodding, the duchess lit a cigarette 
 and began to quote from Dan Blair's conversa- 
 tion : "I fancy he won't let them 'worry him' ; 
 he's too 'busy!'" 
 
 "You mean that you're going to keep him oc- 
 cupied?" 
 
 The duchess didn't notice this. 
 
 "/* he such a catch?" 
 
 Neither of the women had walked out with the 
 guns. The duchess had a bad foot, and Lady 
 Galorey never went anywhere she could help 
 with her husband. She now drew her chair up 
 to the table in the morning-room, to which they 
 4
 
 DAN BLAIR 
 
 had both gone after the (departure of the guns, 
 and regarded with satisfaction a quantity of 
 stationery and the red leather desk appoint- 
 ments. 
 
 "Sit down and smoke if you like, Lily; I'm 
 going to fill out some lists." 
 
 "No, thanks, I'm going up to my rooms and 
 get Parkins to 'massey' this beastly foot of 
 mine. I must have fallen on it. But tell me 
 first, is Mr. Blair a catch?" 
 
 Lady Galorey had opened an address book 
 and looked up from it to reply : 
 
 "Something like ten million pounds." 
 
 "Heavens ! Disgusting !" 
 
 "The richest young man 'west of some river 
 or other.' At any rate he told me last night that 
 it was 'clean money.' I dare say the river is re- 
 sponsible for its cleanliness, but that fact seemed 
 to give him satisfaction." 
 
 The duchess was leaning on the table at Lady 
 Galorey's side. 
 
 "Dan's father took Gordon all over the West 
 5
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 that time he went to the States for a big hunt in 
 the Rockies. He got to know Mr. Blair awfully 
 well and liked him. The old gentleman bought 
 a little property about that time that turne^ out 
 to be a gold mine." 
 
 With persistency the duchess said : 
 
 "How d'you know it is 'clean money,' Edith? 
 Not that it makes a rap of difference," she 
 laughed prettily, "but how do you know that he 
 is rich to this horrible extent?" 
 
 Lady Galorey put down her address book im- 
 patiently: "Does he look like an impostor?" 
 
 The other returned : "Even the archangel fell, 
 my dear Edith !" 
 
 "Well," returned her friend, "this one is too 
 young to have fallen far," and she shut up her 
 list in desperation. 
 
 The duchess^ sat down on the edge of the 
 lounge and raised her expressive eyes to Lady 
 Galorey, who once more looked at her sarcastic- 
 ally, and went on : 
 
 "Gordon liked the old gentleman: he was ex- 
 6
 
 BAN BLAIR 
 
 traordinarily generous quite a type. They 
 called the town after him Blairtown: that is 
 where the son 'hails from.' He was a little lad 
 when Gordon was out and Mr. Blair promised 
 that Dan should come over here and see us one 
 day, and this," she tapped the table with her 
 pen, "seems to be the day, for he came down 
 upon us in this breezy way without even sending 
 a wire, 'just turned up' last night. Gordon's 
 mad about him. His father has been dead a 
 year, and he is just twenty-two." 
 
 "Good heavens!" murmured the duchess. 
 Lady Galorey opened her address book again. 
 
 "Gordon's got him terribly on his mind, my 
 dear; he has forbidden any gambling or any 
 bridge as long as the boy is with us. . . ." 
 
 Her companion rose and thrust her hands into 
 the pocket of her tweed coat. She laughed soft- 
 ly, then went over to the long window where 
 without, across the pane, the early winter mists 
 were flying, chased by a furtive sun. 
 
 "Gordon said that the boy's father treated 
 7
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 him like a king, and that while the boy is here he 
 is going to look out for him." 
 
 Over her shoulder the other threw out coldly : 
 
 "You speak as though he were in a den of 
 thieves. I didn't know Gordon's honor was so 
 fine. As for me, 7 don't gamble, you know." 
 
 Lady Galorey had decided that Lily's insistent 
 remaining gave her a chance to fill her fountain 
 pen. She was, therefore, carefully squirting in 
 the ink, and she flushed at her friend's last 
 words. 
 
 Lady Galorey herself was the best bridge 
 player in London, and cards were her passion. 
 She did not remind the lady in the window that 
 there were other games besides bridge, but kept 
 both her tongue and her temper. 
 
 After a little silence in which the women fol- 
 lowed each her own thoughts, the duchess mur- 
 mured: 
 
 "I'll toddle up-stairs, Edie let you write. 
 Where did you say we were going to meet the 
 guns for food?" 
 
 8
 
 DAN BLAIR 
 
 "At the gate by the White Pastures. There'll 
 be a cart and a motor going, whichever you like, 
 around two." 
 
 "Right," her grace nodded; "I'll be on time, 
 dearest." 
 
 And Lady Galorey with a relieved sigh heard 
 the door close behind the duchess. Wiping her 
 fountain pen delicately with a bit of chamois, she 
 murmured: "Well, Dan Blair is out of Eden, 
 poor dear, if he met her by the gate." 
 
 A fortune of a round ten million pounds was a 
 small part of what this young man had come 
 into by direct inheritance from the Copper King 
 of Blairtown, Montana. For once the money 
 figure had not been exaggerated, but Lady Ga- 
 lorey did not know about the rest of Dan's inher- 
 itance. 
 
 The young man whistling in his rooms in the 
 
 bachelor quarters of Osdene Park House, dressed 
 
 for dinner without the aid of a valet. When 
 
 Lord Galorey had asked him 'Sphere his man- 
 
 9
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 servant was," Dan had grinned. "Gosh, I 
 wouldn't have one of those Johnnies hanging 
 around me never did have! I can put on my 
 stockings all right! There was a chap on the 
 boat I came over in who let his man put on his 
 stockings. Can you beat that?" Blair had 
 laughed again. "I think if anybody tickled my 
 feet that way I would be likely to kick him in 
 the eye." 
 
 Dressing in his room he whistled under his 
 breath a song from a newly popular comic 
 opera ; and he intoned with his clear young voice 
 a line of the words : 
 
 "Should-you-go-to-Mandalay." 
 
 Out through his high window, if he had 
 looked, he would have seen the misty sweep of 
 the park under the faint moonrise and fine 
 shadows that the leaves made in the veiled light, 
 but he did not look out. He was dressing for 
 dinner without a valet and giving a great deal 
 of care to his toilet ; for the first time he was to 
 dine in the house of a nobleman and in the pres- 
 10
 
 DAN BLAIR 
 
 ence of a duchess; not that it meant a great 
 deal to him he thought it was "funny." 
 
 In Dan Blair's twenty-two years of utterly 
 happy days his one grief had been the death of 
 his father. As soon as the old man had died 
 Dan had gone off into the Rockies with his 
 guides and not "shown up" for months. When 
 he came back to Blairtown, as he expressed it, 
 "he packed his grip and beat it while his shoes 
 were good," for* the one place he could remem- 
 ber his father had suggested for him to go. 
 
 Blairtown was very much impressed when the 
 heir came in from the Rockies with "a big kill," 
 and the orphan's ease did not seem especially dis- 
 turbed. But no one in the town knew how the 
 boy's heart ached for the old man. When Dan 
 was six years old his father had literally picked 
 him up by the nape of his neck and thrown him 
 into the water like a pup and watched him swim. 
 At eight he sent the boy off with a gun to rough- 
 camp. Then he took Dan down in the mines 
 with the men. His education had been won in 
 11
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 Blairtown, at a school called public, but which 
 in reality was nothing more than a pioneer dis- 
 trict school. 
 
 On Sundays Dan dressed up and went with 
 his father to church twice a day and in the 
 week-days his father took him to the prayer- 
 meetings, and at sixteen Dan went to college in 
 California. He had just completed his course 
 when old Blair died. Then he inherited fifty mil- 
 lion dollars. 
 
 On the day of the shoot at Osdene, Dan 
 dropped sixty birds. He tried very hard not to 
 be too pleased. "Gosh," he thought to him- 
 self, "those birds fell as though they were 
 trained all right, and the other sports were 
 mad, I could see it." He then fell to whistling 
 softly the air he had heard Lady Galorey play 
 the night before from the new success at the 
 Gaiety, and finished it as his toilet completed it- 
 self. He took up a gardenia from his dressing- 
 table, and fastened it in his coat, stopping on 
 the stairs on the way down to look over into the 
 12
 
 DAN BLAIR 
 
 hall, where the men in their black clothes and the 
 women in their shining dresses waited before 
 going into the dining-room. The lights fell on 
 white arms and necks, on jewels and on fine 
 proud heads. Dan Blair had been in San Fran- 
 cisco and in New York, on short journeys, how- 
 ever, which his father, the year before, had di- 
 rected him to take, but he had never seen a 
 "show" like this. 
 
 He came slowly down the broad stairway of 
 the Osdene Park House, the last guest. In the 
 corner, where, behind her, a piece of fourteenth 
 century tapestry cut a green and pink square 
 against the rich black oak paneling, the Duch- 
 ess of Breakwater sat waiting. She wore 
 a dress of golden tulle which was simply a 
 sheath to her slender body, and from her neck 
 hung a long rope of diamonds caught at the 
 end by a small black fan; there was a wreath 
 of diamonds like shining water drops linked to- 
 gether in her hair. She was the grandest lady 
 at Osdene, and renowned in more than one sense 
 13
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 of the word. As Dan saw her smile at him and 
 rise, he thought : 
 
 "She is none too sorry that I made that rec- 
 ord, but I hope to heaven she won't say anything 
 to me about it." 
 
 And the duchess did not speak of it. Telling 
 him that he was to take her in to dinner, she 
 laid first her fan on his arm and then her hand. 
 And Dan, one of those fortunate creatures who 
 are born men of the world when they get into it, 
 gave her his arm with much grace, and as he 
 leaned down toward her he thought to himself: 
 
 "Well, it's lucky for me I have my head on 
 tight ; a few more of those goo-goo eyes of hers 
 and it would be as well for me to light out for 
 the woods." 
 
 Dan liked best at Osdene Park his chin-chins 
 with Gordon Galorey. The young man was un- 
 flatteringly frank in his choice of companions. 
 When the duchess looked about for him to ride 
 with her, walk with her, to find the secluded 
 14
 
 DAN BLAIR 
 
 corners, to talk, to play with him, she was likely 
 to discover Dan gone off with Lord Galorey, and 
 to come upon them later, sitting enveloped in 
 smoke, a stand of drinks by their side. 
 
 To Galorey, who had no heir or child, the 
 boy's presence proved to be the happiest thing 
 that had come to him for a long time. He talked 
 a great deal to Dan about the old man. Galorey 
 was poor and the fact of a fortune of ten 
 million pounds possessed by this one boy 
 was continually before, his mind like an obses- 
 sion. It was like looking down into a gold mine. 
 Galorey tried often to broach the subject of 
 money, but Dan kept off. At length Galorey 
 asked boldly: 
 
 "What are you going to do with it?" On this 
 occasion they were walking over from the lower 
 park back to the house, a couple of terriers at 
 their heels. 
 
 "Do with what?" Blair asked innocently. He 
 was looking at the trees. He was comparing 
 their grayish green trunks and their foliage with 
 15
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 the California redwoods. A little taken aback, 
 Lord Galorey laughed. 
 
 "Why, with that colossal fortune of yours." 
 
 And Blair answered unhesitatingly: "Oh 
 spend it on some girl sooner or later." 
 
 Galorey fairly staggered. Then he took it 
 humorously. 
 
 "My dear chap, I never saw a sweeter, bigger 
 man than your father. If he had been my 
 father, I dare say I might have pulled off a dif- 
 ferent yard of hemp, but I must confess that 
 I think he has left you too much money." 
 
 "Well, there are a lot of fellows who are ready 
 to look after it for me," Blair answered coolly. 
 Before his companion could redden, he con- 
 tinued : "You see, dad took care of me for twen- 
 ty-one years all right, and whenever I am up a 
 stump, why all I have to do is to remember the 
 things he did." 
 
 For the first time since his arrival at Osdene 
 Dan's tone was serious. Interested as he was in 
 the older man, Dan's inclination was to evade 
 16
 
 DAN BLAIR 
 
 the discussion of serious subjects. With Blair's 
 slang, his conversation was almost incomprehen- 
 sible. 
 
 "Dad didn't gas much," the boy said, "but I 
 could draw a map of some of the things he did 
 say. He used to say he made his money out of 
 the earth." 
 
 The two were walking side by side across the 
 rich velvet of the immemorial English turf. The 
 extreme softness of the autumn day, its shifting 
 lights, its mellow envelope, the beauty of the 
 park the age, the stability, the harmony, 
 served to touch the young fellow's spirits. At 
 any rate there was a ring in him, an equilibrium 
 that surprised Galorey. 
 
 " 'Most things,' dad said to me, 'go back 
 to the earth.'" He struck the English turf 
 with his stick. "Dad said a fellow had better 
 buy those things that stay above the ground." 
 Dan smiled frankly at his companion. "Curious 
 thing to say, wasn't it?" he reflected. "I re- 
 membered it, and I got to wondering after I 
 17
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 saw him buried, 'what are the things that stay 
 above the ground?' The old man never gave me 
 another talk like that." 
 
 After a few seconds Galorey put in : 
 
 "But, my dear chap, you did give me a shock 
 up there just now when you said you were going 
 to spend 'all your money on some girl.' " 
 
 The millionaire took a chestnut from his 
 pocket. He held it high above his head and the 
 little dog that had been yelping at his heels 
 fixed his eyes on it. Blair poised it, then threw 
 it as far as he could. It sped through the air 
 and the terrier ran like mad across the park. 
 
 "I like girls awfully, Gordon, and when I 
 find the right one, why, then I'm going to feel 
 what a bully thing it is to be rich." 
 
 Lord Galorey groaned aloud. 
 
 "My dear chap !" he exclaimed. 
 
 The spell of the day, the fragrant beauty of 
 
 the time and place and hour were clearly upon 
 
 Dan Blair. Lord Galorey was sympathetic to 
 
 him. The terrier came tearing back with the 
 
 18
 
 DAN BLAIR 
 
 chestnut held between his thick jaws. Dan bent 
 down to take the nut from the dog and wrestled 
 with him gently. 
 
 "Swell little grip he's got. Nice old pup! 
 Let it go now!" And he threw the nut far 
 again, and as the terrier ran once more Blair 
 thrust his hands down in his pockets and began 
 softly to whistle the tune of Mandalay. 
 
 He said slowly, going back to his subject: 
 "It must be great to feel that a fellow can give 
 her jewels like the Duchess of Breakwater's, 
 ropes of 'em" he nodded toward the house 
 "and a fine old place like this now, and motors 
 and yachts and all kinds of stuff." 
 
 His eyes rested on the suave lines of the Eliza- 
 bethan house, with its softened gables and its 
 banked terraces. Possibly his vivid imagination 
 pictured "some nice girl" there waiting, as they 
 should come up, to meet him. 
 
 "I have always thought it would be bully to 
 find a poor girl pretty as a peach, of course 
 one who had never had much, and just 
 19
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 cover her with things. Hey, there!" he cried 
 to the terrier, who had come running back, 
 "bring it to me." 
 
 They had come up to the terrace by this, and 
 Dan's confidence, fresh as a gush of water from 
 a rock, had ceased. His face was placid. He 
 didn't realize what he had said. 
 
 From out of one of the long windows, dressed 
 in a sable coat, her small head tied up in a motor 
 scarf, the Duchess of Breakwater appeared. 
 She greeted them severely, and Lord Galorey 
 hear her say under her breath to Dan : 
 
 "You promised to be back to drive with me 
 before dinner, Dan. Did you forget?" 
 
 And as Galorey left the boy to make his 
 peace, the first smile of amusement broke over 
 his face. He felt that the duchess had between 
 her and her capture of Dan Blair's heart the elu- 
 sive picture of some "nice girl" not much per- 
 haps, but it might be very hard to tear away the 
 picture of the ideal that was ever before the blue 
 eyes of this man who had a fortune to spend on 
 her! 
 
 20
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE DUCHESS APPROVES 
 
 HIS attentions to the Duchess of Break- 
 water had not been so conspicuous or so 
 absorbing as to prevent the eager mothers who, 
 true to her word, Lady Galorey had invited 
 down from laying siege to Dan Blair. Lady 
 Galorey asked him: 
 
 "Don't you want to marry any one of these 
 beauties, Dan?" And Blair, with his beautiful 
 smile and what Lily called his inspired candor, 
 answered : 
 
 "Not on your life, Lady Galorey !" 
 
 And she agreed, "I think myself you are too 
 young." 
 
 "No," Dan refuted, "you are wrong there. I 
 shall marry as fast as I can." 
 
 His hostess was surprised. 
 31
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "Why, I thought you wanted your fling first." 
 
 And Dan, from his chair, in which, with a 
 book, he had been sitting when Lady Galorey 
 found him, answered cheerfully : 
 
 "Oh, I don't like being alone. I want to go 
 about with some one. I should like a fling all 
 right, but I want to fling with somebody as 
 I go." 
 
 The lady of the house was not a philosopher 
 nor an analyst. She had certain affairs of her 
 own and was engrossed in them and lived in 
 them. As far as Lady Galorey was concerned 
 the rest of the world might go and hang itself 
 as long as it didn't do it at her gate-post. But 
 Blair couldn't leave any one indifferent to him 
 very long, not unless one could be indifferent to 
 a blaze of sunlight; one must either draw the 
 blinds down or bask in its brightness. 
 
 She laughed. "You're perfectly delicious! 
 You mean to say you want to be married at once 
 and let your wife fling around with you?" 
 
 "Just that."
 
 THE DUCHESS APPROVES 
 
 "How sweet of you, Dan ! And you won't 
 marry one of these girls here?" 
 
 "Don't fill the bill, Lady Galorey." 
 "Oh, you have a sweetheart at home, then ?" 
 "All off!" he assured her blithely, and rose, 
 tall and straight and slender. 
 
 The Duchess of Breakwater had come in, in- 
 deed she never failed to when there* was any 
 question of finding Blair. 
 
 Dan stood straightly before the two women 
 of an old race, and the American didn't sug- 
 gest any line of noble ancestors whatsoever. 
 His features were rather agglomerate; his 
 muscles were possibly not the perfect elastic 
 specimens that were those muscles whose strain 
 and sinew had been made from the same stock 
 for generations. He was, nevertheless, very 
 good to look on. Any woman would have 
 thought so, and he bent his blond head as he 
 looked at the Duchess of Breakwater with some- 
 thing like benevolence, something of his father's 
 kindness in his clear blue eyes. Neither of the 
 23
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 noble ladies vaguely understood him. His host- 
 ess thought him "a good sort," not half bad, a 
 splendid catch, and the other woman, only a 
 few years his senior, was in love with him. The 
 duchess had married at eighteen, tired of her 
 bargain at twenty, and found herself a widow 
 at twenty-five. She held a telegram in her hand. 
 
 "We've got the box for Mandcday to-night at 
 the Gaiety, and let's motor in." 
 
 Only Lady Galorey hesitated, disappointed. 
 
 "Too bad I had specially arranged for 
 Lady Grandcourt to drive over with Eileen. I 
 thought it would be a ripping chance for her 
 to see Dan." 
 
 When at length the duchess had succeeded in 
 getting Dan to herself toward the end of the 
 day in the red room, after tea, she said: 
 
 "So you won't marry a London beauty?" 
 
 And rather coldly Dan had answered : 
 
 "Why, you talk, all of you, as if I had only 
 to ask any girl of them, and she would jump 
 down my throat." 
 
 M
 
 THE DUCHESS APPROVES 
 
 "Don't try it," the duchess answered, "unless 
 you want to have your mouth full !" 
 
 Dan did not reply for a second, but he looked 
 at her more seriously, conscious of her grace 
 and her good looks. She was certainly better to 
 look at than the simple girls with their big hands, 
 small wits, long faces, and, as the boy expressed 
 it, "utter lack of get-up." The duchess shone 
 out to advantage. 
 
 "Why don't you talk to me?" she asked 
 softly. "You know you would rather talk to 
 me than the others." 
 
 "Yes," he said frankly ; "they make me nerv- 
 ous." 
 
 "And I don't?" 
 
 "No," he said. "I learn a lot every time we 
 are together." 
 
 "Learn?" she repeated, not particularly flat- 
 tered by this. "What sort of things?" 
 
 "Oh, about the whole business," he returned 
 vaguely. "You know what I mean." 
 
 "Then," she said with a slight laugh, "you 
 25
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 mean to say you talk witH me for educational 
 purposes? What a beastly bore!" 
 
 Dan did not contradict her. She was by no 
 means Eve to him, nor was he the raw recruit 
 his simplicity might give one to think. He had 
 had his temptations and his way out of them 
 was an easy one; for he was very slow to stir, 
 and back of all was his ideal. The reality and 
 power of this ideal Dan knew best at moments 
 like these. But the Duchess of Breakwater was 
 the most lovely woman the most dangerous 
 woman that had come his way. He liked her 
 Dan was well on the way to love. 
 
 The two were alone in the big dark room. At 
 their side the small table, from which they had 
 taken their tea together, stood with its empty 
 cups and its silver. Without, the day was cold 
 and windy, and the sunset threw along the panes 
 a red reflection. The light fell on the Duchess of 
 Breakwater, something like a veil a crimson 
 veil slipped over her face and breast. She leaned 
 toward Dan, and between them there was no
 
 THE DUCHESS APPROVES 
 
 more barrier than the western light. He felt 
 his pulses beat and a tide rising within him. 
 She was a delicious emanation, fragrant and 
 near, and as he might have gathered a cluster 
 of flowers, so in the next second he would have 
 taken her in his arms, but from the other room 
 just then Lady Galorey, at the piano, played a 
 snatch from Mandalay, striking at once into 
 the tune. The sound came suddenly, told them 
 quickly some one was near, and the Duchess of 
 Breakwater involuntarily moved back, and so 
 knocked the small tray, jostled it, and it fell clat- 
 tering to the floor.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE BLAIRTOWN SOLOIST 
 
 BLAIRTOWN had a population of some 
 eight thousand. There was a Presbyte- 
 rian church to which Dan and his father went 
 regularly, sitting in the bare pew when the win- 
 ter's storms beat and rattled on the panes, or in 
 the summer sunshine, when the flies thronged 
 the window casings, when the smell of the pews 
 and the panama fans and the hymn-books came 
 strong to them through the heat. 
 
 One day there was a missionary sermon, and 
 for the first time in its history a girl sang a 
 solo in the First Presbyterian Church. Dan 
 Blair heard it, looked up, and it made a mark in 
 his life. A girl in a white dress trimmed with 
 blue gentians, white cotton gloves, and golden 
 hair, was the soloist. He knew her, that is, he
 
 THE BLAIRTOWN SOLOIST 
 
 had a nodding acquaintance with her. It was 
 the girl at the drug store who sold soda-water, 
 and he had asked her some hundreds of times 
 for a "vanilla or a chocolate," but it wasn't this 
 vulgar memory that made the little boy listen. 
 It was the girl's voice. Standing back of the 
 yellow-painted rail, above the minister's pulpit, 
 above the flies, the red pews and the panama 
 fans, she sang, and she sang into Dan Blair's 
 soul. To speak more truly, she made him a soul 
 in that moment. She awakened the boy ; his col- 
 lar felt tight, his cheeks grew hot. He felt his 
 new boots, too, hard and heavy. She made him 
 want to cry. These were the physical sensa- 
 tions the material part of the awakening. The 
 rest went on deeply inside of Dan. She broke 
 his heart; then she healed it. She made him 
 want to cry like a girl ; then she wiped his tears. 
 The little boy settled back and grew more 
 comfortable and listened, and what she sang was, 
 
 "From Greenland's icy mountains, 
 From India's coral stra ands." 
 
 29
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 Before the hymn reached its end he was a 
 calm boy again, and the hymn took up its pic- 
 tures and became like an illustrated book of 
 travels, and he wanted to see those pea-green 
 peaks of Greenland, to float upon the icebergs 
 to them, and see the dawn break on the polar 
 seas as the explorers do. ... He should find 
 the North Pole some day! Then he wanted to 
 go to an African jungle, where the tiger, "tiger 
 shining bright," should flash his stripes before 
 his eyes! Dan would gather wreaths of coral 
 from the stra ands and give them to the girl 
 with the yellow hair ! When he and his father 
 came out together from the church, Dan 
 chose the street that passed the soda-fountain 
 drug store and peeped in. It was dark and cool, 
 and behind the counter the drug clerk mixed the 
 summer drinks : and the drug clerk mixed them 
 from that time ever afterward for the girl with 
 the yellow hair never showed up in Blairtown 
 again. She went away! 
 
 30
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN THE CORAL BOOM 
 
 'TV/T ANDALAY " had run at the Gaiet ? the 
 
 i. T A season before and again opened the au- 
 tumn season. Light and charming, thoroughly 
 musical, it had toured successfully through 
 Europe, but London was its home, and its great 
 popularity was chiefly owing to the girl who 
 had starred in it Letty Lane. Her face was 
 on every post-card, hand-bill, cosmetic box, and 
 even popular drinks were named for her. 
 
 The night of the Osdene box party was the 
 reopening of Mandalay, and the curtain went 
 up after the overture to an outburst of ap- 
 plause. Dan Blair had never "crossed the pond" 
 before this memorable visit, when he had gone 
 straight out to Osdene Park. London theaters 
 and London itself, indeed, were unexplored by 
 31
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 him. He had seen what there was to be seen of 
 the opera bouffe in his own country, but the 
 brilliant, perfect performance of a company at 
 the London Gaiety he had yet to enjoy. 
 
 The opening scene of Mandalay is oriental ; 
 the burst of music and the tinkling of the sil- 
 very temple bells and the effect of an extremely 
 blue sea, made Dan "sit up," as he put it. The 
 theatrical picture was so perfect that he lifted 
 his head, pushed his chair back to enjoy. He 
 was thus close to the duchess. With invigorat- 
 ing young enthusiasm the boy drew in his breath 
 and waited to be amused and to hear. The tunes 
 he already knew before the orchestra began to 
 charm his ear. 
 
 On landing at Plymouth Dan had been keen 
 to feel that he was really stepping into the 
 world, and at Osdene Park he had been daily, 
 hourly "seeing life." The youngest of the 
 household, his youth nevertheless was not taken 
 into consideration by any of them. No one had 
 treated him like a junior. He had gone neck
 
 IN THE CORAL ROOM 
 
 to neck with their pace as far as he liked, fur- 
 nished them fresh amusement, and been their 
 diversion. In all his rare unspoiled youth, Blair 
 had been suddenly dropped down in an effete 
 set that had whirled about him, and one by 
 one out of the inner circle had called him to join 
 tliem ; and one by one with all of them Dan had 
 whirled. 
 
 Lord Galorey had talked to him frankly, as 
 plainly as if Dan had been his own father, and 
 found much of the old man's common sense in 
 his fine blond head. Lady Galorey had come 
 to him in a moment of great anxiety, and no one 
 but her young guest knew how badly she needed 
 help. He had further made it known to the 
 lady that he was not in the marriage market; 
 that she could not have him for any of her girls. 
 And as for the Duchess of Breakwater, well 
 he had whirled with her until his head swam. 
 He had grown years older at the Park in the 
 few weeks of hie visit, but now for the first time, 
 as the music of Mandalay struck upon his ears, 
 33
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 like a ripple of distant seas, he felt like the boy 
 who had left Blairtown to come abroad. He 
 had spent the most part of the day in London 
 with a man who had come over to see him from 
 America. Dan attended to his business affairs, 
 and the people who knew said that he had a keen 
 head. Mr. Joshua Ruggles, his father's best 
 friend, whom Dan this afternoon had left to go 
 to his room at the Carlton, had put his arm with 
 affection through the boy's : 
 
 "Don't look as though it were any too healthy 
 down to the place you're visiting at, Dan. 
 Plumbing all right?" 
 
 And the boy, flushing slightly, had said: 
 "Don't you fret. Josh, I'll look after my health 
 all right." 
 
 "There's nothing like the mountain air/' re- 
 turned the Westerner. "These old fogs stick in 
 my nostrils ; feel as though I could smell London 
 clean down to my feet !" 
 
 From the corner of the box Dan looked hard 
 34
 
 IN THE CORAL ROOM , 
 
 at the stage, at the fresh brilliant costumes and 
 the lovely chorus girls. 
 
 "Gosh," he thought to himself, "they are the 
 prettiest ever! Dove-gray, eyes of Irish blue, 
 mouths like roses !" 
 
 Leaning forward a little toward the duchess 
 he whispered: "There isn't one who isn't a win- 
 ner. I never struck such a box of dry goods !" 
 
 The duchess smiled on Dan with good humor. 
 His naive pleasure was delightful. It was like 
 taking a child to a pantomime. She was wearing 
 his flowers and displaying a jewel that he had 
 found and bought for her, and which she had 
 not hesitated to accept. She watched his eager 
 face and his pleasure unaffected and keen. She 
 could not believe that this young man was mas- 
 ter of ten million pounds. 
 
 When Letty Lane appeared Blair heard a 
 light rustle like rain through the auditorium, a 
 murmur, and the house rose. There was a well- 
 bred calling from the stalls, a call from the 
 pit, and a generous applause "Letty Lane 
 35
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 Letty Lane !" and as though she were royalty, 
 there was a fluttering of handkerchiefs like 
 flags. The young fellow with the others stood 
 in the back of the box, his hands in his pockets, 
 looking at the stage. There wasn't a girl in the 
 chorus as pretty as this prima donna! Letty 
 Lane came on in Mandalay in the first act in the 
 dress of a fashionable princess. She was modish 
 and worldly. For the only time in the play she 
 was modern and conventional, and whatever 
 breeding she might have been able to claim, 
 from whatever class she was born, as she stood 
 there in her beautiful gown she was grace itself, 
 and charm. She was distinctly a star, and 
 showed her appreciation of her audience's ad- 
 miration. 
 
 At the end of the tenor solo the Princess Ol- 
 tary runs into the pavilion and there changes 
 her dress and appears once more to dance before 
 the rajah and to prove herself the dancer he 
 has known and loved in a cafe in Paris. Letty 
 Lane's dress in this dance was the classic ballet
 
 IN THE CORAL ROOM 
 
 dancer's, white as the leaves of a lily. She seemed 
 to swim and float ; actually to be breathed and 
 exhaled from out her filmy gown; and the 
 only ray of color in her costume was her own 
 golden hair, surmounted by a small coral-colored 
 cap, embroidered in pearls. The actress bowed 
 to the right and left, ran to the right, ran to the 
 left ; glanced toward the Duchess of Break- 
 water's box; acknowledged the burst of ap- 
 plause ; began to dance and finished her pas seul, 
 and with folded hands sang her song. Her 
 beautiful voice came out clear as crystal water 
 from a crystal rock, and her words were cradled 
 like doves, like boats on the boundless seas. . . . 
 
 "From India's coral strand. . . " 
 
 But there was no hymn tune to this song of 
 Letty Lane's in Mandalay! To the boy in the 
 box, however, the words, the tune, the droning 
 of the flies on the window-pane, the strong odor 
 of the hymn-books and panama fans, came back, 
 37
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 and the clear sunlight of Montana seemed to 
 steal into the Gaiety as Letty Lane sang. 
 
 The Duchess of Breakwater clapped with 
 frank enthusiasm, and said: "She is a perfect 
 wonder, isn't she? Oh, she is too bewitching!" 
 
 And she turned for sympathy to her friend, 
 who stood behind her, his face illumined. He 
 was amazed; his blue eyes ablaze, his head bent 
 forward, he was staring, staring at the Gaiety 
 curtain, gone down on the first act. 
 
 He laughed softly, and the duchess heard him 
 say: 
 
 "Good! Well, I should say she was! She's 
 a girl from our town !" 
 
 When the duchess tried to share her enthusi- 
 asm with Dan he had disappeared. He left the 
 box and with no difficulty made his way as far 
 as the first wing. 
 
 "Can you get me an entrance?" he asked a 
 man he had met once at Osdene and who was 
 evidently an habitue. 
 
 "I dare say. Rippin' show, isn't it?" 
 3?

 
 IN THE CORAL ROOM 
 
 Dan put his hand on ducal shoulders and fol- 
 lowed the nobleman through the labyrinth of 
 flies. 
 
 "Which of 'em do you want to see, old man?" 
 
 Dan, without replying, went forward to a 
 small cluster of lights in one of the wings. He 
 went forward intuitively, and his companion 
 caught his arm: "Oh, I say, for God's sake, 
 don't go on like this !" 
 
 But without response Dan continued his direc- 
 tion. A call page stood before the door, and 
 Dan, on a card over the entrance, read "Miss 
 Lane." The smell of calcium and paint and 
 perfume and the auxiliaries hung heavy on 
 the air. The other man saw Dan knock, knock 
 again and then go in. 
 
 Unannounced Dan Blair opened the door of 
 the dressing-room of the actress. Miss Lane's 
 dressing-rooms were worth displaying to her in- 
 timate friends. They were done with great taste 
 in coral tint. She might have been said to be in 
 a coral cave under the sea, as far as young 
 39
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 Blair was concerned. As he came in he felt his 
 ears deaden, and the smoke of cigarettes grew 
 so thick that he looked as through a veil. The 
 dancer was standing in the center of the room, 
 one hand on her hip, and in the other hand a 
 cigarette. Her short skirt stood out around her 
 like a bell, and over the bell fell a rain of pinkish 
 coral strands. She wore a thin silk slip, from 
 which her neck and arms came shining out, and 
 her woman knelt at her feet strapping on a little 
 coral shoe. 
 
 Blair shut the door behind him, and began to 
 realize how rude, how impertinent his entrance 
 would be considered. But he came boldly for- 
 ward and would have introduced himself as "Dan 
 Blair from Blairtown," but Miss Lane, who 
 stared at the entrance through the smoke, burst 
 into a laugh so bright, so delightful, that he 
 was carried high up on the coral strands to the 
 very beach. She crossed her white arms over 
 her breast and leaned forward, as a saleswoman 
 might lean forward over a counter, and with 
 40
 
 IN THE CORAL ROOM 
 
 her beautifully trained voice, all sweetly she 
 asked him : 
 
 "Hello, little boy, what will you take?" 
 
 Blair giggled, quick to catch her meaning, 
 and answered : "Oh, chocolate, I guess !" 
 
 And Letty Lane laughed, put out her white 
 hand, the one without the cigarette, and said: 
 "Haven't got that brand on board so sorry! 
 Will a cocktail do ? All sorts in bottles. Higgins, 
 fix Mr. Blair a Martini." 
 
 As the dresser rose from her stooping posi- 
 tion, the rest of Letty Lane's dressing-room un- 
 folded out of the mist and smoke. On a sofa 
 covered with lace pillows Blair saw a man sitting, 
 smoking as well. He was tall and had a dark 
 mustache. It was Prince Poniotowsky, whom' 
 Dan had already met at the Galorey shoot. 
 
 "Prince Poniotowsky," Miss Lane presented 
 him, "Mr. Blair, of Blairtown, Montana. Say, 
 Frederick, give me my cap, will you? It is over 
 by your side. I've got to hustle." 
 
 The man, without moving, picked up a small 
 41
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 red cap with a single plume, from the sofa at his 
 side. In another second Letty Lane had placed 
 it on her head of yellow hair, real yellow hair 
 and not a doubt of it, like sunshine not the 
 color one gets from inside bottles. Her arms, 
 her hands flashed with rings, priceless flashes, 
 and the little spears pricked Dan like sharp 
 needles. 
 
 "It's the nicest ever !" she was saying. *'How 
 on earth did you get in here, though? Have 
 you bought the Gaiety Theater? I'm the most 
 exclusive girl on the stage. Who let you in?" 
 Her accent was English, and even that put 
 her from him. As he looked at her he couldn't 
 understand how he had ever recognized her. If 
 he had waited for another act he wouldn't have 
 believed the likeness real. The girl he remem- 
 bered had both softened and hardened ; the round 
 features were gone, but all the angles were gone 
 as well. Her eyes were as gray as the seas ; she 
 was painted and her lids were darkened. Seen 
 close, she was not so divine as on the stage, 
 4,2
 
 IN THE CORAL ROOM 
 
 but there was still a more thrilling charm about 
 the fact that she was real. 
 
 "To think of any one from Montana being 
 here to-night! Staying very long, Mr. Blair?" 
 Between each sentence she directed Higgins, who 
 was getting her into her bodice. "And how do 
 you like Mandalay? Isn't it great?" 
 
 She addressed herself to Dan, but she smiled 
 en both the men with extreme brilliance. 
 
 "You bet your life," he responded. I should 
 think it was great." 
 
 Poniotowsky rose indolently. He had not 
 looked toward the new-comer, but had, on the 
 other hand, followed every detail of Miss Lane's 
 dressing. 
 
 "Better take your scarf, Letty. Hand it to 
 Miss Lane," he directed Higgins. "It is so 
 damned drafty in these beastly wings." 
 
 He drew his watch out, gathered up his long 
 coat, flung it over his arm and picked up his 
 opera hat which lay folded on Letty Lane's 
 dressing-table. 
 
 43
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 The call page for the third time summoned 
 "Miss La ne, Miss La ane," and she took the 
 scarf Higgins handed her and ran it through 
 her hands, still beaming on Dan. 
 
 "Come in to see me at the Savoy on any day 
 at two-thirty except on matinee days." 
 
 "Put on your scarf." Poniotowsky, taking 
 it from her hands, laid it across her white shoul- 
 ders, and she passed out between the two men, 
 light as a bird, smiling, nodding, followed by the 
 prince and the boy from Montana. The crowds 
 began to fill the lately empty wings dancers, 
 chorus girls with their rustling gowns. Letty 
 Lane said to Dan : 
 
 "Guess you'll like my solo in this act all 
 right it's the best thing in Mandalay. Now go 
 along, and clap me hard." 
 
 It gave him a new pleasure, for she had 
 spoken to him in real American fashion with the 
 swift mimicry that showed her talent. Dan went 
 slowly back to his party. As he took his seat 
 by the duchess she said to him : 
 44
 
 IN THE CORAL ROOM 
 
 "You went out to see Letty Lane. Do you 
 know her?" 
 
 "Know her!" And as Dan answered, the 
 sound of his own voice was queer to him, and his 
 face flushed hotly. "Lord, yes. She used to be 
 in the drug store in Blairtown. Sold soda-wa- 
 ter to me when we were both kids. Whoever 
 would have thought that she had that in her !" 
 He nodded toward the stage, for Letty Lane had 
 come on. "She sang in our church, too, but not 
 for long." 
 
 "Who was with her in her dressing-room?" 
 the duchess asked. Blair didn't answer. He 
 was looking at Letty Lane. She had come to 
 dance for the rajah and in her arms she held 
 four white doves; each dove had a coral thread 
 around its throat. It was a number that made 
 her famous, The Dove Song. Set free, the 
 birds flew about her, circling her blond head, sur- 
 mounted by the small coral-colored cap. The 
 doves settled on her shoulders, pecked at her 
 lips. 
 
 45
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "Was it Poniotowsky?" the duchess repeated. 
 
 And Dan told her a meaningless lie. "I didn't 
 meet any one there." And with satisfaction the 
 duchess said: 
 
 "Then she has thrown him over, too. He 
 was the latest and the richest. She is horribly 
 extravagant. No man is rich enough for her, 
 they say. Poniotowsky isn't a gold mine." 
 
 The doves had flown away to the wings and 
 been gathered up by the Indian servants. The 
 actress on the stage began her Indian cradle 
 song. She came, distinctly turning toward the 
 box party. She had never sung like this in 
 London before. There was a freshness in her 
 voice, a quality in her gesture, a pathos and a 
 sweetness that delighted her audience. They 
 fairly clamored for her, waved and called and 
 recalled. Dan stood motionless, his eyes fastened 
 on her, his heart rocked by the song. He didn't 
 want any one to speak to him. He wished that 
 none of them would breathe, and nearly as ab- 
 sorbed as was he, no one did speak. 
 46
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 AT THE CAELTON 
 
 THERE are certain natures to whom each 
 appearance of evil, each form of delin- 
 quency is a fresh surprise. They are born 
 simple, in the sweet sense of the word, and they 
 go down to old age never of the world, although 
 in a sense worldly. If Dan Blair's eyes were 
 somewhat opened at twenty-two, he had yet the 
 bloom on his soul. He was no fool, but his 
 ideals stood up each on its pedestal and ready to 
 appear one by one to him as the scenes of his 
 life shifted and the different curtains rose. He 
 had been trained in finance from his boyhood 
 and he was a born financier. Money was his 
 natural element; he could go far in it. But 
 woman! He was one of those manly crea- 
 tures a knight to whom each woman is a 
 
 m
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 sacred thing: a dove, a crystal-clear soul, made 
 to cherish and to protect, made to be spoiled. 
 And in Dan were all the qualities that go to 
 make up the unselfish, tender, foolish, and often 
 unhappy American husband. These were some 
 of the other things he had inherited from his 
 father. Blair, senior, had married his first love, 
 and whereas his boy had been trained to know 
 money and its value, how to keep it and spend it, 
 to save it and to make it, he had been taught 
 nothing at all about woman. He had never been 
 taught to distrust women, never been warned 
 against them; he had been taught nothing but 
 his father's memory of his mother, and the re- 
 sult was that he worshiped the sex and wondered 
 at the mystery. 
 
 With Gordon Galorey and the others he 
 had ridden, shot better than they, and had 
 played, but with Lady Galorey and the Duchess 
 of Breakwater he was nothing but a child. 
 As far as his hostess was concerned, on several 
 occasions she had put to him certain states 
 48
 
 AT THE CARLTON 
 
 of affairs, well, touchingly. Dan had been 
 moved by the stories of sore need among the 
 tenants, had been impressed by the necessity of 
 reforms and rebuildings and on each occasion 
 had given his hostess a check. She had asked 
 him to say nothing about it to Gordon, and he 
 had kept his silence. Dan liked Lady Galorey 
 extremely: she was jolly, witty and friendly. 
 She treated him as a member of the family and 
 made no demands on him, save the ones men- 
 tioned. 
 
 In the time that he had come to know the 
 Duchess of Breakwater she, on her part, had 
 filled him full of other confidences. Into his 
 young ears she poured the story of her disap- 
 pointment, her disjointed life, from her worldly 
 girlhood to her disillusion in marriage. She 
 was beautiful when she talked and more lovely 
 when she wept. Dan thought himself in love 
 with the Duchess of Breakwater. His conversa- 
 tions with her had brought him to this conclu- 
 sion. They had motored from Osdene Park to- 
 49
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 gether, and he had been extremely taken with 
 the pleasure of it, and with the fact of their 
 real companionship. Two or three times the 
 words had been on his lips, which were fated not 
 to be spoken then, however, and Dan reached 
 the Gaiety still unfettered, his duchess by his 
 side. And then the orchestra had begun to play 
 Mandalay, the curtain had gone up and Letty 
 Lane had come out on the boards. But her 
 apparition did not strike off his chains immedi- 
 ately, nor did he renounce his plan to tell the 
 duchess the very next day that he loved her. 
 
 When with sparkling eyes Lady Galorey 
 raved about Mandalay, Dan listened with eager- 
 ness. Everybody seemed to know all about 
 Letty Lane, but he alone knew from what town 
 she had come ! 
 
 They went for supper at the Carlton after 
 the theater. 
 
 "Letty," Lady Galorey said, "tells it herself 
 how the impresario heard her sing in some 
 country church picked her up then and there 
 50
 
 AT THE CARLTON 
 
 and brought her over here, and they say she 
 married him." 
 
 Dan Blair could have told them how she had 
 sung in that little church that day. Dan was 
 eating his caviare sandwich. "Her name then 
 was Sally Towney," he murmured. How little 
 he had guessed that she was singing herself 
 right out of that church and into the London 
 Gaiety Theater! Anyway, she had made him 
 "sit up!" It was a far cry from Montana to 
 the London Gaiety. And so she married the 
 greasy Jew who had discovered her ! 
 
 Dan glanced over at the Duchess of Break- 
 water. She was looking well, exquisitely high 
 bred, and she impressed him. She leaned slightly 
 over to him, laughing. He had hardly dared to 
 meet her eyes that day, fearing that she might 
 read his secret. She had told him that in her 
 own right she was a countess the Countess of 
 Stainer. Titles didn't cut any ice with him. At 
 any rate, she would be able to "buy back the 
 old farm" that is the way Dan put it. She 
 51
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 had told him of the beautiful old Stainer Court, 
 mortgaged and hung up with debts, as deep in 
 ruins as the ivy was thick on the walls. 
 
 As Dan looked over at the duchess he saw the 
 other people staring and looking about at a table 
 near. It was spread a little to their left for 
 four people, a great bouquet of orchids in the 
 center. 
 
 "There," Galorey said, "there's Letty Lane." 
 And the singer came in, followed by three 
 men, the first of them the Prince Poniotowsky, 
 indolent, bored, haughty, his eye-glass dangling. 
 Miss Lane was dressed in black, a superb cos- 
 tume of faultless cut, and it enfolded her like a 
 shadow; as a shadow might enfold a specter, 
 for the dancer was as pale as the dead. She 
 had neither painted nor rouged, she had evi- 
 dently employed no coquetry to disguise her 
 fag; rather she seemed to be on the verge of a 
 serious illness, and presented a striking con- 
 trast to the brilliant creature, who had shone be- 
 fore their eyes not an hour before. Her dress Fas 
 52
 
 AT THE CARLTON 
 
 a challenge to the more gay and delicate affairs 
 the other women in the restaurant wore. The 
 gown came severely up to her chin. Its high 
 collar closed around with a pearl necklace ; from 
 her ears fell pearls, long, creamy and priceless. 
 She wore a great feathered hat, which, drooping, 
 almost hid her small, pale face and her golden 
 hair. She drew off her gloves as she came in 
 and her white, jeweled hands flashed. She looked 
 infinitely tired and extremely bored. As soon 
 as she took her seat at the table intended for her 
 party, Poniotowsky poured her out a glass of 
 champagne, which she drank off as though it 
 were water. 
 
 "Gad," Lord Galorey said, "she is a stunner ! 
 What a figure, and what a head, and what dar- 
 ing to dress like that !" 
 
 "She knows how to make herself conspicuous," 
 said the Duchess of Breakwater. 
 
 "She looks extremely ill," said Lady Galorey. 
 "The pace she goes will do her up in a year or 
 two." 
 
 53
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 Dan Blair had his back to her, and when they 
 rose to leave he was the last to pass out. Letty 
 Lane saw him, and a light broke over her pallid 
 face. She nodded and smiled and shook her hand 
 in a pretty little salute. If her face was pale, 
 her lips were red, and her smile was like sun- 
 light ; and at her recognition a wave of friendly 
 fellowship swept over the young man a sort 
 of loyal kinship to her which he hadn't felt for 
 any other woman there, and which he could not 
 have explained. In warm approval of the 
 actress' distinction, he said softly to himself: 
 "That's all right she makes the rest of them 
 look like thirty cents." 
 
 54,
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 GALOBEY SEEKS ADVICE 
 
 BLAIR did not go back at once to Osdene 
 Park. He stopped over in London for a 
 few days to see Joshua Ruggles, and so re- 
 marked for the first time the difference between 
 the speech of the old and the new world. Mr. 
 Ruggles spoke broadly, with complete disregard 
 of the frills and adornments of the King's Eng- 
 lish. He spoke United States of the pure, broad, 
 western brand, and it rang out, it vibrated and 
 swelled and rolled, and as Ruggles didn't care 
 who heard him, nothing of what he had to say 
 was lost. 
 
 Old Mr. Blair had left behind him a comrade, 
 and as far as advice could go the old man knew 
 that his Dan would not be bankrupt. 
 
 "Advice," Dan Blair senior once said to his 
 55
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 boy, "is the kind of thing we want some fellow 
 to give us when we ain't going to do the thing 
 we ought to do, or are a little ashamed of some- 
 thing we have done. It's an awful good way to 
 get cured of asking advice just to do what the 
 fellow tells you to at once." 
 
 During Ruggles' stay in London the young 
 fellow looked to it that Ruggles saw the sights, 
 and the two did the principal features of the big 
 town, to the rich enjoyment of the Westerner. 
 Dan took his friend every night to the play, and 
 on the fourth evening Ruggles said: "Let's go 
 to the circus or a vawdeville, Dan. I have 
 learned this show by heart!" They had been 
 every night to see Mandalay. 
 
 "Oh, you go on where you like, Josh," the 
 boy answered. "I'm going to see how she looks 
 from the pit." 
 
 Ruggles was not a Blairtown man. He had 
 
 come from farther west, and had never heard 
 
 anything of Sarah Towney or Letty Lane. He 
 
 applauded the actress vigorously at the Gaiety at 
 
 56
 
 GALOREY SEEKS ADVICE 
 
 first, and after the third night slept through 
 most of the performance. When he waked up 
 he tried to discover what attraction Letty Lane 
 had for Dan. For the young man never left 
 Ruggles' side, never went behind the scenes, 
 though he seemed absorbed, as a man usually is 
 absorbed for one reason only. 
 
 In response to a telegram from Osdene Park, 
 Dan motored out there one afternoon, and dur- 
 ing his absence Ruggles was surprised at his 
 hotel by a call. 
 
 "My dear Mr. Ruggles," Lord Galorey said, 
 for he it was the page boy fetched up, "why 
 don't you come out to see us? All friends of old 
 Mr. Blair's are welcome at Osdene." 
 
 Ruggles thanked Galorey and said he was not 
 a visiting man, that he only had a short time in 
 London, and was going to Ireland to look up 
 "his family tree." 
 
 "There are one hundred acres of trees in 
 Osdene," laughed Galorey ; "you can climb them 
 all." And Ruggles replied : 
 57
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "I guess I wouldn't find any O'Shaughnessy 
 Ruggles at the top of any of 'em, my lord. The 
 boy has gone out to see you all to-day." 
 
 Galorey nodded. "That is just why I toddled 
 in to see you !" 
 
 Ruggles' caller had been shown to the sitting- 
 room, where he and Dan hobnobbed and smoked 
 during the Westerner's visit. There was a pile 
 of papers on the table, in one corner a type- 
 writer covered by a black cloth. Galorey took 
 a chair and, refusing a cigarette, lit his pipe. 
 
 "I didn't have the pleasure of meeting you in 
 the West when I was out there with Blair. I 
 knew Dan's father rather well." 
 
 Ruggles responded: "I knew him rather well 
 too, for thirty years. If," he went on, "Blair 
 hadn't known you pretty well he wouldn't have 
 sent the boy out to you as he has done. He was 
 keen on every trail. I might say that he had 
 been over every one of 'era like a hound before 
 he set the boy loose." 
 
 Galorey answered, "Quite so," gravely. "I 
 58
 
 GALOREY SEEKS ADVICE 
 
 know it. I knew it when Dan turned up at Os- 
 dene " Holding his pipe bowl in the palm of 
 his slender hand, he smoked meditatively. He 
 hadn't thought about things, as he had been do- 
 ing lately, for many years. His sense of honor 
 was the strongest thing in Gordon Galorey, the 
 only thing in him, perhaps, that had been left 
 unsmirched by the touch of the world. He was 
 unquestionably a gentleman. 
 
 "Blair, however," he said, "wasn't as keen on 
 this scent as you'd expect. His intuition was 
 wrong." 
 
 Ruggles raised his eyebrows slightly. 
 
 "I mean to say," Lord Galorey went on, "that 
 he knew me in the West when I had cut loose for 
 a few blessed months from just these things into 
 which he has sent his boy from what, if I had 
 a son, God knows I'd throw him as far as I 
 could." 
 
 "Blair wanted Dan to see the world." 
 
 "Of course, that is right enough. We all 
 have to see it, I fancy, but this boy isn't ready 
 to look at it." 
 
 59
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "He is twenty-two," Ruggles returned. 
 "When I was his age I was supporting four 
 people." 
 
 Galorey went on: "Osdene Park at present 
 isn't the window for Blair's x boy to see life 
 through, and that is what I have come up to 
 London to talk to you about, Mr. Ruggles. I 
 should like to have you take him away." 
 
 "What's Dan been up to down there?" 
 
 "Nothing as yet, but he is in the pocket of a 
 woman he is in a nest of women." 
 
 Ruggles' broad face had not altered its ex- 
 pression of quiet expectation. 
 
 "There's a lot of 'em down there?" he asked. 
 
 "There are two," Galorey said briefly, "and 
 one of them is my wife." 
 
 Ruggles turned his cigarette between his 
 great fingers. He was a slow thinker. He had 
 none of old Blair's keenness, but he had other 
 qualities. Galorey saw that he had not been 
 quite understood, and he waited and then said : 
 
 "Lady Galorey is like the rest of modern 
 60
 
 GALOREY SEEKS ADVICE 
 
 wives, and I am like a lot of modern husbands. 
 We each go our own way. My way is a worth- 
 less one, God knows I don't stand up for it, but 
 it is not my wife's way in any sense of the word." 
 
 "Does she want Dan to go along on her 
 road?" Ruggles asked. "And how far?" 
 
 "We are financially strapped just now," said 
 Galorey calmly, "and she has got money from 
 the boy." He didn't remove his pipe from his 
 mouth ; still holding it between his teeth he put 
 his hand in his pocket, took out his wallet, drew 
 forth four checks and laid them down before 
 Ruggles. "It is quite a sum," Galorey noted, 
 "sufficient to do a lot to Osdene Park in the way 
 of needed repairs." Ruggles had never seen a 
 smile such as curved his companion's lips. "But 
 Osdene Park will have to be repaired by money 
 from some other source." 
 
 Ruggles wondered how the husband had got 
 hold of the checks, but he didn't ask and he did 
 not look at the papers. 
 
 "When Dan came to the Park," said Galorey, 
 61
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "I stopped bridge playing, but this more than 
 takes its place!" 
 
 Ruggles' big hand went slowly toward the 
 checks ; he touched them with his fingers and 
 said : "Is Dan in love with your wife ?" 
 
 And Lord Galorey laughed and said: "Lord 
 no, my dear man, not even that ! It is pure good 
 nature on his part mere prodigality. Edith 
 appealed to him, that's all." 
 
 Relief crossed Ruggles' face. He understood 
 in a flash the worldly woman's appeal to the rich 
 young man and believed the story the husband 
 told him. 
 
 "Have you spoken to the boy ?" 
 
 "My dear chap, I have spoken to him about 
 nothing. I preferred to come to you." 
 
 "You said," Ruggles continued, "there were 
 two ladies down to your place." 
 
 Galorey had refilled his pipe and held it as 
 before in the palm of his hand. 
 
 "I can look after the affairs of my wife, and 
 this shan't happen again, I promise you not at 
 62
 
 GALOREY SEEKS ADVICE 
 
 Osdene, but I'm afraid I can not do much in the 
 other case. The Duchess of Breakwater has 
 been at Osdene for nearly three weeks, and Dan 
 is in love with her." 
 
 Ruggles put the four checks one on top of the 
 other. 
 
 "Is the lady a widow?" 
 
 "Unfortunately, yes." 
 
 "So that's the nest Dan has got into at Os- 
 dene," the Westerner said. And Galorey an- 
 swered : "That is the nest." 
 
 "And he has gone out there to-day got a 
 wire this morning." 
 
 "The duchess has been in an awful funk," 
 said Galorey, "because Dan's been stopping in 
 London so long. She sent him a message, and 
 as soon as Dan wired back that he was coming 
 to the Park, I decided to come here and see you." 
 
 Ruggles ruminated: "Has the duchess com- 
 plications financially ?" 
 
 "Ra-ther !" the other answered. 
 
 And Ruggles turned his broad, honest face 
 63
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 full on Galorey: "Do you think she could be 
 bought off?" 
 
 Galorey took his pipe out of his mouth. 
 
 "It depends on how far Dan has gone on with 
 her. To be frank with you, Mr. Ruggles, it is 
 a case of emotion on the part of the woman. 
 She is really in love with Dan. Gad !" exclaimed 
 the nobleman. "I have been on the point of turn- 
 ing the whole brood out of doors these last days. 
 It was like imprisoning a mountain breeze in a 
 charnel house a woman with her scars and her 
 experience and that boy I don't know where 
 you've kept him, or how you kept him as he is, 
 but he is as clear as water. I have talked to him 
 and I know." 
 
 Nothing in Ruggles* expression had changed 
 until now. His eyes glowed. 
 
 "Dan's all right," he said softly. "Don't 
 you worry ! He's all right. I guess his father 
 knew what he was doing, and I'll bet the whole 
 thing was just what he sent him over here for ! 
 Old Dan Blair wasn't worth a copper when the 
 64
 
 GALOREY SEEKS ADVICE 
 
 boy was born, and jet he had ideas about every- 
 thing and he seemed to know more in that old 
 gray head of his than a whole library of books. 
 Dan's all right." 
 
 "My dear man," said the nobleman, "that is 
 just where you Americans are wrong. You com- 
 fort yourself with your eternal 'Dan's all right,' 
 and you won't see the truth. You won't breathe 
 the word 'scandal' and yet you are thick enough 
 in them, God knows. You won't admit them, 
 but they are there. Now be honest and look at 
 the truth, will you? You are a man of common 
 sense. Dan Blair is not all right. He is in an 
 infernally dangerous position. The Duchess of 
 Breakwater will marry him. It is what she has 
 wanted to do for years, but she has not found 
 a man rich enough, and she will marry this boy 
 offhand." 
 
 "Well," said the Westerner slowly, "if he 
 loves her and if he marries her " 
 
 "Marries her!" exclaimed the nobleman. 
 "There you are again ! Do you think marriage 
 65
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 makes it any better? Why, if she went off to the 
 Continent with him for six weeks and then set 
 him free, that would be preferable to marrying 
 her. My dear man," he said, leaning over the 
 table where Ruggles sat, "if I had a boy I would 
 rather have him marry Letty Lane of the Gai- 
 ety. Now you know what I mean." 
 
 Ruggles' face, which had hardened, relaxed. 
 
 "I have seen that lady," he exclaimed with 
 satisfaction ; "I have seen her several times." 
 
 Galorey sank back into his chair and neither 
 man spoke for a few seconds. Turning it all 
 over in his slow mind, Ruggles remembered 
 Dan's absorption in the last few days. "So there 
 are three women in the nest," he concluded 
 thoughtfully, and Gordon Galorey repeated: 
 
 "No, not three. What do you mean?" 
 
 "Your wife" Ruggles held up one finger 
 and Galorey interrupted him to murmur : 
 
 "I'll take care of Edith." 
 
 "The Duchess of Breakwater you think won't 
 talk of money?" 
 
 66
 
 GALOREY SEEKS ADVICE 
 
 "No, don't count on it. She is aiming at ten 
 million pounds." 
 
 Ruggles was holding up the second finger. 
 
 "Well, I guess Dan has gone out to take care 
 of Tier to-day." 
 
 Dan and Ruggles had seen Mandalay from a 
 box, from the pit and from the stalls. On the 
 table lay a book of the opera. While talking 
 with Galorey, Ruggles had unconsciously ar- 
 ranged the checks on top of the libretto of Man- 
 dalay. 
 
 "Til take care of Miss Lane," Ruggles said 
 at length. 
 
 His lordship echoed, "Miss Lane?" and looked 
 up in surprise. "What Miss Lane, for God's 
 sake?" 
 
 "Miss Letty Lane at the Gaiety," Ruggles 
 answered. 
 
 "Why, she isn't in the question, my dear 
 man." 
 
 "You put her there just now yourself." 
 
 "Bosh!" Galorey exclaimed impatiently, "I 
 67
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 spoke of her as being the limit, the last thing on 
 the line." 
 
 "No," corrected the other, "you put the 
 Duchess of Breakwater as the limit." 
 
 Galorey smiled frankly. "You are right, my 
 dear chap," he accepted, "and I stand by it." 
 
 A page boy knocked at the door and came in 
 holding out on a salver a card for Mr. Ruggles, 
 and at the interruption Galorey rose and in- 
 vited Ruggles to go out with him that night to 
 Osdene. "Lady Galorey will be delighted." 
 
 But Ruggles shook his head. "The boy is 
 coming back here to-night," and Galorey 
 laughed. 
 
 "Don't you believe it! You don't know how 
 deep in he is. You don't know the Duchess of 
 Breakwater. Once he is with her " 
 
 At the same time that the page boy handed 
 Mr. Ruggles the card of the caller, he gave him 
 as well a small envelope, which contained box 
 tickets for the Gaiety. Ruggles examined it. 
 
 "I have got some writing to do," he told Ga-
 
 GALOREY SEEKS ADVICE 
 
 lorey, "and I'm going to see a show to-night, 
 and I think I'll just stay here and watch my 
 hole." 
 
 As soon as Galorey had left the Carlton, Mr. 
 Ruggles despatched his letters and his visitor, 
 made a very careful toilet, and after waiting 
 until past eight o'clock for Dan to return to 
 dinner, dined alone on roast beef and a tart, and 
 with perfect digestion, if somewhat thoughtful 
 mind, left the hotel and walked down the dim 
 street to the brilliant Strand, and on foot to the 
 Gaiety. 
 
 69
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 AT THE STAGE ENTRANCE 
 
 RUGGLES, from his stall, for the fourth 
 time saw the curtain go up on Mandalay 
 and heard the temple bells ring. One of the 
 stage boxes was not occupied until after the first 
 act and then the son of his friend came in alone 
 and sat far back out of sight of any eyes but 
 the keenest, and those eyes were Ruggles'. Letty 
 Lane, delicious, fantastic, languishing, sang 
 to Dan ; that was evident to Ruggles. He was 
 a large man and filled his stall comfortably. He 
 sat through the performance peacefully, his 
 hands in his pockets, his big face thoughtful, 
 his shirt front ruffled. To look at him, one must 
 have wondered why he had come to Mandalay. 
 He scarcely lost any of the threads of his own re- 
 flections, though when Miss Lane, in response to 
 70
 
 AT THE STAGE ENTRANCE 
 
 a call from the house, sang her cradle song three 
 times, he seemed moved. The tones of her pure 
 voice, the cradling in her arms of an imaginary 
 child, her apparent dovelike purity, her grace 
 and sweetness, and her cooing, gentle tone, to 
 judge by the softening of the Westerner's face, 
 touched very much the big fellow who listened 
 like a child. At the end he drew his handker- 
 chief slowly across his eyes, but the tears, or 
 rather moisture, that rose there was not all due 
 to Miss Lane's song, for Ruggles was extremely 
 warm. 
 
 He could see that in his box the boy sat trans- 
 fixed and absorbed. Dan went out in the second 
 entr'acte and was absent when the curtain went 
 down. Ruggles, as well, left before the per- 
 formance was over, to make his way outside the 
 theater to the stage exit, where there was already 
 gathered a little group, looked after by a couple 
 of policemen. Close to the curb a gleaming 
 motor waited, the footman at its door. Ruggles 
 buttoned his coat up to his chin and took his 
 71
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 place close to the door, over which the electric 
 light showed the words "Stage Entrance." A 
 poor woman elbowed him, her shabby hat 
 adorned by a scraggly plume, a gray shawl 
 wrapped round her shoulders. A girl or two, 
 who might have been flower sellers in Piccadilly 
 in the daytime, a couple of toughs, a handful of 
 other vagrants smelling of gin, a decent man in 
 working clothes, a child in his arms, formed the 
 human hedge Letty Lane was to pass between 
 a singular group of people to spend an hour 
 hanging about the streets at the exit of a theater 
 well toward midnight. So the naive Ruggles 
 thought, and better understood the appearance 
 of the young fellows in evening clothes who 
 hovered on the extreme edge of the little crowd. 
 Dan, however, was not of these. 
 
 "Look sharp, Cissy," the workingman spoke 
 to his child, holding her well up. "When she 
 comes hout she'll pass close to yer, and you sing 
 hout, 'God bless yer. " 
 
 "Yes, Dad, I will," shrilled the child. 
 72
 
 AT THE STAGE ENTRANCE 
 
 The woman in the gray shawl drew it close 
 about her. "Aw she's a true lidy, all right, 
 ain't she? I expect you've had some kindness 
 off her as well?" 
 
 The man nodded over the child's shoulder. 
 "Used to be a scene shifter, and Miss Lane 
 found out about my little girl last year not this 
 lass, not Cissy, Cissy's sister and she sent 'er to 
 a place where it costs the eyes out of yer head. 
 She's gettin' well fast, and we, none of us, has 
 seen her or spoken to Miss Lane. She doesn't 
 know our names." 
 
 And the woman answered : "She does a lot like 
 that. She's got a heart bigger'n her little 
 body." 
 
 And a big boy in the front row said back to 
 the others : "Well, she makes a mint of money." 
 
 And the woman who had spoken before said : 
 "She gives it nearly all to the poor." 
 
 Ruggles was evidently on the poor side of the 
 waiting crowd; the handful of riffraff around 
 him with its stench of dirt and gin. A better 
 73
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 looking set collected opposite and there was the 
 gleam of white shirt fronts. 
 
 "Now, there she comes," the father saw her 
 first. "Sing out, Cissy." 
 
 The door opened and a figure quickly floated 
 from it, like a white rose blown out into the 
 foggy darkness. It floated down the few steps 
 to the street between the double row of spec- 
 tators. A white cloak entirely covered the 
 actress. Her head was hidden by a white scarf, 
 and she almost ran the short gantlet to her 
 motor, between the cries of "God bless you!" 
 "Three cheers for Letty Lane" "God 
 bless you, lady!" She didn't speak or heed, 
 however, or turn her head, but held her 
 scarf against her face, and the man who slowly 
 lounged behind her to the car, and put her in 
 and got in after her, was not the man Joshua 
 Ruggles had waited there to see. He hung about 
 until the footman had sprung up and the car 
 moved softly away, the stage entrance door shut, 
 then he followed along with the crowd, with the 
 74,
 
 AT THE STAGE ENTRANCE 
 
 few faithful ones who had waited an hour in the 
 cold mist to cry out their applause, not to a 
 singer in Mandalay but to a woman's heart.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE Duchess of Breakwater was not sure 
 how close Dan Blair's thoughts were to 
 marriage, but the boy from Montana was the 
 easiest prey that had come across the beautiful 
 and unscrupulous woman's range. He had told 
 her that he stayed on up in London to see a man 
 from home, and when after four days he still lin- 
 gered in town, she found his absence unbearable, 
 .and sent him a wire so worded that if he had a 
 spark of interest in her he must immediately re- 
 turn to the Park. She had never been more love- 
 ly than when Dan found her waiting for him. 
 
 She had ordered tea in her sitting-room. She 
 
 told him that he looked frightfully seedy, asked 
 
 him what he had been doing and why he had 
 
 stopped so long away, and Blair told her that 
 
 76
 
 DAN'S SIMPLICITY 
 
 old Ruggles, his father's friend, had run over 
 to see him with a lot of papers for Dan to read 
 and sign and closed with a smile, telling her that 
 he guessed she "didn't know much about busi- 
 ness." 
 
 "I only know the horrid things of business 
 debts, and loans, and bills, and fussing." 
 
 "Those things are not business," Dan an- 
 swered wisely; "they are just common or gar- 
 den carelessness." 
 
 She asked him why he had not brought Rug- 
 gles out to Osdene, and he told her he couldn't 
 have done a stroke of work with the old boy 
 down here at the Park. 
 
 Stirring his tea, he appreciated the duchess. 
 The agreeable picture she made impressed him 
 mightily. 
 
 "Do you know,*' he asked suddenly, "what 
 you make me think of?" 
 
 And she responded softly : "No, dear." 
 
 "A box of candy. This room with its stuffed! 
 walls, and you in it are good enough " 
 77
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "To eat?" she laughed aloud. "Oh, you per- 
 fectly killing creature, what an idea !" 
 
 And as he met her eyes with his clear ones, 
 with a simplicity she could never hope to reach, 
 he put his tea-cup down; and as he did so the 
 duchess observed his strong hands, their vigor, 
 well-kept and muscular, but not the dandified 
 hands of the man who goes often to the mani- 
 cure. 
 
 "If it hadn't been for one thing," the boy 
 went on, "I would have thought of nothing else 
 but you, every minute I've been away." 
 
 "Mr. Ruggles ?" suggested the duchess. 
 
 "No, the Gaiety girl, Letty Lane. You know 
 I told you in the box that she was from my 
 town." 
 
 The young man, who had flown back to Os- 
 dene Park in answer to a telegram, began to 
 take his companion into his confidence. 
 
 "I knew that girl," Dan said, "when she 
 wasn't more than fourteen. She sold me soda- 
 water over the drug store counter. I always 
 78
 
 DAN'S SIMPLICITY 
 
 thought she was bully, bright as a button and 
 pretty as a peach. Once, I remember, I took six 
 chocolate sodas in one day just to go in and see 
 her. I had an awful time. I most died of that 
 jag, and yet," he said meditatively, "I don't 
 think I ever spoke three words to her, just said 
 'sarsaparilla' or 'chocolate' or whatever it might 
 happen to be. Ever since that day, ever since 
 that jag," he said with feeling, "I couldn't see a 
 stick of chocolate and keep my head up ! Well," 
 went on the boy, "Sarah Towney sang in our 
 church for a missionary meeting, and I was 
 there. I can remember the song she sang." He 
 spoke with unconscious ardor. He didn't refer 
 to the hymn, however, but went on with his nar- 
 rative. "She disappeared from Blairtown. I 
 never had a peep at her again until the other 
 night. Gosh!" he said fervently, "when I saw 
 her there on the stage, why, I felt as though 
 cold water was running up and down my spine." 
 The duchess, as a rule, was amused by his 
 slang. It seemed vulgar to her now. 
 79
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "Heavens," she drawled, "you are really too 
 dreadful!" 
 
 He didn't seem to hear her. 
 
 "She's turned out a perfect wonder, hasn't 
 she ? A world-beater ! Why, everybody tells me 
 there isn't another like her in her specialty. Of 
 course I have heard of Letty Lane, but I haven't 
 been out to things since I went in mourning, and 
 I've never run up against her." 
 
 "Really," drawled the duchess again, "now 
 that you have 'run up against her' what are you 
 going to do with her? Marry her?" 
 
 His honest stare was the greatest relief she 
 had ever experienced. He repeated bluntly: 
 "Marry her? Why the dickens should I?" 
 
 "You seem absorbed in her." 
 
 He agreed with her. "I am. I think she's 
 great, don't you?" 
 
 "Hardly." 
 
 But the cold voice of the duchess did not chill 
 him. ''Simply great," he continued, "and I'm 
 sorry for her down to the ground. That is what 
 80
 
 DAN'S SIMPLICITY 
 
 is the matter. Didn't you notice her when she 
 came into the Carlton that night?" 
 
 "What of it, silly? I thought she looked as 
 thin as a shad in that black dress, and the way 
 Poniotowsky goes about with her proves what 
 an ass he is." 
 
 "Well, I hate him," Blair simply stated; "I 
 would wring his neck for twenty cents. But 
 she's very ill; that is what is the matter with 
 her." 
 
 "They all look like that off the stage," the 
 duchess assured indifferently. "They are noth- 
 ing but f ootlight beauties : they look ghastly off 
 the boards. I dare say that Letty Lane is ill, 
 though; the pace she goes would kill anybody. 
 Have some more tea ?" 
 
 He held out his cup and agreed with her. 
 
 "She works too hard this playing almost 
 every night, singing, and dancing twice at the 
 matinees, I should think she would be dead." 
 
 "Oh, I don't mean her professional engage- 
 ments," murmured the duchess. 
 81
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 A revolt such, as had stung him when they 
 criticized her at the Carlton rose in him now. 
 
 "It is hard to believe," he said, "when you hear 
 her sing that dove song and that cradle song." 
 
 But his companion's laugh stopped his cham- 
 pionship short. 
 
 "You dear boy, don't be a silly, Dan. She 
 doesn't need your pity or your good opinion. 
 She is perfectly satisfied. She has got a for- 
 tune in Poniotowsky, and she really is e a perfect 
 terror,' you know." 
 
 Affected slightly by her cold dismissal of his 
 subject, he paused for a moment. But his own 
 point of view was too strong to be shaken by 
 this woman's light words. 
 
 "I suppose if she wasn't from my town " 
 At his words the vision of Letty Lane with 
 the coral strands on her dress, came before his 
 eyes, and he said honestly: "But I do take an 
 interest in her just the same, and she's going to 
 pieces, that's clear. Something ought to be 
 done." 
 
 82
 
 DAN'S SIMPLICITY 
 
 The Duchess of Breakwater was very much 
 annoyed. 
 
 "Are you going to talk about her all the 
 time?" she asked with sharp sweetness. "You 
 are not very flattering, Dan." 
 
 And he returned peacefully, "Why, I thought 
 you might be able to help her in some way or 
 another." 
 
 "Me!" She laughed aloud. "Me help Letty 
 Lane? Really " 
 
 "Why, you might get her to sing out here," 
 he suggested. "That would sort of get hold of 
 her ; women know how to do those things." 
 
 His preposterous simplicity overwhelmed her. 
 She stirred her tea, and said, controlling her- 
 self, "Why, what on earth would you have me to 
 say to Letty Lane?" 
 
 "Oh, just be nice to her," he suggested. "Tell 
 her to take care of herself and to brace up. Get 
 some nice woman to " 
 
 The duchess helped him. "To reform her?" 
 
 "Do her good," the boy said gently.
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "You're too silly for words. If you were not 
 such a hopeless child I would be furious with 
 you. Why, my dear boy, she would laugh in 
 your face and in mine." 
 
 As the duchess left the tea-table she repeated : 
 "Is this what you came up from London to talk 
 to me about?" 
 
 And at the touch of her dress as she passed 
 him at the look she gave him from her eyes, 
 Dan flushed and said honestly: "Why, I told 
 you that she was the only thing that kept me 
 from thinking about you all the time."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 DISAPPOINTMENT 
 
 DAN BLAIR had not been back of the 
 scenes at the Gaiety since his first call 
 on the singer. Indeed, though he had told 
 the duchess he pitied Miss Lane, he had not 
 been able to approach her very closely, even 
 in his own thoughts. When she first ap- 
 peared on his horizon his mind was full of the 
 Duchess of Breakwater, and the singer had 
 only hovered round his more profound feelings 
 for another woman. But Letty Lane was an at- 
 mosphere in Dan's mind which he was not yet 
 able to understand. There was so little left 
 that was connected with his old home, certainly 
 nothing in the British Isles, excepting Ruggles, 
 and to the young man everything from America 
 had its value. Decidedly the nice girl of whom 
 85
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 he had spoken to Gordon Galorey, the print- 
 frocked, sunbonneted type, the ideal girl that 
 Dan would like to marry and to spoil, had not 
 crossed his path. The Duchess of Breakwater did 
 not suggest her, nor did any of the London beau- 
 ties. Dan's first ideal was beginning to fade. 
 
 He left Osdene Park on protest and returned 
 the same night to London, and all the way back 
 to town tried to register in his mind, unused to 
 analysis, his experience with the Duchess of 
 Breakwater on this last visit. 
 
 He had experienced his first disappointment 
 in the sex, and this disappointment had been of 
 an unusual kind. It was not that he had been 
 turned down or given the mitten, but he had seen 
 one woman turn another down. A woman had 
 been mean, so he put it, and the fact that the 
 Duchess of Breakwater had refused to lend a 
 moral hand to the singer at the Gaiety hurt 
 Dan's feelings. Then, as soon as his enthusi- 
 asm had calmed, he saw what a stupid ass he had 
 been. A duchess couldn't mix up with a comic 
 86
 
 DISAPPOINTMENT 
 
 opera singer, of course. Still, he mused, "she 
 might have been a little nicer about it." 
 
 The education his father had given him about 
 women, the slender information he had about 
 them, was put to the test now ; the girl he had 
 dreamed of, "the nice girl," well, she would have 
 had a tenderer way with her in a case such as 
 this ! Back of Dan's hurt feelings, there was a 
 great deal on the Duchess of Breakwater's side. 
 She had not done for herself yet. She hadn't 
 fetched him nearly up to the altar for nothing, 
 and back of his disapproval, there was a long 
 list of admirations and looks, memories of many 
 tete-a-tetes and of more fervent kisses which 
 scored a good deal in the favor of Dan's first 
 woman. The Duchess of Breakwater had gone 
 boldly on with Dan's unfinished education, and 
 he really thought he loved her, and that he was 
 in honor bound to see the thing through. 
 
 That evening, once more in the box he had 
 taken all to himself, he listened to Mandalay, 
 87
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 carried away with the charm of the music and 
 carried away by the singer. He was in the box 
 nearest the stage and seemed close to her, and 
 he imagined that under her paint he could see 
 her pallor and how thin she was. Nothing, how- 
 ever, in her acting or in her voice revealed the 
 least fatigue. Blair had obtained a card of en- 
 trance to the theater, which permitted him to 
 circulate freely behind the scenes, and although 
 as yet the run of his visits had not been clear, 
 this night he had a purpose. Dan stood not far 
 from the corridor that led to Letty Lane's room, 
 and saw her after her act hurriedly cross the 
 stage, a big white shawl wrapping her slender 
 form closely. She was as thin as a candle. Her 
 woman Higgins followed closely after her, and 
 as they passed Dan, Letty Lane called to him 
 gaily: 
 
 "Hello, you! What are you hanging around 
 here for?" 
 
 And Dan returned : "Don't stand here in the 
 draft. It is beastly cold." 
 88
 
 DISAPPOINTMENT 
 
 "Yes, Miss," her woman urged, "don't stand 
 here." 
 
 But the actress waited nevertheless and said 
 to Dan: "Who's the girl?" 
 
 "What girl?" 
 
 "Why, the girl you come here every night to 
 see and are too shy to speak to. Everybody is 
 crazy to know." 
 
 Letty Lane looked like a little girl herself in 
 the crocheted garment her small hands held 
 across her breast. Dan put his arm on her 
 shoulder without realizing the familiarity of his 
 gesture : 
 
 "Get out of this draft get out of it quick, 
 I say," and pushed her toward her room. 
 
 "Gracious, but you are strong." She felt 
 the muscular touch, and his hand flat against 
 her shoulder was warm through the wool. 
 
 "I wish you were strong. You work too 
 darned hard." 
 
 Her head was covered with the coral cap and 
 feather. Dan saw her billowy skirt, her silken
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 hose, her little coral shoes. She fluttered at the 
 door which Higgins opened. 
 
 "Why haven't you been to see me?" she asked 
 him. "You are not very polite." 
 
 "I am coming in now." 
 
 "Not a bit of it. I'm too busy, and it is a 
 short entr'acte. Go and see the girl you came 
 here to see." 
 
 Dan thought that the reason she forbade him 
 to come in was because Prince Poniotowsky 
 waited for her in her dressing-room. It was his 
 first jealous moment, and the feeling fell on 
 him with a swoop, and its fangs fastened in him 
 with a stinging pain. He stammered : 
 
 "I didn't come to see any girl here but you. I 
 came to see you." 
 
 "Come to-morrow at two, at the Savoy." 
 
 But before Dan realized his own precipitation, 
 he had seized the door-handle as Letty Lane went 
 within and was about to close her room against 
 him, and said quickly : 
 
 "I'm coming right in now." 
 90
 
 DISAPPOINTMENT 
 
 "Why, I never heard of such a thing," she an- 
 swered sharply, angrily; "you must be crazy! 
 Take away your hand !" And hers, as well as his, 
 seized the handle of the door. Her small ice- 
 cold hand brought him to his senses. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," he murmured confused- 
 ly. "Do go in and get warm if you can." 
 
 But instead of obeying, now that the rude 
 young man withdrew his importuning, Miss 
 Lane's hands fell from the knob, and close to his 
 eyes she swayed before him, and Dan caught her 
 in his arms went into her room, carrying her. 
 He had been wrong about Prince Poniotowsky; 
 save for Higgins, the room was empty. The 
 woman, though she exclaimed, showed no great 
 surprise and seemed prepared for such a faint- 
 ing spell. Dan laid the actress on the sofa and 
 then the dresser said to him : 
 
 "Please go, sir ; I can quite manage. She has 
 these turns often. I'll give her brandy. She 
 will be quite right." 
 
 But Dan hesitated, looking at the bit of hu- 
 91
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 manity that he had laid with great gentleness on 
 the divan covered with pillows. Letty Lane lay 
 there, small as a little child, inanimate as death. 
 It was hard to think the quiet little form could 
 contain such life, fire and motion, or that this 
 senseless little creature held London with her 
 voice and grace. Higgins knelt down by Letty 
 Lane's side, quiet, capable, going about the busi- 
 ness of resuscitating her lady much as she laced 
 the singer's bodice and shoes. "If you would be 
 so good as to open the door, sir, and send me a 
 call page. They'll have to linger out this 
 entr'acte or put on some feature." 
 
 "But," exclaimed Blair, "she can't go back 
 to-night?" 
 
 "Lord, yes," Higgins returned. "Here, Miss 
 Lane ; drink this." 
 
 At the door where he paused, Dan saw the 
 girl lifted up, saw her lean on Higgins' shoulder, 
 and assured then that she was not lifeless in 
 good truth, he went out to do as Higgins had 
 asked him. In a quarter of an hour the curtain
 
 DISAPPOINTMENT 
 
 rose and within half an hour Dan, from his box, 
 saw the actress dance to the rajah her charming 
 polka to the strains of the Hungarian Band. 
 
 93
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE BOY FBOM MY TOWN 
 
 HE went the next day to see Letty Lane at 
 the Savoy and learned that she was too 
 ill to receive him. Mrs. Higgins in the sitting- 
 room told him so. 
 
 Dan liked the big cordial face of the Scotch- 
 woman who acted as companion, dresser and 
 maid for the star. Mrs. Higgins had an affable 
 face, one that welcomes, and she made it plain 
 that she was not an enemy to this young caller. 
 
 The visitor, in his blue serge clothes, was less 
 startling than most of the men that came to see 
 her mistress. 
 
 "She works too hard, doesn't she?" 
 
 "She does everything too hard, sir." 
 
 "She ought to rest." 
 
 "I doubt if she does, even in her grave," re- 
 94
 
 THE BOY FROM MY TOWN 
 
 turned Higgins. "She is too full of motion. 
 She is like the little girl in the fairy book that 
 danced in her grave." 
 
 Dan didn't like this comparison. 
 
 "Can't you make her hold up a little?" 
 
 Higgins smiled and shook her head. 
 
 Letty Lane's sitting-room was as full of roses 
 as a flower garden. There were quantities of 
 theatrical photographs in silver and leather 
 frames on the tables and the piano. Signed por- 
 traits from crowned heads ; pictures of well- 
 known worldly men and women whom the dancer 
 had charmed. But a full-length picture of 
 Letty Lane herself in one of the dresses of Man- 
 dalay lay on the table near Dan, and he picked 
 it up. She smiled at him enchantingly from the 
 cardboard, across which was written in her big, 
 dashing hand: "For the Boy from my Town. 
 Letty Lane." 
 
 Dan glanced up at Mrs. Higgins. 
 
 "Why, that looks as though this were for 
 
 95
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 The dressing woman nodded. "Miss Lane 
 thought she would be able to see you to-day." 
 
 The picture in his hand, Dan gazed at it rap- 
 turously. 
 
 "I'm from Blairtown, Montana, where she 
 came from." 
 
 "So she told me, sir." 
 
 He laid the picture back on the table, and 
 Higgins understood that he wanted Miss Lane 
 to give it to him herself. She led him affably to 
 the door and affably smiled upon him. She had 
 a frill in her hand, a thimble on her finger, and 
 a lot of needles in her bodice. She looked moth- 
 erly and useful. Blair liked to think of her 
 with Letty Lane. He put his hand in his pocket, 
 but she saw his gesture and reproved him qui- 
 etly : "No, no, sir, please, I never do. I am just 
 as much obliged," and her face remained so affa- 
 ble that Blair was not embarrassed by her re- 
 fusal. His parting words were: 
 
 "Now, you make her take care of herself." 
 
 And to please him, as she opened the door, 
 96
 
 THE BOY FROM MY TOWN 
 
 she pleasantly assured him that she would do her 
 very best. 
 
 Dan went out of the Savoy feeling that he had 
 left something of himself behind him in the mot- 
 ley room of an actress with its perfumed atmos- 
 phere of roses and violets. The photograph 
 which he had laid down on the table seemed to 
 look out at him again, and he repeated delight- 
 edly, "That one was for me, all right ! I'm the 
 'boy from her town' and no mistake." And he 
 thought of her as she had lain, lifelessly and 
 pale on the dressing-room sofa, under the touch 
 of hired hands, and how, no doubt, she had 
 been lying in her room when he called to-day, 
 with shades drawn, resting before the long hard 
 evening, when London would be amused by her, 
 delighted by her, charmed by her voice, by her 
 body and her grace. He had wandered up as far 
 as Piccadilly, went into a florist's and stood be- 
 fore the flowers. Her sitting-room had been full 
 of roses, but Dan chose something else that had 
 caught his eye from the window, a huge coun- 
 97
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 try basket of primroses, smelling of the earth 
 and the spring. He sent them with his card and 
 wrote on it, "To the Girl from My Town," and 
 sent the gift with a pleasure as young and as 
 fresh as was his own heart. 
 
 He got no note of acknowledgment from his 
 flowers. Miss Lane was evidently better and 
 played every night ; no mention was made of her 
 indisposition in the papers. But Dan couldn't 
 go to the Gaiety or bear to see her make the ef- 
 fort which he knew must tire her beyond words 
 to conceive. 
 
 After a few days he called at the Savoy to 
 get news of her. He got as far as the lift when 
 going up in it he saw Prince Poniotowsky. The 
 sight affected Miss Lane's townsman so forcibly 
 that instead of going up to the dancer's apart- 
 ment Dan took himself off, and anger, displeas- 
 ure and something like disgust were the only 
 sentiments he carried away from the Savoy. He 
 sent her no flowers, and gave himself up unre- 
 servedly to Joshua Ruggles and to a couple of
 
 THE BOY FROM MY TOWN 
 
 men who came in to see him by appointment. 
 And when toward four o'clock he found himself 
 alone with Ruggles, Dan threw himself down in 
 a big chair and looked intensely bored. 
 
 "Well, I guess we don't need to see any more 
 of these fellows for a week, Dan," Ruggles 
 yawned with relief. "I'm blamed if it isn't as 
 hard to take care of money as to get it. I was 
 a poor man once, and so was your father. Those 
 were the days we had fun." 
 
 Ruggles took out a big cigar, struck a match 
 sharply, and when he had lit his Henry Clay he 
 fixed his gaze on the flying London fog, whose 
 black curtain drew itself across their window. 
 
 "There's a lot of excitement," Ruggles said, 
 "in not knowing what you're going to get ; may 
 turn out to be anything when you're young and 
 on the trail. That's the way your father and 
 me felt. And when we started out on the spot 
 that's Blairtown on the map to-day, your father 
 had forty dollars a week to engineer a busted 
 mine and to pull the company into shape." 
 99
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 Dan knew the story of his father's rise by 
 heart, but he listened. 
 
 "He took on with the mine a lot of discon- 
 tented half-hearted rapscallions a whole bunch, 
 who had failed all along the line. He didn't 
 chuck 'era out. 'There's no life in old wood, 
 Josh,' he said to me, 'but sometimes there's fire in 
 it, and I'm going to light up,' and he did. He 
 won over the whole lot of them in eighteen 
 months, and within two years he had that darned 
 mine paying dividends. Meanwhile something 
 came his way and he took it." 
 
 From his chair Dan asked: "You mean the 
 Bentley claim?" 
 
 "Measles," his friend said comically, with a 
 grin. "Your father was sick to death with them. 
 When he was sitting up for the first time, peel- 
 ing in his room, there was a fellow, an English- 
 man, a total stranger, come in to see him. 'Bet- 
 ter clear out of here,' your father says to him. 
 'I'm shedding the damnedest disease for a grown 
 man that ever was caught.' 'I'm not afraid of 
 100
 
 THE BOY FROM MY TOWN 
 
 it,' the Englishman said, 'I'm shedding worse.' 
 When your father asked him what that was, he 
 said the idea that he could make any money in 
 the West. He told your father that he was going 
 back to England and give up his western schemes, 
 and that he had a claim to sell, and he told Blair 
 where it lay. 'Who has seen it?' your father 
 asked. 'Any of my men?' And the Englishman 
 told your father that nobody had wanted to buy 
 it and that was why he had come to him. He said 
 he thought his only chance to sell was to hold up 
 some blind man on his dying bed and that he had 
 heard that Blair was too sick to stir out of his 
 room and to prospect. Your father liked the 
 fellow's cheek and when he found out that he had 
 the maps with him, your father bought the whole 
 blooming sweep at the man's price, which was a 
 mere song. 
 
 "Your father never went near his purchase 
 for a year or more, and when he had turned the 
 mine he was managing over to the original com- 
 pany, with me as manager in his place, at a sal- 
 101
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 ary of twenty thousand dollars a year, he said to 
 me one day, 'Ruggles, you'll be sorry to know 
 that the fun is all over, I've struck oil.' But the 
 oil was copper. The whole blooming business 
 that he'd bought of that Englishman was rich 
 with ore. Well, that's the\story of Blairtown," 
 Ruggles said. "You were born there and your 
 mother died there." 
 
 Dan said: "Galorey told me what dad did 
 later for the man that sold him the mine, and it 
 was just like everything else he did, for dad was 
 all right, just as good as they come." 
 
 Ruggles agreed. He left his reminiscences 
 abruptly. "Your dad and me had the fun in our 
 time ; now you are going to get the other kind ; 
 you're going to make the dust fly that he dug 
 up." 
 
 And the rich young man said musingly : "I'll 
 bet it isn't half as good at my end." 
 
 And Ruggles agreed: "Not by a jugful." 
 And followed: "What's on to-night? Manda- 
 lay?" 
 
 102
 
 THE BOY FROM MY TOWN 
 
 Dan's fury at Prince Poniotowsky came back. 
 "I guess you thought I was a little loose in the 
 lid, didn't you, Josh, going so often to the same 
 play?" 
 
 "You wouldn't have been the first rich man 
 that had the same disease," Ruggles answered. 
 
 "There is nothing the matter with Mandalay, 
 but I'm not gone on any actress living, Josh; 
 you are in the wrong pew." 
 
 Dan altered his indolent pose and sat forward. 
 "But I am thinking of getting married," he said. 
 
 "I hope it's to the right girl, Dan." 
 
 And with young assurance Blair answered: 
 "It will be if I marry her. I know what I want 
 all right." 
 
 "I hope she knows what she wants, Dan." 
 
 "How do you mean?" 
 
 "You or your money. You have the darnedest 
 handicap, my boy." 
 
 Blair flushed. "I'll get to hate the whole 
 thing," he said ferociously. "It meets me every- 
 where bonds stocks figures dividends 
 103
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 coupons deeds it's too much !" he said sud- 
 denly, with resentment. "It is too much for me. 
 Why, sometimes I feel a hundred years old, and 
 like a hunk of gold." 
 
 Ruggles, in answer to this, said : "Why, that 
 reminds me of what a man remarked about your 
 father once. It was the same English chap your 
 father bought the claim of. Speaking of Blair, 
 he said to me: 'You know there's all kinds of 
 metal bars, and when you cut into them some is 
 bullion and some's coated with aluminum, and 
 there's others that when you cut down, cut a 
 clean yellow all along the line.' If, as you say, 
 you feel like a hunk of metal, it ain't bad if it is 
 that kind." 
 
 "It's got to stop coming in between me and 
 the woman I marry, all right, though." Dan 
 did not pursue his subject further, for his feel- 
 ings about the duchess were too unreal to give 
 him the sincere heartiness with which he would 
 have liked to answer Ruggles. 
 
 He went over to the window, and, with his 
 104.
 
 THE BOY FROM MY TOWN 
 
 hands in his pockets, stood looking out at the 
 fog. Ruggles, at the table, opened the cover of 
 the book of Mandalay and took out the four 
 checks made out to Lady Galorey and which he 
 had forgotten. He hurriedly thrust them into 
 his pocket. 
 
 "Come away, Dannie," he said cheerfully, 
 "let's do something wild. I feel up to most any- 
 thing with this miserable fog down on me. If it 
 had any nerve it would take some form or shape, 
 so a man could choke it back." 
 
 Ruggles blew his nose violently. 
 
 "There's nothing to do," said Dan in a bored 
 tone. 
 
 "Why don't you see who your telegram is 
 from?" Ruggles asked him. It proved to be a 
 suggestion from Gordon Galorey that Dan 
 should meet him at five o'clock at the club. 
 
 "What will you do, Rug?" 
 
 "Sleep," said the Westerner serenely; "I'm 
 nearly as happy in London as I am in Philadel- 
 phia. It's four o'clock now and I can't sleep 
 105
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 more than four hours anyway. Let's have a real 
 wild time, Dannie." 
 
 Dan looked at him doubtfully, but Ruggles' 
 eyes were keen. 
 
 "What kind of a time do you mean ?" 
 
 "Let's ask the Gaiety girl for dinner for 
 supper after the theater." 
 
 "Letty Lane ? She wouldn't go." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "She is awfully delicate ; it is all she can do to 
 keep her contracts." 
 
 He knows that, Ruggles thought. "Let's ask 
 her and see." He went over to the table and 
 drew out the paper. "Come on and write and 
 ask her to go out with us to supper." 
 
 "See here, Rug, what's this for?" 
 
 "What's strange in it? She is from our state, 
 and if you don't hustle and ask her I am going 
 to ask her all alone." 
 
 Dan was puzzled as he sat down to the table, 
 reflecting that it was perfectly possible that old 
 Ruggles had fallen a prey to the charms of an 
 106
 
 THE BOY FROM MY TOWN 
 
 actress. She wouldn't come, of course. He 
 wrote a formal invitation without thinking very 
 much of what he said or how, folded and ad- 
 dressed his note. 
 
 "What did you say?" Ruggles asked eagerly. 
 
 "Why, that two boys from home wanted to 
 give her a supper." 
 
 "Well," said Ruggles, "if the answer comes 
 while you are at the club I'll open it and give 
 the orders. Think she'll come?" 
 
 "I do not," responded Dan rather brutally. 
 "She's got others to take her out to supper, you 
 bet your life." 
 
 "Well, there's none of them as rich as you are, 
 I reckon, Dan." 
 
 And the boy turned on him violently. 
 
 "See here, Josh, if you speak to me again of 
 my money, when there's a woman in the ques- 
 tion " 
 
 He did not finish his threat, but snatched up 
 his coat and hat and gloves and went out of the 
 door, slamming it after him. 
 107
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN; 
 
 Mr. Ruggles' profound and happy snore was 
 cut short by the page boy, who fetched in a note, 
 with the Savoy stamping on the back. Ruggles 
 opened it not without emotion. 
 
 "Dear boy," it ran, "I haven't yet thanked 
 you for the primroses; they were perfectly 
 sweet. There is not one of them in any of my 
 rooms, and I'll tell you why to-night. I am 
 crazy to accept for supper" here she had evi- 
 dently struck out her intended refusal, and 
 closed with, "I'm coming, but don't come after 
 me at the Gaiety, please. I'll meet you at the 
 Carlton after the theater. Who's the other 
 boy? L. L." 
 
 The "other boy" read the note with much dif- 
 ficulty, for it was badly written. "He'll have 
 to stop sending her flowers and going every 
 night to the theater unless he wants a row with 
 the duchess," he said dryly. And with a cer- 
 tain interest in his role, Ruggles rang for the 
 head waiter, and with the man's help ordered 
 his first midnight supper for an actress. 
 108
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 BUGGLES GIVES A DINNER 
 
 THE bright tide of worldly London flows 
 after and around midnight into the various 
 restaurants and supper rooms, and as well 
 through the corridors and halls of the Carlton. 
 At one of the small tables bearing a great ex- 
 pensive bunch of orchids and soft ferns, Josh 
 Ruggles, in a new evening dress, sat waiting for 
 his party. Dan had dined with Lord Galorey, 
 and the two men had gone out together after- 
 ward, and Ruggles had not seen the boy to 
 give him Letty Lane's note. 
 
 "Got it with you?" Blair asked when he came 
 in, and Ruggles responded that he didn't carry 
 love letters around in his dress clothes. 
 
 They could tell by the interest in the room 
 when the actress was coming, and both men rose 
 109
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 as Letty Lane floated in at flood tide with a 
 crowd of last arrivals. 
 
 She had not dressed this evening with the 
 intention that her dark simplicity of attire 
 should be conspicuous. The cloak which Dan 
 took from her shed the perfume of orris and 
 revealed the woman in a blaze of sparkling 
 paillettes. She seemed made out of sparkle, and 
 her blond head, from which a bright ornament 
 shook, was the most brilliant thing about her, 
 though her dress from hem to throat glistened 
 with discs of gold like moonshine on a starry 
 sea. The actress' look of surprise when she saw 
 Ruggles indicated that she had not expected a 
 boy of his age. 
 
 "The other boy?" she asked. "Well, this is 
 the nicest supper party ever! And you are 
 awfully good to invite me." 
 
 Ruggles patted his shirt front and adjusted 
 his cravat. 
 
 "My idea," he told her, "all the blame on me, 
 Miss Lane. Charge it up to me ! Dan here had 
 110
 
 RUGGLES GIVES A DINNER 
 
 cold feet from the first. He said you wouldn't 
 come." 
 
 She laughed deliciously. 
 "He did? Hasn't got much faith, has he?" 
 Miss Lane drew her long gloves off, touched 
 the orchids with her little hands, on which the 
 ever present rings flashed, and went on talking 
 to Ruggles, to whom she seemed to want to ad- 
 dress her conversation. 
 
 "I'm simply crazy over these flowers." 
 The older man showed his pleasure. "My 
 choice again ! Walked up myself and chose the 
 bunch, blame me again ; ditto dinner ; mine from 
 start to finish hope you'll like it. I would 
 have added some Montana peas and some choco- 
 late soda-water, only I thought you might not 
 understand the joke." 
 
 Miss Lane beamed on him. Although he 
 was unconscious of it, she was not fully at ease : 
 he was not the kind of man she had expected to 
 see. Accustomed to young fellows like the boy 
 and their mad devotion, accustomed to men with 
 111
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 whom she could be herself, the big, bluff, middle- 
 aged gentleman with his painfully correct tie, 
 his rumpled iron-gray hair, and his deference to 
 her, though an unusual diversion, was a little 
 embarrassing. 
 
 "Oh, I know your dinner is ripping, Mr. 
 Ruggles. I'm on a diet of milk and eggs my- 
 self, and I expect your order didn't take in 
 those." But at his fallen countenance she hur- 
 ried to say: "Oh, I wouldn't have told you 
 that if I hadn't been intending to break 
 through." 
 
 And with childlike anticipation she clapped 
 her hands and said: "We're going to have 'lots 
 of fun.' Just think, they don't know what that 
 means here in London. They say 'heaps of 
 sport, you know.' " She imitated the accent 
 maliciously. "It's just we Americans who know 
 what 'lots of fun' is, isn't it?" 
 
 Near her Dan Blair's young eyes were drink- 
 ing in the spectacle of delicate beauty beauti- 
 fully gowned, of soft skin, glorious hair, and
 
 RUGGLES GIVES A DINNER 
 
 he gazed like a child at a pantomime. Under 
 his breath he exclaimed now, with effusion, "You 
 bet your life we are going to have lots of fun !" 
 And turning to him, Miss Lane said: 
 
 "Six chocolate sodas running?" 
 
 "Oh, don't," he begged, "not that kind of 
 
 jag-" 
 
 She shook with laughter. 
 
 "Are you from Blairtown, Mr. Ruggles? I 
 don't think I ever saw you there." 
 
 And the Westerner returned: "Well, from 
 what Dan tells me, you're not much of a fixture 
 yourself, Miss Lane. You were just about born 
 and then kidnapped." 
 
 Her gay expression faded. And she repeated 
 his word, "Kidnapped? That's a good word 
 for it, Mr. Ruggles." 
 
 She picked up between her fingers a strand of 
 the green fern, and looked at its delicate tracery 
 as it lay on the palm of her hand. 
 
 "I sang one day after a missionary sermon in 
 the Presbyterian Church." She interrupted her- 
 113
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 self with a short laugh. "But I guess you're 
 not thinking of writing my; biography, are 
 you?" 
 
 And it was Dan's voice that urged her. "Say, 
 do go on. I was there that day with my father, 
 and you sang simply out of sight." 
 
 "Yes," she accepted, "out of sight of Blair- 
 town and everybody I ever knew. I went away 
 the next day." She lifted her glass of cham- 
 pagne to her lips. "Here's one thing I oughtn't 
 to do," she said, "but I'm going to just the 
 same. I'm going to do everything I want this 
 evening. Remember, I let you drink six glasses 
 of chocolate soda once." She drained her glass 
 and her friends drank with her. "I like this 
 soup awfully. What is it?" just touching it 
 with her spoon. 
 
 "Why," Ruggles hastened to tell her, "it 
 ain't a party soup, it's Scotch broth. But some- 
 how it sounded good on the bill of fare. I fixed 
 the rest of the dinner up for you and Dan, but 
 I let myself go on the soup, it's my favorite."
 
 RUGGLES GIVES A DINNER 
 
 She did not eat it, however, although she said 
 it was splendid and that she was crazy about it. 
 
 "Did you come East then?" Dan returned to 
 what she had been saying. 
 
 "Yes, that week; went to Paris and all over 
 the place." 
 
 She instantly fell into a sort of melancholy. 
 It was easy to be seen that she did not want to 
 talk about her past and yet that it fascinated 
 her. 
 
 "Just think of it!" he exclaimed. "I never 
 heard a word about you until I heard you sing 
 the other night." 
 
 The actress laughed and told him that he had 
 made up for lost time, and that he was a regular 
 "sitter" now at the Gaiety. 
 
 Ruggles said, "He took me every night to 
 see you dance until I balked, Miss Lane." 
 
 "Still, it's a perfectly great show, Mr. Rug- 
 gles, don't you think so? I like it better than 
 any part I ever had. I am interested about it 
 for the sake of the man who wrote it, too. It's 
 115
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 his first opera ; he's an invalid and has a wife 
 and five kids to look after." 
 
 And Ruggles replied, "Oh, gracious! I feel 
 better than ever, having gone ten times, al- 
 though I wasn't very sore about it before! 
 Ain't you going to eat anything ?" 
 
 She only picked at her food, drinking what 
 they poured in her glass, and every time she 
 spoke to Dan a look of charming kindness 
 crossed her face, an expression of good fellow- 
 ship which Ruggles noted with interest. 
 
 "I wish you could have seen this same author 
 to-day at the rehearsal of the play," Letty Lane 
 went on. "He's too ill to walk and they had to 
 carry him in a chair. We all went round to his 
 apartments after the theater. He lives in three 
 rooms with his whole family and he's had so 
 many debts and so much trouble and such a 
 poor contract that he hasn't made much out of 
 Mandalay, but I guess he will out of this new 
 piece. He hugged and kissed me until I thought 
 he would break my neck." 
 116
 
 RUGGLES GIVES A DINNER 
 
 London had gone mad over Letty Lane, whose 
 traits and contour were the admiration of the 
 world at large and well-known even to the news- 
 boys, and whose likeness was nearly as familiar 
 as that of the Madonnas of old. Her face was 
 oval and perfectly formed, with the reddest of 
 mouths the most delicious and softest of 
 mouths the line of her brows clear and straight, 
 and her gray eyes large and as innocent and 
 appealing as a child's; under their long lashes 
 they opened up like flowers. It was said that 
 no man could withstand their appeal; that she 
 had but to look to make a man her slave ; and as 
 more than once she turned to Dan, smiling and 
 gracious, Ruggles watched her, mutely thinking 
 of what he had heard this day, for after her let- 
 ter came accepting their invitation he had taken 
 pains to find out the things he wanted to know. 
 It had not been difficult. As her face and form 
 were public, on every post-card and in every 
 photographer's shop, so the actress' reputation 
 was the property of the public. 
 117
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 As Ruggles repeated these things to himself, 
 he watched her beside the son of his old friend. 
 They were talking rather she was and behind 
 the orchids and the ferns her voice was sweet 
 and enthralling. Ruggles tried to appreciate 
 his bill of fare while the two appreciated each 
 other. It was strange to Dan to have her so 
 near and so approachable. His sights of her 
 off the stage had been so slight and fleeting. 
 On the boards she had seemed to be an unreal 
 creation made for the public alone. Her dress, 
 cut fearlessly low, displayed her lovely young 
 bosom soft, bloomy, white as a shell and her 
 head and ears were as delicate as the petals of 
 a white rose. Low in the nape of her neck, her 
 golden hair lay lightly, and from its soft masses 
 fragrance came to him. 
 
 Ruggles could hear her say: "Roach came 
 to the house and told my people that I had a 
 fortune in my voice. I was living with my uncle 
 and my step-aunt and working in the store. 
 And that same day your father sent down a 
 118
 
 RUGGLES GIVES A DINNER 
 
 check for five hundred dollars. He said it was 
 'for the little girl with the sweet voice,' and it 
 gives me a lot of pleasure to think that I began 
 my lessons on that money." 
 
 The son of old Dan Blair said earnestly: 
 "I'm darned glad you did I'm darned glad you 
 did!" 
 
 Letty Lane nodded. "So am I. But," with 
 some sharpness, "I don't see why you speak that 
 way. I've earned my way. I made a fortune 
 for Roach all right." 
 
 "You mean the man you married?" 
 
 "Married goodness gracious, what made you 
 think that?" She threw back her pretty head 
 and laughed a laugh with the least possible 
 merriment in it. "Oh, Heavens, marry old Job 
 Roach! So they say that, do they? I never 
 heard that. I hear a lot, but I never heard that 
 fairy tale." She put her hands to her cheeks, 
 which had grown crimson. "That's not true!" 
 
 Dan swore at himself for his tactless stu- 
 pidity. 
 
 119
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 Ruggles had heard both sides. She was 
 adored by the poor, and, as far as rumor knew, 
 she spent thousands on the London paupers, 
 and the Westerner, who had never been given 
 to reveling in scandals and to whom there was 
 something wicked in speaking ill of a woman, 
 no matter whom she might be, listened with 
 embarrassment to tales he had been told in an- 
 swer to his other questions; and turned with 
 relief to the stories of Letty Lane's charity, and 
 to the stories of her popularity and her success. 
 They were more agreeable, but they couldn't 
 make him forget the rest, and now as he looked 
 at her face across the bouquet of orchids and 
 ferns, it was with a sinking of heart, a great 
 pity for her, and still a decided enmity. He 
 disapproved of her down to the ground. He 
 didn't let himself think how he felt, but it was 
 for the boy. Ruggles was not a man of the 
 world in any sense ; he was simple and Puritan in 
 his judgments, and his gentle nature and his big 
 heart kept him from pharisaical and strenuous 
 120
 
 RUGGLES GIVES A DINNER 
 
 measures. He had been led in what he was doing 
 to-night by a diplomacy and a common sense 
 that few men east of the Mississippi would have 
 thought out under the circumstances. 
 
 "Tell Mr. Ruggles," he heard Dan say to 
 her, "tell him tell him !" 
 
 And she answered : 
 
 "I was telling Mr. Blair that, as he is so 
 frightfully rich, I want him to give me some 
 money." 
 
 Ruggles gasped, but answered quietly : 
 
 "Well, he's a great giver, Miss Lane." 
 
 "I guess he is if he's like his father !" she re- 
 turned. "I am trying to get a lot, though, out 
 of him, and when you asked me to dine to-night 
 I said to myself, 'I'll accept, for it will be a good 
 time to ask Mr. Blair to help me out in what I 
 want to do.' " 
 
 At Ruggles' face she smiled sweetly and said 
 graciously : 
 
 "Oh, don't think I wouldn't have come any- 
 way. But I'm awfully tired these days, and
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 going out to supper Is just one thing too much to 
 do! I want Mr. Blair," she said, turning to 
 Ruggles as if she knew a word from him would 
 make the thing go through, "to help me build 
 a rest home down on the English coast, for 
 girls who get discouraged in their art. When 
 I think of the luck I have had and how these 
 things have been from the beginning, and how 
 money has just poured in, why," she said ar- 
 dently, "it just makes my heart ache to think 
 of the girls who try and fail, who go on for a 
 little while and have to give up. You can't 
 tell," she nodded to Ruggles, as though she 
 were herself a matron of forty, "you can not 
 tell what their temptations are or what comes 
 up to make them go to pieces." 
 
 Ruggles listened with interest. 
 
 "I haven't thought it all out yet, but so many 
 come to me tired out and discouraged, and I 
 think a nice home taken care of by a good crea- 
 ture like my Higgins, let us say, would be a 
 perfect blessing to them. They could go there
 
 RUGGLES GIVES A DINNER 
 
 and rest and study and just think, and per- 
 haps," she said slowly, as though while she 
 spoke she saw a vision of a tired self, for whom 
 there had been no rest home and no place of 
 retreat, "perhaps a lot of them would pull 
 through in a different way. Now to-day" she 
 broke her meditative tone short "I got a letter 
 from a hospital where a poor thing that used 
 to sing with me in New York was dying with 
 consumption all gone to pieces and discour- 
 aged, and there is where your primroses went 
 to " she nodded to Dan. "Higgins took them. 
 You don't mind?" And Blair, with a warmth 
 in his voice, touched by her pity more than by 
 her charity, said: 
 
 "Why, they grew for you, Miss Lane ; I don't 
 care what you do with them." 
 
 Letty Lane sank her head on her hands, her 
 elbows leaned on the table. She seemed sud- 
 denly to have lost interest even in her topic. 
 She looked around the room indifferently. The 
 orchestra was softly playing The Dove Song 
 123
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 from Mandalay, and very softly under her 
 breath the star hummed it, her eyes vaguely 
 fixed on some unknown scene. To Dan and to 
 Ruggles she had grown strange. The music, 
 her brilliancy, her sudden indifference, put her 
 out of their commonplace reach. Ruggles to 
 himself thought with relief: 
 
 "She doesn't care one rap for the boy any- 
 way, thank God. She's got other fish to land." 
 
 And Dan Blair thought: "It's my infernal 
 money again." But he was generous at heart 
 and glad to be of service to her, and was per- 
 fectly willing to be "touched" for her poor. 
 Then two or three men came up and joined them. 
 She greeted them indolently, bestowing a word 
 or a look on this one or on that; all fire and 
 light seemed to have gone out of her, and Dan 
 said: 
 
 "You are tired. I guess I had better take you 
 home." 
 
 She did not appear to hear him. Indeed she 
 was not looking at him, and Dan saw Prince
 
 RUGGLES GIVES A DINNER 
 
 Poniotowsky making his way toward their table 
 across the room. 
 
 Letty Lane rose. Dan put her cloak about 
 her shoulders, and glancing toward Ruggles 
 and toward the boy as indifferently as she had 
 considered the new-comers, who formed a small 
 group around the brilliant figure of the actress, 
 she nodded good night to both Ruggles and 
 Blair and went up to the Hungarian as though 
 he were her husband, who had come to take her 
 home. However, at the door she sufficiently 
 shook off her mood to smile slightly at Dan : 
 
 "I have had 'lots of fun,' and the Scotch 
 broth was great ! Thank you both so much." 
 
 Until they were up in their sitting-room her 
 hosts did not exchange a word. Then Ruggles 
 took a book up from the table and sat down with 
 his cigar. "I am going to read a little, Dan. 
 Slept all day ; feel as wide-awake as an owl." 
 
 Dan showed no desire to be communicative, 
 however, to Ruggles' disappointment, but he ex- 
 claimed abruptly : 
 
 125
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "I'll be darned, Ruggles, if I can guess what 
 you asked her for !" 
 
 "Well, it did turn out to be a pretty expen- 
 sive party for you, Dannie, didn't it?" Ruggles 
 returned humorously. "I'll let you off from any 
 more supper parties." 
 
 And Dan fumed as he turned his back. "Ex- 
 pensive! There you are again, Ruggles, with 
 your infernal intrusion of money into everything 
 I do." 
 
 When the older man found himself alone, he 
 read a little and then put his book down to 
 muse. And his meditations were on the tide of 
 life and the beds it runs over; the living whirl- 
 pool as Ruggles himself had seen it coursing 
 through London under fog and mist. It seemed 
 now to surge up in the dark to his very win- 
 dows, and the flow mysteriously passed under 
 his windows in these silent hours when no one 
 can see the muddy, muddy bottom over which the 
 waters go. Out of the sound, as it flowed on, 
 the cries rose, he thought, kindly to his ears: 
 126
 
 RUGGLES GIVES A DINNER 
 
 "God bless her God bless Letty Lane!" And 
 with this sound he closed his meditations, think- 
 ing of a more peaceful stream, the brighter, 
 sweeter waters of the boy's nature, translucent 
 and clear. The vision was happier, and with it 
 Ruggles rose and yawned, and shut his book. 
 
 127
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE GKEEN KNIGHT 
 
 THE Duchess of Breakwater had made Dan 
 promise at Osdene the day he went back to 
 London that he would take her over to her own 
 place, Stainer Court, and with her see the 
 beauty, ruins and traditions of the place. 
 
 When Dan got up well on in the morning, 
 Ruggles had gone to the bank. Dan's thoughts 
 turned from everything to Letty Lane. With 
 irritation he put her out of his mind. There 
 had come up between himself and the girl he 
 had known slightly in his own town years ago 
 a wall of partition. Every time he saw her 
 Poniotowsky was there, condescending, arro- 
 gant, rude and proud. The prince the night 
 before had given the tips of his fingers to Dan, 
 nodded to Ruggles as if the Westerner had been 
 128
 
 THE GREEN KNIGHT 
 
 his tailor, and had appropriated Letty Lane, and 
 she had gone away under his shadow. The sim- 
 plicity of Dan's life, his decent bringing up, 
 his immaculate youth, for such it was, his aloof- 
 ness from the world, made him nai've, but he was 
 not dull. He waited not like a skeptic who 
 would fit every one into his pigeonholes on the 
 contrary, he waited to find every one as perfect 
 as he knew they must be, and every time he tried 
 to think of Letty Lane, Poniotowsky troubled 
 him horribly and seemed to rise before him, and 
 sardonically look at him through his eye-glass, 
 making the boy's belief in good things ridicu- 
 lous. 
 
 He wrote a note to Ruggles, saying that lie 
 would be back late and not to wait for him, and 
 set out in his own car for Blankshire, where the 
 duchess was to meet him at Stainer Court at 
 noon. On his way out he decided that he had 
 been a fool to discuss Letty Lane with the 
 Duchess of Breakwater, and that it had been 
 none of his business to put her duty before her ? 
 129
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 and that he had judged her quickly and un- 
 fairly. He fell in love with the lovely English 
 country over which his motor took him, and it 
 made him more affectionate toward the English 
 woman. He sat back in his car, looking over 
 the fine shooting land, the misty golden forests, 
 as through the misty country his motor took its 
 way. The breath of England was on his cheeks, 
 he breathed in its odors fresh and sweet, the 
 windless air was cool and fragrant. His cheeks 
 grew red, his eyes shone like stars, and he was 
 content with his youth and his lot. When they 
 stopped at Castelene, the property belonging 
 to Stainer Court, he felt something of propri- 
 etorship stir in him, and at Stainer Arms or- 
 dered a drink, bought petroleum, and then 
 pushed up the avenue under the leafless giant 
 trees, whose roots were older than his father's 
 name or than any state of the Union. And he 
 felt admiration and something like emotion as 
 he saw the first towers of Stainer Court finally 
 appear. 
 
 130
 
 THE GREEN KNIGHT 
 
 The duchess waited for him in the room known 
 as the "Green Knight's Room," because of a 
 figure in tapestry on the walls. The legend in 
 wool had been woven in Spain, somewhere about 
 the time when Isabella was kind, and when in 
 turn a continent loomed up for the world in gen- 
 eral out of the mist. The subject of the Green 
 Knight's tapestry was simple and convincing. 
 On a sheer-cut village of low ferns, where daisies 
 stood up like trees, a slender lady poised, her 
 dark sandaled feet on the pin-like turf. Her 
 figure was all swathed round with a spotless 
 dress of woolly white, softened by age into a 
 golden misty tone, and a pair of friendly and 
 confidential rabbits sat close to her golden slip- 
 pers. The lady's face was candid and mild ; her 
 eyes were soft, and around her head was wound 
 a fillet of woven threads, mellow in tone, a red, 
 no doubt, originally, but softened to a coral 
 pink by time. This lady in all her grace and 
 virginal sweetness was only half of the woven 
 story. To her right stood a youth in forest 
 131
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN' 
 
 green, his sword drawn, and his intention evi- 
 dently to kill a creature which, near to the gentle 
 rabbits, out of the daisied grass lifted its cruel 
 snakelike head. For nearly five hundred years 
 the serpent's venom had been poised, and if the 
 serpent should start the Green Knight weuld 
 strike, too, at the same magic moment. 
 
 Close to the tapestry a fire had been laid in 
 the broad fireplace, and the duchess had ordered 
 the luncheon table for Dan and herself spread 
 with the cold things England knows how to com- 
 bine into a delectable feast. The room was full 
 of mediaeval furnishings, but the Green Knight 
 was the best of all. The Duchess of Break- 
 water took him for granted. She had known 
 him all her life, and she had only been struck 
 by his expensive beauty when the offer came to 
 her from the National Museum to buy him, and 
 she wondered how long she could afford to stick 
 to her price. 
 
 When Dan came in he found her in a short 
 tweed skirt, a mannish blouse, looking boyish 
 132
 
 THE GREEN KNIGHT 
 
 and wholly charming, and she mixed him a cock- 
 tail under the Green Knight's very nose and 
 offered it with the wisdom of the serpent itself, 
 and the duchess didn't in the least suggest the 
 white-robed, milk-white lady. 
 
 The friends drank their cocktails in goo'd 
 spirits, and Dan presented the lady with the 
 flowers he had brought her, and he felt a strong 
 sentiment stir at the sight of her in this old 
 room, alone and waiting for him. The servants 
 left them, the duchess put her hands on the boy's 
 broad shoulders. Nearly as tall as he, she was 
 a good example of the best-looking English 
 woman, straight and strong, and her eyes were 
 level, and Dan met them with his own. 
 
 "I am so glad you came," she murmured. 
 "I've been ragging myself every minute since 
 you went away from Osdene." 
 
 "You have? What for?" 
 
 "Because I was such a perfect prig. I'll do 
 anything you like for Miss Lane. I mean to say, 
 I'll arrange for a musicale and ask her to sing." 
 133 

 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 The color rushed into Dan's face. How bully 
 of her! What a brick this showed her to be! 
 He said : "You are as sweet as a peach !" 
 
 The duchess' hands were still on his shoulders. 
 She could feel his rapid breath. 
 
 "I don't make you think of a box of candy 
 now?" she murmured, and the boy covered her 
 hand with his own. 
 
 "I don't know what you make me think of 
 it is bully, whatever it is !" 
 
 If the Spanish tapestry could only have re- 
 versed its idea, and if the immaculate lady, or 
 even one of the rabbits, could have drawn a 
 sword to protect the Green Knight, it would 
 have been passing well. But the woven work, 
 when it first had been embroidered, was done for 
 ever; it was irrevocable in its mistaken idea, 
 that it is only the woman who needs protection !
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE FACE OF LETTY LANS 
 
 AS Dan went through the halls of the Carl- 
 ton on his way to his rooms that same 
 evening, the porter gave him two notes, which 
 Dan went down into the smoking-room to read. 
 He tore open the note bearing the Hotel Savoy 
 on the envelope, and read: 
 
 "DEAR BOY: Will you come around to-night 
 and see me about five o'clock? Don't let any- 
 thing keep you." (Letty Lane had the habit of 
 scratching out phrases to insert others, and 
 there was something scratched out.) "I want to 
 talk to you about something very important. 
 Come sure. L. L." 
 
 Dan looked at the clock; it was after nine, 
 and she would be at the Gaiety going on with 
 her performance. 
 
 The other note, which he opened more slowly, 
 135
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 was from Ruggles, and it began in just the 
 same way as the dancer's had begun : 
 
 "DEAR BOY : I have been suddenly called back 
 to the United States. As I didn't know how to 
 get at you, I couldn't. I had a cable that takes 
 me right back. I get the Lusitania at Liverpool 
 and you can send me a Marconi. Better make the 
 first boat you can and come over. 
 
 "JOSHUA RUGGLES." 
 
 Ruggles left no word of advice, and uncon- 
 scious of this master stroke on the part of the 
 old man, whose heart yearned for him as for 
 his own son, Dan folded the note up and thought 
 no more about Ruggles. 
 
 When an hour later he came out of the Carl- 
 ton he was prepared for the life of the evening. 
 He stopped at the telephone desk and sent a 
 telegram to Ruggles on the Lusitania: 
 
 "Can't come yet a while; am engaged to be 
 married to the Duchess of Breakwater." 
 
 136
 
 THE FACE OF LETTY LANE 
 
 He wrote this out In full and the man at the 
 Marconi "sat up" and smiled as he wrote. With 
 Letty Lane's badly written note in his pocket, 
 and wondering very much at her summons of 
 him, Dan drove to the Gaiety, and at the end of 
 the third act went back of the scenes. There 
 were several people in her dressing-room. Hig- 
 gins was lacing her into a white bodice and Miss 
 Lane, before her glass, was putting the rouge 
 on her lips. 
 
 "Hello, you," she nodded to Dan. 
 
 "I am awfully sorry not to have shown up at 
 five. Just got your note. Just got in at the 
 hotel ; been out of town all day." 
 
 Dan saw that none of the people in the room 
 was familiar to him, and that they were out of 
 place in the pretty brocaded nest. One of them 
 was a Jew, a small man with a glass eye, whose 
 fixed stare rested on Miss Lane. He had kept 
 on his overcoat, and his derby hat hung on the 
 back of his head. 
 
 "Give Mr. Cohen the box, Higgins," Miss 
 187
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 Lane directed, and bending forward, brought 
 her small face close to the glass, and her hands 
 trembled as she handled the rouge stick. 
 
 Mr. Cohen in one hand held a string of pearls 
 that fell through his fat fingers, as if eager to 
 escape from them. Higgins obediently placed 
 a small box in his hand. 
 
 "Take it and get out of here," she ordered 
 Cohen. "Miss Lane has only got five minutes." 
 
 Cohen turned the stub of his cigar in his 
 mouth unpleasantly without taking the trouble 
 to remove it. "I'll take the box," he said rap- 
 idly, "and when I get good and ready I'll get 
 out of here, but not before." 
 
 "Now see here," Blair began, but Miss Lane, 
 who had finished her task, motioned him to be 
 quiet. 
 
 "Please go out, Mr. Blair," she said. "Please 
 go out. Mr. Cohen is here on business and I 
 really can't see anybody just now." 
 
 Behind the Jew Higgins looked up at 
 Dan and he understood but he didn't heed her 
 138
 
 THE FACE OF LETTY LANE 
 
 warning; nothing would have induced him to 
 leave Letty Lane like this. 
 
 "I'm not going, though, Miss Lane," he said 
 frankly. "I've got an appointment with you 
 and I'm going to stay." 
 
 As he did so the other people in the room 
 took form for him : a blind beggar with a stick 
 in his hand, and by his side a small child wrapped 
 in a shawl. With relief Dan saw that Poniotow- 
 sky was absent from the party. 
 
 Cohen opened the box, took its contents out 
 and held up the jewels. "This," he said, indi- 
 cating a string of pearls, "is all right, Miss 
 Lane, and the ear-drops. The rest is no good. 
 I'll take or leave them, as you like." 
 
 She was plainly annoyed and excited, and, as 
 Higgins tried to lace her, moved from her dress- 
 ing-table to the sofa in a state of agitation. 
 
 "Take them or leave them, as you like," she 
 said, "but give me the money and go." 
 
 The Jew took from his wallet a roll of bank- 
 notes and counted them. 
 139
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "Six," he began, but she waved him back. 
 
 "Don't tell me how much it is. I don't want 
 to know." 
 
 "Let the other lady count it," the Jew said. 
 <f l don't do business that way." 
 
 Dan, who had laid down his overcoat and hat 
 on a chair, came quietly forward, his hands 
 in his pockets, and standing in front of the 
 Jew, he said again : 
 
 "Now you look here " 
 
 Letty Lane threw the money down on the 
 dressing-table. "Please," she cried to Dan, "let 
 me have the pleasure of sending this man out of 
 my room. You can go, Cohen, and go in a 
 hurry, too." 
 
 The Jew stuffed the pearls in his pocket and 
 went by Dan hurriedly, as though he feared the 
 young man intended to help him. But Dan 
 stopped him : 
 
 "Before this deal goes through I want you to 
 tell me why you are " 
 
 Miss Lane broke in : "My gracious Heavens ! 
 140
 
 THE FACE OF LETTY LANE 
 
 Can't I even sell my jewels without being 
 bossed? What business is it of yours, Mr. 
 Blair? Let this man go, and go all of you 
 all of you. Higgins, send them out." 
 
 The blind man and the child stirred, too, at 
 this outburst. The little girl wore a miserable 
 hat, a wreck of a hat, in which shook a feather 
 like a broken mast. The rest of her garments 
 seemed made of the elements of dirt and mud 
 mere flags of distress, and the odor of the poor 
 filled the room : over the perfume and scent and 
 smell of stage properties, this miserable smell 
 held its own. 
 
 "Come, Daddy," whispered the child timidly, 
 "come along." 
 
 "Oh, no, not you, not you," Letty Lane said. 
 
 Job Cohen crawled out with ten thousand 
 pounds' worth of pearls in his pockets, and as 
 soon as the door had closed the actress took up 
 the roll of notes. 
 
 "Come here," she said to the child. "Now 
 you can take your father to the home I told you 
 141
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 of. It is nice and comfortable they will treat 
 his eyes there." 
 
 "Miss Lane Miss Lane!" called the page 
 boy. 
 
 "Never mind that," said the actress, "it is a 
 long wait this act. I don't go on yet." 
 
 Higgins went to the door and opened it and 
 stood a moment, then disappeared into the side 
 scenes. 
 
 Letty Lane ruffled the pile of bank-notes and 
 without looking drew out two or three bills, put- 
 ting them into the child's hands. "Don't you 
 lose them ; stuff them down ; this will keep you 
 and your father for a couple of years. Take 
 care of it. You are quite rich now. Don't get 
 robbed." 
 
 The child tremblingly folded the notes and 
 hid them among her rags. The tears of hap- 
 piness were straggling over her face. She said 
 finally, finding no place to stow away her riches, 
 "I expect I'd best put them in daddy's pocket." 
 
 r Aad Dan came to her aid; taking the notes
 
 THE FACE OF LETTY LANE 
 
 from her, he folded and put them inside the 
 clothes of the old beggar. 
 
 "Miss Lane," said Higgins, who had come in, 
 "it is time you went on." 
 
 "I'll see your friends out of the theater," 
 Blair offered. And as he did so, for the first 
 time she looked at him, and he saw the fever in 
 her brilliant eyes. 
 
 "Thanks awfully," she accepted. "It is per- 
 fectly crazy to give them so much money at 
 once. Will you look after it like a good boy and 
 see something or other about them?" 
 
 He thought of her, however, and caught up 
 a great soft shawl from the chair, wrapped it 
 around her tenderly, and she flitted out, Hig- 
 gins after her, leaving the rest of the money 
 scattered on her dressing-table. 
 
 "Come along," said Blair kindly to the two 
 who stood awaiting his orders with the docility 
 of the poor, the obedience of those who have no 
 right to plan or suggest until told to move on. 
 "Come, I'll see you home." And he didn't leave 
 143
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 them until he had taken them in a cab to their 
 destination until he had persuaded the girl to 
 let him have the money, look after it for her, 
 come to see her the next day and tell her what 
 to do. 
 
 Then he went back to the theater and stood 
 up in the rear, for the house was crowded, to 
 hear Letty sing. It was souvenir night ; there 
 were post-cards and little coral caps with feathers 
 as bonbonnieres. They called her out before the 
 curtain a dozen times, and each time Dan wanted 
 to cry "Mercy" for her. He felt as though 
 this little act had established a friendship be- 
 tween them; and his hands clenched as he 
 thought of Poniotowsky, and he tried to recall 
 that he was an engaged man. He had an idea 
 that Letty Lane was looking for him through 
 the performance. She finished in a storm of ap- 
 plause, and flowers were strewn upon her, and 
 Dan found himself, in spite of his resolution, 
 going back into the wings. 
 
 This time two or three cards were sent in. 
 144.
 
 THE FACE OF LETTY LANE 
 
 One by one he saw the visitors refused, and Dan, 
 without any formality, himself knocked at Letty 
 Lane's small door, which Higgins opened, looked 
 back over her shoulder to give his name to her 
 mistress, and said to Dan confidently, "Wait, 
 sir; just wait a bit." Her lips were affable. And 
 in a few moments, to Dan's astonished delight, 
 the actress herself appeared, a big scarf over 
 her head and her body enveloped in her snowy 
 cloak, and he understood with a leap of his heart 
 that she had singled him out to take her home. 
 She went before him through the wings to the 
 stage entrance, which he opened for her, and she 
 passed out before him into the fog and the mist. 
 For the first time Blair followed her through the 
 crowd, which was a big one on this night. On 
 the one side waited the poor, who wished her 
 many blessings, and on the other side her ad- 
 mirers, whose thoughts were quite different. 
 Something of this flashed through Dan's mind, 
 and in that moment he touched the serious part 
 of life for the first time. 
 
 145
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 In Letty Lane's motor, the small electric light 
 lit over their heads and the flower vase empty, 
 he sat beside the fragrant human creature whom 
 London adored, and knew his place would have 
 been envied by many a man. 
 
 "I took your friends to their place all right," 
 he told her, "and I'm going to see them myself 
 to-morrow. I advised the girl not to get mar- 
 ried for her money. Say, this is awfully nice 
 of you to let me take you home !" 
 
 She seemed small in her corner. "You were 
 great to-night," Dan went on, "simply great! 
 Wasn't the crowd crazy about you, though! 
 How does it feel to stand there and hear them 
 clap like a thunderstorm and call your name?" 
 
 She replied with effort. "It was a nice audi- 
 ence, wasn't it? Oh, I don't know how it feels. 
 It is rather stimulating. How's the other boy ?" 
 she asked abruptly, and when Dan had said that 
 Ruggles had left him alone in London, she 
 turned and laughed a little. 
 
 Dan asked her why she had sent for him to- 
 146
 
 THE FACE OF LETTY LANE 
 
 day. "I'm mighty sorry I was out of town," he 
 said warmly. "Just to think you should have 
 wanted me to do something for you and I didn't 
 turn up. You know I would be glad to do any- 
 thing. What was it? Won't you tell me what 
 it was?" 
 
 "The Jew did it for me." 
 
 And Dan exclaimed : "It made me simply sicK 
 to see that animal in your room. I would have 
 kicked him out if I hadn't thought that it would 
 make an unpleasant scene for you. We have 
 passed the Savoy." He looked out of the win- 
 dow, and Letty Lane replied: 
 
 "I told the driver to go to the Carlton first." 
 
 She was taking him home then ! 
 
 ic Well, you've got to come in and have some 
 supper with me in that case," he cried eagerly, 
 and she told him that she had taken him home 
 because she knew that Mr. Ruggles would ap- 
 prove. 
 
 "Not much you won't," he said, and put his 
 hand on the speaking tube, but she stopped him. 
 147
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "Don't give any orders in my motor, Mr. 
 Blair. You sit still where you are." 
 
 "Do you think that I am such a simple youth 
 that I" 
 
 Letty Lane with a gesture of supreme ennui 
 said to him impatiently : 
 
 "Oh, I just think I am pretty nearly tired to 
 death; don't bother me. I want my own way." 
 
 Her voice and her gesture, her beauty and her 
 indifference, her sort of vague lack of interest 
 in him and in everything, put the boy, full of 
 life as he was, out of ease, but he ventured, after 
 a second: 
 
 "Won't you please tell me what you wanted 
 me to do this afternoon?" 
 
 "Why, I was hard up, that's all. I have used 
 all my salary for two months and I couldn't 
 pay my bill at the Savoy." 
 
 "Lord!" he said fervently, "why didn't 
 you" 
 
 "I did. Like a fool I sent for you the first 
 148
 
 THE FACE OF LETTY LANE 
 
 thing, but I was awfully glad when five o'clock 
 came you didn't turn up. Please don't bother or 
 speak of it again." 
 
 And burning with curiosity as to what part 
 Poniotowsky played in her life, Dan sat quiet, 
 not venturing to put to her any more questions. 
 She seemed so tired and so overcome by her own 
 thoughts. When they had turned down toward 
 the hotel, however, he decided that he must in 
 honor tell her his news. 
 
 "Got some news to tell you," he exclaimed 
 abruptly. "Want you to congratulate me. I'm 
 engaged to be married to the Duchess of Break- 
 water. She happens to be a great admirer of 
 your voice." 
 
 The actress turned sharply to him and in the 
 dark He could see her little, white 'face. The 
 covering over her head fell back and sHe ex- 
 claimed: 
 
 "Heavens !" and impulsively put her hands 
 out over his. "Do you really mean what you 
 
 say?" 
 
 149
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "Yes." He nodded surprisedly. "What do 
 you look like that for?" 
 
 Letty Lane arranged her scarf and then drew 
 back from him and laughed. 
 
 "Oh, dear, dear, dear," she exclaimed, "and I 
 . . . and I have been ..." 
 
 She looked up at him swiftly as though she 
 fancied she might detect some new quality in him 
 which she had not observed before, but she saw 
 only his clear, kind eyes, his charming smile and 
 his beautiful, young ignorance, and said softly 
 to him : 
 
 "No use to cry, little boy, if it's true! But 
 that woman isn't half good enough for you not 
 half, and I guess you think it funny enough to 
 hear me say so ! What does the other boy from 
 Montana say?" 
 
 "Don't know," Dan answered indifferently. 
 "Marconied him ; didn't tell him about it before 
 he left. You see he doesn't understand England 
 doesn't like it." 
 
 A little dazed by the way each of the two 
 150
 
 THE FACE OF LETTY LANE 
 
 women took tHe mention of the other, he asked 
 timidly : 
 
 "You don't like the Duchess of Breakwater, 
 then?" i 
 
 And she laughed again. 
 
 "Goodness gracious, I don't know her; ac- 
 tresses don't sit around with duchesses." Then 
 abruptly, her beautiful eyes, under their curled 
 dark lashes, full on him, she asked: 
 
 "Do you like her?" 
 
 "You bet!" he said ardently. "Of course I 
 do. I am crazy about her." Yet he realized, as 
 he replied, that he didn't have any inclination to 
 begin to talk about his fiancee. 
 
 They had reached the Carlton and the door of 
 Letty Lane's motor was held open. 
 
 "Better get out," he urged, "and have some- 
 thing to eat." 
 
 And she, leaning a little way toward him, 
 laughed. 
 
 "Crazy! Your engagement would be broken 
 off to-morrow." And she further said: "If I 
 151
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 really thought it would, why I'd come like a 
 shot." 
 
 As she leaned forward, her cloak slipping 
 from her neck, revealing her throat above the 
 dark collar of the simple dress she wore, he looked 
 in her dove-gray eyes, and murmured : 
 
 "Oh, say, do come along and risk it. I'm 
 game, all right." 
 
 She hesitated, then bade him good night lan- 
 guidly, slipping back into her old attitude of in- 
 difference. 
 
 "I am going home to rest. Good night. I 
 don't think the duchess would let you go, no 
 matter what you did !" 
 
 Dan, standing there at her motor door, this 
 beautiful, well-known woman bantering him, 
 leaning toward him, was conscious of her alone, 
 all snowy and small and divine in her enveloping 
 scarf, lost in the corner of her big car. 
 
 "I hate to have you go back alone to the 
 Savoy. I really do. Please let me " 
 
 But she shook her head. "Tell the man the 
 152
 
 THE FACE OF LETTY LANE 
 
 Savoy," and as Dan, carrying out her instruc- 
 tions, closed the door, he said : "I don't like that 
 empty vase in there. Would you be very good 
 and put some flowers in it if they came ?" 
 
 She wouldn't promise, and he went on : 
 
 "Will you put only my flowers in that vase 
 always hereafter?" 
 
 Then, "Why, of course not, goose," she said 
 shortly. "Will you please let me close the door 
 and go home?" 
 
 Dan walked into the Carlton when her bright 
 motor had slipped away, his evening coat long 
 and black flying its wings behind him, his hat on 
 the back of his blond head, light of foot and 
 step, a gay young figure among the late lin- 
 gering crowd. 
 
 He went to his apartments and missed Ruggles 
 in the lonely quiet of the sitting-room, but as the 
 night before Ruggles had done, Dan in his bed- 
 room window stood looking out at the mist and 
 fog through which before his eyes the things 
 'he had lately seen passed and repassed, specter- 
 153
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 like, winglike, across the gloom. Finally, in 
 spite of the fact that he was an engaged man 
 with the responsibilities of marriage before him, 
 he could think of but one thing to take with 
 him when he finally turned to sleep. The face 
 of the woman he was engaged to marry eluded 
 him, but the face under the white hood of Letty 
 Lane was in his dreams, and in his troubled vi- 
 sions he saw her shining, dovelike eyes. 
 
 154
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 FBOM INDIA'S COBAL STRANDS 
 
 MRS. HIGGINS, in Miss Lane's apart- 
 ment at the Savoy, was adjusting the 
 photographs and arranging the flowers when 
 she was surprised by a caller, who came up with- 
 out the formality of sending his name. 
 
 "Do you think," Blair asked her, "that Miss 
 Lane would see me half a minute? I called yes- 
 terday, and the day before, as soon as I saw that 
 there was a substitute singing in Mandalay. 
 Tell her I'm as full of news as a charity report, 
 please, and I rather guess that will fetch her." 
 
 Something fetched her, for in a few minutes 
 she came languidly in, and by the way she 
 smiled at her visitor it might be thought Dan 
 Blair's name alone had brought her in. The 
 actress had been ill for a fortnight with what 
 155
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 the press notices said was influenza. She wore 
 a teagown, long and white as foam, her hair 
 rolled in a soft knot, and her face was pale as 
 death. Frail and small as she was, she was 
 more ethereal than when in perfect health. 
 
 "Don't stand a minute." And by the hand 
 she gave him Dan led her over to the lounge 
 where the pillows were piled and a fur-lined silk 
 cover thrown across the sofa. 
 
 "Don't give me that heavy rug, there's that 
 little white shawl." She pointed to it, and Dan, 
 as he gave it to her, recognized the shawl in 
 which she wrapped herself when she crossed the 
 icy wings. 
 
 "It's in those infernal side scenes you get 
 colds." 
 
 He sat down by her. She began to cough vio- 
 lently and he asked, troubled, "Who's taking 
 care of you, anyway?" 
 
 "Higgins and a couple of doctors." 
 
 "That's all?" 
 
 "Yes. Why, who should be?" 
 166
 
 FROM INDIA'S CORAL STRANDS 
 
 Dan didn't follow up his jealous suspicion, 
 but asked in a tone almost paternal and softly 
 confidential : 
 
 "How are your finances getting on?" 
 
 Her lips curved in a friendly smile. But she 
 made a dismissing gesture with her frail little 
 hand. 
 
 "Oh, I'm all right ; Higgins told me you had 
 some news about my poor people." 
 
 The fact that she did not take up the financial 
 subject made him unpleasantly sure that her 
 wants had been supplied. 
 
 "Got a whole bunch of news," Dan replied 
 cheerfully. "I went to see the old man and the 
 girl in their diggings. Gosh, you couldn't believe 
 such things were true." 
 
 She drew her fine brows together. "I guess 
 there are a good many things that would sur- 
 prise you. But you don't need to tell me about 
 hard times. That's the way I am. I'll do any- 
 thing, give anything, so long as I don't have to 
 hear hard stories." She turned to him confiden- 
 157
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 tially. "Perhaps it's acting in false scenes on 
 the stage ; perhaps it's because I'm lazy and self- 
 ish, but I can't bear to hear about tales of woe." 
 
 What she said somewhat disturbed his idea of 
 her big-hearted charity. 
 
 "I don't believe you're lazy or selfish," he said 
 sincerely, "but I've got an idea that not many 
 people really know you." 
 
 This amused her. Looking at him quizzically, 
 she laughed. "I expect you think you do." 
 
 Dan answered : "Well, I guess the people that 
 see you when you are a kid, who come from your 
 own part of the country, have a sort of friend- 
 ship." And the girl on the sofa from the depths 
 of her shawl put out a thin little hand to him and 
 said in a voice as lovely in tone as when she sang 
 in Mandalay: 
 
 "Well, I guess that's right! I guess that's 
 about true." 
 
 After the tenth of a second, in which she 
 thought best to take her little cold hand away 
 from those big warm ones, she asked : 
 158
 
 FROM INDIA'S CORAL STRANDS 
 
 "Now please do tell me about the poor peo- 
 ple." 
 
 In this way giving him to understand how 
 really true his better idea of her had been. 
 
 "Why, the old duffer is as happy as a house 
 afire," said the boy. "Not to boast, I've done 
 the whole thing up as well as I knew how. I've 
 got him into that health resort you spoke of, and 
 the girl seems to have got a regular education 
 vice! She wants to study something, so she's 
 going to school." 
 
 "Go on talking," the actress invited languid- 
 ly. "I love to hear you talk Montana! Don't 
 change your twang for this beastly English 
 drawl, whatever you do." 
 
 "You have, though, Miss Lane. I don't hear 
 a thing of Blairtown in the way you speak." 
 
 And the girl said passionately: "I wish to 
 God I spoke it right through! I wish I had 
 never changed my speech or anything in me that 
 was like home." 
 
 And the boy leaning forward as eagerly ex- 
 159
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 claimed: "Oh, do you mean that? Think how 
 crazy London is about you ! Why, if you ever 
 go back to Montana, they will carry you from 
 the cars in a triumphal chair through the town." 
 
 She waited until she could control the emotion 
 in her voice. 
 
 "Go on telling me about the little girl." 
 
 "She was so trusting as to give the money up 
 to me and I guess it will draw interest for her 
 all right." 
 
 "Thank you," smiled the actress, "you are 
 terribly sweet. The child got Higgins to let her 
 into my dressing-room one day after a matinee. 
 I haven't time to see anybody except then." 
 
 Here Higgins made her appearance in the 
 room, with an egg-nog for her lady, which, after 
 much coaxing, Dan succeeded in getting the 
 actress to drink. Higgins also had taken away 
 the flowers, and Letty Lane said to Dan : 
 
 "I send them to the hospital ; they make me 
 sick." And Dan timidly asked : 
 
 "Mine, too?" 
 
 160
 
 FROM INDIA'S CORAL STRANDS 
 
 This brought a flush across the ivory pallor 
 of her cheek. "No, no, Higgins keeps them in 
 the next room." And with an abrupt change of 
 subject she asked: "Is the Duchess of Break- 
 water very charitable?" And Blair quickly re- 
 plied : 
 
 "Anyhow she wants you to sing for her at a 
 musicale in Park Lane when you're fit." 
 
 Miss Lane gave a soft little giggle. "Is that 
 what you call being charitable?" 
 
 Dan blushed crimson and exclaimed: "Well, 
 hardly!" 
 
 "Did you come here to ask me that?" 
 
 **I came to tell you about 'our mutual poor.' 
 You'll let me call them that, won't you, because 
 I happened to be in your dressing-room when 
 they struck their vein ?" 
 
 Miss Lane had drawn herself up in the cor- 
 ner of the sofa, and sat with her hands clasped 
 around her knees, all swathed around and draped 
 by the knitted shawl, her golden head like a 
 radiant flower, appearing from a bank of snow. 
 161
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 Her fragility, her sweetness, her sraallness, ap- 
 pealed strongly to the big young fellow, whose 
 heart was warm toward the world, whose ideals 
 were high, and who had the chivalrous longing 
 inherent in all good men to succor, to protect, 
 and above all to adore. No feeling in Dan Blair 
 had been as strong as this, to take her in his 
 arms, to lift her up and carry her away from 
 London and the people who applauded her, from 
 the people that criticized her, and from Ponio- 
 towsky. 
 
 He was engaged to the Duchess of Break- 
 water. And as far as his being able to do any- 
 thing for Letty Lane, he could only offer her this 
 politeness from the woman he was going to 
 marry. 
 
 "I never sing out of the theater." Her pro- 
 file was to him and she looked steadily across the 
 room. "It's a perfect fight to get the manager 
 to consent." 
 
 Blair interrupted and said : "Oh, I'll see him ; 
 I'll make it all right."
 
 FROM INDIA'S CORAL STRANDS 
 
 "Please don't," she said briskly, "it's purely a 
 business affair. How much will she pay ?" 
 
 Dan was rather shocked. "Anything you 
 like." 
 
 And her bad humor faded at his tone, and she 
 smiled at him. "Well, I'll tell Roach that. I 
 guess it'll make my singing a sure thing." 
 
 She changed her position and drew a long 
 sigh as though she were very tired, leaned her 
 blond head with its soft disorder back on the 
 pillow, put both her folded hands under her 
 cheek and turned her face toward Dan. The 
 most delicate coral-like color began to mount 
 her cheeks, and her gray eyes regained their 
 light. 
 
 "Will two thousand dollars be too much to 
 ask?" she said gently. 
 
 If she had said two million to the young fel- 
 low who had not yet begun to spend his fortune, 
 which as far as he was concerned was nothing 
 but a name, it would not have been too much to 
 him; not too much to have given to this small 
 163
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 white creature with her lovely flushed face, and 
 her glorious hair. 
 
 "Whatever is your price, Miss Lane, goes." 
 "I'll sing three songs : one from Mandalay, an 
 English ballad and something or other, I don't 
 know what now, and I expect you don't realize 
 how cheaply you are getting them." She 
 laughed, and began to hum a familiar air. 
 
 "I wish you would sing just one song for me." 
 "For another thousand?" she asked, lifting 
 her eyebrows. "What song is it?" 
 
 And as Dan hesitated, as if unwilling to give 
 form to words that were so full of spell to him, 
 she said deliciously : "Why, can you see a Lon- 
 don drawing-room listening to me sing a Pres- 
 byterian hymn tune?" Without lifting her head 
 from the pillow she began in a charming under- 
 tone, her gray eyes fixed on his : 
 
 "From Greenland's icy mountains, 
 
 Prom India's coral strands, 
 Where Afric's sunny fountains 
 Roll down thpir golden sands."
 
 FROM INDIA'S CORAL STRANDS 
 
 Blair, near her, turned pale. There rose in 
 him the same feeling that she had stirred years 
 ago in the little church, and at the same time 
 others. He had lost his father since then, and he 
 thought of him now, but that big, sad emotion 
 was not the one that swayed him. 
 
 "Please stop," he pleaded ; "don't go on. Say, 
 there's something in that hymn that hurts." 
 
 Letty Lane, unconscious of how subtly she 
 was playing, laughed, and suddenly remembered 
 that Dan had sat before her that day by the 
 side of old Mr. Blair. She asked abruptly : 
 
 "Why does the Duchess of Breakwater want 
 me to sing?" 
 
 "Because she's crazy about your voice." 
 
 "Is she awfully rich?" 
 
 "Urn . . . I don't know." 
 
 Letty Lane flashed a look at him. "Oh," she 
 said coolly, "I guess she won't pay the price 
 then." 
 
 Dan said: "Yes, she will; yes, she will, all 
 right." 
 
 165
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "Now," Letty Lane went on, "if it were a 
 charity affair, I could sing for nothing, and I 
 don't doubt the duchess, if she is as benevolent 
 as you say she is, could get me up some kind of 
 a charity show." 
 
 Dan, who had started to rise, now leaned to- 
 ward her and said: "Don't you worry about it 
 a bit. If you'll come and sing we will make it 
 right about the price and the charity; every- 
 thing shall go your way." 
 
 She was seized upon by a violent fit of cough- 
 ing, and Dan leaned toward her and put his arm 
 around her as a brother might have done, hold- 
 ing her tenderly until the paroxysm was past. 
 
 "Gosh!" he exclaimed fervently, "it's heart- 
 breaking to hear you cough like that and to 
 think of your working as you do. Can't you 
 stop and take a good rest? Can't you go some- 
 where?" 
 
 "To Greenland's icy mountains?" she re- 
 sponded, smiling. "I hate the cold." 
 
 "No, no; to some golden sands or other," he 
 166
 
 FROM INDIA'S CORAL STRANDS 
 
 murmured under his breath. "And let me take 
 you there." 
 
 But she pushed him back, laughing now. "No 
 golden sands for me. I'm afraid I've got to 
 sing in Mandalay to-night." 
 
 He looked at her in dismay. 
 
 She interrupted his protest: "I've promised 
 on my word of honor, and the box-office has sold 
 the seats with that understanding." 
 
 By her sofa, leaning over her, in a choked 
 voice he murmured: 
 
 "You shan't sing! You shan't go out to- 
 night !" 
 
 "Don't be a goose, boy," she said. "You've 
 no right to order me like that. Stand back, 
 please." As he did so she whisked herself off 
 the sofa with a sudden ardor and much grace. 
 "Now," she told him severely, "since you've be- 
 gun to take that tone with me, I'm going to tell 
 you that you mustn't come here day after day 
 as you have been doing. I guess you know it, 
 don't you?" 
 
 167
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 He stood his ground, but his bright face 
 clouded. They had been so near each other and 
 were now so removed. 
 
 "I don't care a damn what people say," he re- 
 plied. 
 
 She interrupted him. She could be wonder- 
 fully dignified, small as she was, wrapped as she 
 was in the woollen shawl. "Well," she drawled 
 with a sudden indolence and indifference in her 
 voice, "I expect you'll be surprised to hear that 
 7 do care. Sounds awfully funny, doesn't it? 
 But as you have been coming to the theater now 
 night after night till everybody's talking about 
 it" 
 
 "You don't want my friendship," he stam- 
 mered. 
 
 And Letty Lane controlled her desire to laugh 
 at his boyish subterfuge. "No, I don't think I 
 do." 
 
 Her tone struck him deeply : hurt him terri- 
 bly. He threw his head up defiantly. 
 
 "All right, I'm turned down then," he said 
 168
 
 FROM INDIA'S CORAL STRANDS 
 
 simply. "I didn't think you'd act like this to a 
 boy you'd known all your life !" 
 
 "Don't be silly, you know as well as I do that 
 it won't do." 
 
 He did know it and that he had already done 
 enough to make it reasonable for the duchess, if 
 she wanted to, to break their engagement. Slow- 
 ly preparing to take his leave, he said wistfully : 
 "Can't I help you in any way? Let me do some- 
 thing with you for your poor. It's a comfort to 
 have them between us, and you can count on me." 
 
 She said she knew it. "But don't come any 
 more to the wings ; get a habit of not coming." 
 
 On the threshold of her door he asked her to 
 let him know when she would sing in Park Lane, 
 and in touching her hand he repeated that she 
 must count on him. With more tenderness in his 
 blue eyes than he was himself aware, he mur- 
 mured devotedly : 
 
 "Take care of yourself, won't you, please?" 
 
 As Blair passed from the sitting-room into 
 the hall and toward the lift, Mrs. Higgins 
 169
 
 . THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 came out hurriedly from one of the rooms and 
 joined him. 
 
 "How did you find her, Mr. Blair?" 
 
 "Awfully seedy, Mrs. Higgins; she needs a 
 lot of care." 
 
 "She won't take it though," returned the 
 woman. "Just seems to let herself go, not to 
 mind a bit, especially these last weeks. I'm glad 
 you came in ; I've been hoping you would, sir." 
 
 "I'm not any good though, she won't listen 
 to a word I say." 
 
 It seemed to surprise the dressing woman. 
 
 "I'm sorry to hear it, sir ; I thought she would. 
 She talks about you often." 
 
 He colored like a school-boy. "Gosh, it's a 
 shame to have her kill herself for nothing." Re- 
 luctant to talk longer with Mrs. Higgins, he 
 added in spite of himself : "She seems so lonely." 
 
 "It's two weeks now since that human devil 
 
 went away," Mrs. Higgins said unexpectedly, 
 
 looking quietly into the blue eyes of the visitor. 
 
 "She hasn't opened one of his letters or his tele- 
 
 170
 
 FROM INDIA'S CORAL STRANDS 
 
 grams. She has sold every pin and brooch he 
 ever gave her, scattered the money far and wide. 
 You saw how she went on with Cohen, and her 
 pearls." 
 
 Dan heard her as through a dream. Her words 
 gave form and existence to a dreadful thing he 
 had been trying to deny. 
 
 "Is she hard up now, Mrs. Higgins?" he 
 asked softly. And glancing at him to see just 
 how far she might go, the woman said : 
 
 "An actress who spends and lives as Miss 
 Lane does is always hard up." 
 
 "Could you use money without her knowing 
 about it?" 
 
 "Lord," exclaimed the woman, "it wouldn't be 
 hard, sir! She only knows that there is such a 
 thing as money when the bills come and she 
 hasn't got a penny. Or when the poor come! 
 She's got a heart of gold, sir, for everybody that 
 is in need." 
 
 He took out of his wallet a wad of notes and 
 put them in Higgins' hands. "Just pay up 
 171
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 some bills on the sly, and don't you tell her on 
 your life. I don't want her to be worried." Ex- 
 plaining with sensitive understanding: "It's all 
 right, Mrs. Higgins ; I'm from her town, you 
 know." And the woman who admired him and 
 understood him, and whose life had made her 
 keen to read things as they were, said earnestly : 
 
 "I quite understand how it is, sir. It is just 
 as though it came straight from 'ome. She over- 
 draws her salary months ahead." 
 
 "Have you been with Miss Lane long?" 
 
 "Ever since she toured in Europe, and nobody 
 could serve her without being very fond of her 
 indeed." 
 
 Dan put out his big warm hand eagerly. 
 "You're a corker, Mrs. Higgins." 
 
 "I could walk around the world for her, sir." 
 
 "Go ahead and do it then," he smiled, "and 
 I'll pay for all the boot leather you wear out !" 
 
 As he went down-stairs, already too late to 
 keep an engagement made with his fiancee, he 
 stopped in the writing-room to scribble off a note 
 172
 
 FROM INDIA'S CORAL STRANDS 
 
 of excuse to the duchess. At the opposite table 
 Dan saw Prince Poniotowsky, writing, as well. 
 The Hungarian did not see Blair, and when he 
 had finished his note he called a page boy and 
 Dan could hear him send his letter up to Miss 
 Lane's suite. The young Westerner thought 
 with confident exaltation, "Well, he'll get left 
 all right, and I'm darned if I don't sit here and 
 see him turned down !" 
 
 Dan sat on until the page returned and gave 
 Poniotowsky a verbal message. 
 
 "Will you please come up-stairs, sir?" 
 And Blair saw the Hungarian rise, adjust his 
 eye-glass, and walk toward the lift. 
 
 173
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 GAIX)EEY GIVES ADVICE 
 
 LORD GALOREY had long been used to 
 seeing things go the way they would and 
 should not, and his greatest effort had been at- 
 tained on the day he gave his languid body the 
 trouble to go in and see Ruggles. 
 
 "My God," he muttered as he watched Dan 
 and the duchess on the terrace together they 
 were nevertheless undeniably a handsome pair 
 "to think that this is the way I am returning 
 old Blair's hospitality!" And he was ashamed 
 to recall his western experiences, when in a 
 shack in the mountains he had watched the big 
 stars come out in the heavens and sat late with 
 old Dan Blair, delighted with the simple philos- 
 ophies and the man's high ideals. 
 174.
 
 GALOREY GIVES ADVICE 
 
 "What the devil does it all mean?" he won- 
 dered. "She has simply seduced him, that's all." 
 
 He got Dan finally to himself and without 
 any preparation began, pushing Dan back into 
 a big leather chair, and standing up like a judge 
 over him : 
 
 "Now, you really must listen to me, my dear 
 chap. I shan't rest in my grave unless I get a 
 word with you. Your father sent you here to 
 me and I'm damned if I know what for. I've 
 been wondering every day about it for two 
 months. He didn't know what this set was like 
 or how rotten it is." 
 
 "What set?" The boy looked appallingly 
 young as Gordon stared down at him. There 
 wasn't a line or wrinkle on his smooth brow or on 
 his lips and forehead finely cut and well molded 
 but there were the very seals of what his fa- 
 ther would have been glad to see. The boy had 
 the same clear look and unspoiled frankness that 
 had charmed Galorey at the first. He had been 
 a lazy coward to delay so long. 
 175
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "Why, the rottenness of this set right here in 
 my house." And as the host began to see that 
 he should have to approach a woman's name in 
 speaking, he stopped short, his mouth wide open, 
 and Dan thought he had been drinking. 
 
 "You are talking of marrying Lily," Gordon 
 got out. 
 
 "I am going to marry her." 
 
 "You mustn't." 
 
 Blair got up out of his chair. It didn't need 
 this attack of Galorey's to bring to his mind 
 hints that had been dropped that Galorey was in 
 love with the Duchess of Breakwater. It illumi- 
 nated what Galorey was saying fast and incohe- 
 rently. 
 
 "I mean to say, my dear chap, that you 
 mustn't marry the Duchess of Breakwater. 
 Look at most of these European marriages. 
 They all go to smash. She is older than you are 
 and she has lived her life. You are much too 
 young." 
 
 "Hold up, Galorey; you mustn't go on, you 
 176
 
 GALOREY GIVES ADVICE 
 
 know. You know I am engaged ; that's all there 
 is about it. Now, let's go and have a game of 
 pool." 
 
 Galorey had not worked himself up to this 
 pitch to break off now at a fatal point. 
 
 "I'm responsible for this, and by gad, Dan, 
 I'm going to put you on your guard." 
 
 "You are responsible for nothing, Galorey, 
 and I warn you to drop it." 
 
 "You would listen to your father if he were 
 here, wouldn't you ?" 
 
 "I don't know," said the boy slowly. Then 
 followed up with an honest, "Yes, I would." 
 
 Gordon caught eagerly, "Well, he sent you to 
 me. Your friend Ruggles has gone off and 
 washed his hands of you, but I can't." 
 
 Lord Galorey walked across the room briskly 
 and came back to Dan. "First of all, you are 
 not in love with Lily not a bit of it. You 
 couldn't be and what's more she is not in love 
 with you." 
 
 Blair laughed coolly. "You certainly have 
 177
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 got things down to a fine point, Gordon. I'll be 
 hanged if I understand your game." 
 
 Galorey went bravely on : "Therefore, if nei- 
 ther of you are in love, you understand that 
 there is nothing between you but your money." 
 
 The Englishman got his point out brutally, 
 relieved that the impersonal thing money opened 
 a way for him. He didn't want to be the bound- 
 er and the cad that the mention of the woman 
 would have made him. 
 
 The boy drew in an angry breath. "Gosh," 
 he said, "that cursed money will make me crazy 
 yet ! You are not very flattering to me, Gordon, 
 I swear, and Lily wouldn't thank you for the 
 motives you impute to her." 
 
 "Oh, rot!" returned Gordon more tranquilly. 
 "She hasn't got a human sentiment in her. She's 
 a rock with a woman's face." 
 
 Dan turned his back on his host and walked 
 off into the billiard-room. Galorey promptly fol- 
 lowed him, took down a cue and chalked it, and 
 said: 
 
 178
 
 GALOREY GIVES ADVICE 
 
 "Well, come now; let's put it to the test." 
 Blair began stacking the balls. 
 
 "How do you mean?" 
 
 "Well, when you have had time to get your 
 first news over from Ruggles, tell her you have 
 gone to smash and that you are a pauper." 
 
 "I don't play tricks like that," said the West- 
 erner quietly. 
 
 "No," responded Galorey bitterly, "you let 
 others play tricks on you." 
 
 The young man threw his cue smartly down, 
 his youth looked contemptuously at the worldly 
 man, and he turned pale, but he said in a low 
 voice : 
 
 "Now, you've got to let up on this, Gordon ; I 
 thought at first you had been drinking. I won't 
 listen. Let's get on another subject, or I'll clear 
 out." 
 
 Galorey, however, cool and pitiful of the tan- 
 gle in the boy's affairs, wouldn't let himself be 
 angry. "You are my old chum's boy, Dan," he 
 went on, "and I'm not going to stand by and see 
 179
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 you spoil your life in silence. You are of age. 
 You can go to the devil if you like, but you 
 can't go there under my roof, without a word 
 from me." 
 
 "Then I'll get out from under your roof, to- 
 night." 
 
 "Right ! I don't blame you there, but, before 
 you go, tell Lily you have lost your money, and 
 see what she is made of. My dear chap" he 
 changed his tone to one of affection "don't be 
 an ape; listen to me, for your father's sake; 
 remember your whole life's happiness is in this 
 game. Isn't it worth looking after?" 
 
 "Not at the risk of hurting a woman's feel- 
 ings," said the boy. 
 
 "How can it hurt her, my dear man, to tell 
 her you are poor ?" 
 
 "It's a lie. I'm not up to lying to her ; I don't 
 care to. And you mean to think that if I told 
 her I was busted she would throw me over?" 
 
 "Like a shot, my green young friend like a 
 shot." 
 
 180
 
 GALOREY GIVES ADVICE 
 
 "You haven't a very good opinion of women," 
 Blair threw out with as near a sneer as his fine 
 young face could express. 
 
 "No, not very," agreed the pool player, who 
 had continued his shots with more or less sang- 
 froid. When Galorey had run off his string of 
 balls he said, looking up from the table: "But 
 I've got a very good opinion of that 'nice girl' 
 you told me of when you first came, and I wish to 
 Heaven she had kept you in the States." 
 
 This caught the boy's attention as nothing 
 else had. "There never was any sucK girl," he 
 said slowly ; "there never has been anywhere ; I 
 rather guess they don't grow. You have made 
 me a cad in listening to you, Gordon, but as to 
 playing any of those comedy tricks you suggest, 
 they are not in my line. If she is marrying me 
 for my money, why, she'll get it." 
 
 "You're a coward," said Galorey, "like the 
 rest of American husbands all ideal and no 
 common sense. You want to make a mess of your 
 181
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 life. You haven't the grit to get out of a bad 
 job." 
 
 He spurred himself on and his weak face grew 
 strong as he felt he was compelling the boy's at- 
 tention. "If you only had half the character 
 your father had, you wouldn't make a mistake 
 like this ; you wouldn't run blind into such a deal 
 as this." 
 
 Blair was impressed by his host. Galorey 
 was so deadly in earnest and so honest, and, as 
 Dan's face grew set and hardened, his compan- 
 ion prayed for wisdom. "If I can only win 
 through this without touching Lily hard," he 
 thought, and as he waited, Blair said : 
 
 "You haven't hesitated to call me names, Gor- 
 don. You're not my build or my age, and I 
 can't thrash you." 
 
 And his host said cheerfully: "Oh, yes, you 
 can; come on and try," and, metaphorically 
 speaking, Dan struck his first blow : 
 
 "They say people have said to me that you 
 once cared for Lily yourself." 
 182
 
 GALOREY GIVES ADVICE 
 
 The Englishman's heavy eyelids did not flick- 
 er. "It's quite true." 
 
 Taken back by this frank response, Blair 
 stammered: "Well, I guess that explains every- 
 thing. It's not surprising that you should feel 
 as you 'do. If you are jealous, I can forgive it 
 a little bit, but it is low down to call a woman a 
 fortune hunter." 
 
 Now Gordon Galorey's face changed and 
 grew slightly white. "Don't make me angry, 
 my dear chap," he said in a low tone; "I have 
 said what I wanted to say. Now, go to the devil 
 if you like and as soon as you like." 
 
 And the boy said hotly, stammering in his ex- 
 citement : 
 
 "Not yet not yet not before I tell you what 
 I think." 
 
 Gordon, with wonderful control of his own 
 anger, met the boy's eyes, and said with great 
 patience: 
 
 "No, 'don't, Dan; don't go on. There are 
 many things in this affair that we can't touch 
 183
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 upon. Let it drop. The right woman would 
 make a ripping man of you, but you oughtn't to 
 marry for ten years." 
 
 Dan took the hand which Galorey put out to 
 him, and the Englishman said warmly: "My 
 dear chap, I hope it will all come out right, from 
 my heart." 
 
 Dan, who had regained his balance, said to his 
 friend : 
 
 "I've been very angry at what you said, but 
 you're the chap my father sent me to. There 
 must be something back of this, and I'm going 
 to find out what it is, and I'm going to take my 
 own way to find out. I wouldn't give a rap for 
 anything that came to me through a trick or a 
 lie, and I wouldn't know how to go to her with 
 a cock-and-bull story. I shall act as I feel and 
 go ahead being just as I am, and perhaps she 
 won't want me after all, even if I have got the 
 rocks !" 
 
 And Galorey said heartily : "I wish there was 
 a chance of it." 
 
 184
 
 GALOREY GIVES ADVICE 
 
 When, later, Gordon thought of Dan it was 
 with a glow. "What a chip .of the old block he 
 is," he said ; "what a good bit of character, even 
 at twenty-two years." He was divided between 
 feeling that he had made a mess of things be- 
 tween Dan and himself, and feeling sure that 
 some of his advice had gone hdme. After a mo- 
 ment's silence, Dan Blair's son said: "I'm going 
 up to London to-morrow." 
 
 "For long?" 
 
 "Don't know." 
 
 Then returning with boyish simplicity to their 
 subject, which Galorey thought had been 
 dropped, Dan said: 
 
 "There may be something true in what you 
 say, Gordon. Perhaps she does want my money. 
 I'm not a titled man and I'll never be known for 
 anything except my income. At any rate I was 
 rich when I asked her to marry me, and I'm go- 
 ing to fix up that old place of hers, and I'm glad 
 I've got the coin to do it." 
 
 When, later, for they had been interrupted in 
 185
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 their conversation by the entrance of the lady 
 herself, Gordon, as Ruggles had done, mentally 
 thought of the flowing tide of life, and how it 
 flowed over what he himself had called "rotten 
 ground." Perhaps old Blair was right, he 
 mused, after all. What does it matter if the 
 source is pure at the head water? It's awfully 
 hard to force it at the start, at least. 
 
 186
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE MUSICALS PROGRAM 
 
 THE duchess ran Dan, made plans, set the 
 pace, and they were very much in evi- 
 dence during the season. The young Ameri- 
 can, good-natured and generous, the duchess 
 beautiful and knowing, were the observed of 
 London, and those of her friends who would 
 have tolerated Dan on account of his money, 
 ended by sincerely liking him. The wedding- 
 day had not been fixed as yet, and Dan was not 
 so violently carried away that he could not wait 
 to be married. Meanwhile Gordon Galorey 
 thanked God for the delay and hoped for a mira- 
 cle to break the spell over his friend's son before 
 it should be too late. In early May the question 
 came up regarding the musicale. The duchess 
 made her list and arranged the Sunday after- 
 187
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 noon and her performers to suit her taste, and 
 the week before lounged in her boudoir when 
 Dan and Galorey appeared for a late morning 
 call. 
 
 "There, Dan," she said, holding out a bit of 
 paper, "look at the list and the program, will 
 you?" 
 
 "Sounds and reads all right," commented 
 Dan, handing it on to Galorey. 
 
 Besides being an artistic event, she intended 
 that the concert should serve to present Dan to 
 her special set. She now lit a cigarette and gave 
 one to each of her friends, lighting the English- 
 man's herself. 
 
 "The best names in London," Lord Galorey 
 said. "You see, Dan, we shall trot you out in a 
 royal way. I hope you fully appreciate how 
 swagger this is to be." 
 
 Glancing at the list Blair remarked : 
 
 '"But I don't see Miss Lane's name?" 
 
 "Why should you?" the duchess answered 
 sharply. 
 
 188
 
 THE MUSICALE PROGRAM 
 
 "Why, we planned all along that she was to 
 sing," he returned. 
 
 She gave a long puff to her cigarette. 
 
 "We did rather speak of it. But we shall do 
 very well as we are. The program is full up 
 and it's perfectly ripping as it stands." 
 
 "Yes, there's only just one thing the matter 
 with it," the boy smiled good-naturedly, "and it's 
 easy enough to run her in. I guess Miss Lane 
 could be run in most anywhere on any pro- 
 gram and not clear the house." 
 
 Lord Galorey, who knew nothing about the 
 subject under discussion, said tactfully: "Why, 
 of course, Letty Lane is perfectly charming, but 
 you couldn't get her, my dear chap.'* 
 
 "I think we will let the thing stand as it is," 
 said the duchess, going back to her desk and 
 stirring her paper about, "It's really too late 
 now, you know, Dan." 
 
 Unruffled, but with a determination which 
 Lord Galorey and the lady were far from guess- 
 ing, Blair resumed tranquilly : 
 189
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "Oh, I guess she'll come in all right, late as it 
 is. We'll send word to her and fix it up." 
 
 The duchess turned to him, annoyed: "OK, 
 don't be a beastly bore, dear you are not really 
 serious." 
 
 Dan still smiled at her sweetly. "You bet 
 your life I am, though, Lily." 
 
 She rang a bell at the side of her desk, and 
 when the footman came in gave him the sheet of 
 paper. "See that this is taken at once to the sta- 
 tioner's." 
 
 "Better wait, Lily" her fiance extended his 
 hand "until the program is filled out the way 
 it is going to stand." And Blair fixed his hand- 
 some eyes on his future wife. "Why, we got 
 this shindig up," he noted irreverently, "just so 
 Miss Lane could sing at it." 
 
 "Nonsense," she cried, angry and powerless, 
 "you ridiculous creature ! Fancy me getting up 
 a musicale for Letty Lane ! Do tell Dan to stop 
 bothering and fussing, Gordon. He's too ridic- 
 ulous !" 
 
 190
 
 THE MUSICALE PROGRAM 
 
 And Lord Galorey said: "What is the row 
 anyway?" 
 
 "Why, I want Miss Lane to sing here on 
 Sunday," Dan explained. . . . 
 
 "And I don't want her," finished the Duchess 
 of Breakwater, who was evidently unwilling to 
 force a scene before Lord Galorey. She handed 
 the list to her servant, but Dan intercepted it. 
 
 "Don't send out that list, Lily, as it is." 
 
 He gave it back to her, and his tone was so 
 cool, his expression so decided and quiet, that she 
 was disarmed, and dismissed the servant, telling 
 him to return when she should ring again. 
 Coloring with anger, she tapped the envelope 
 against her brilliantly polished nails. 
 
 If she had been married to Blair she would 
 have burst into a violent rage; if he had been 
 poorer than he was she would have put him in 
 his place. Lord Galorey understood the con- 
 traction of her brows and lips as Dan reminded : 
 "You promised me that you would have her, you 
 know, Lily." 
 
 191
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "Give in, Lily," Galorey advised, rising from 
 the chair where he was lounging. "Give in 
 gracefully." 
 
 And she turned on Galorey the anger which 
 she dared not show the other man. But Dan in- 
 terrupted her, explaining simply : 
 
 "I knew the girl when she was a kid: she is 
 from my old home, and I want Lily to ask her 
 here to sing for us, and then to see if we can't 
 do something to get her out of the state she 
 is in." 
 
 Galorey repeated vaguely, "State?" 
 
 "Why, she's all run down, tired out ; she's got 
 no real friends in London." 
 
 The other man flicked the ash from his cigar- 
 ette and looked at Blair's boy through his mono- 
 cle. 
 
 "And you thought that Lily might befriend 
 her, old chap?" 
 
 "Yes," nodded Dan, "just give her a lift, you 
 know." 
 
 Galorey nodded back, smiling gently. "I see, 
 192
 
 THE MUSICALS PROGRAM 
 
 I see a moral, spiritual lift? I see I see." He 
 glanced at the woman with his strange smile. 
 
 She put her cigarette down and seated herself, 
 clasping her hands around her knees and looked 
 at her fiance. 
 
 "It's none of my business what Letty Lane's 
 reputation is. I don't care, but you must under- 
 stand v one thing, Dan, I'm not a reformer, or a 
 charitable institution, and if she comes here it is 
 purely professional." 
 
 He took the subject as settled, and asked for 
 a copy of the program and put it in his pocket. 
 "I'll get the names of her songs from her and 
 take the thing myself to Harrison's. And I'd 
 better hustle, I guess; there's no time to lose 
 between now and Sunday." And he went out 
 triumphant. 
 
 Galorey remained, smoking, and the duchess 
 continued her notes in silence, cooling down at 
 her desk. Her companion knew her too well to 
 speak to her until she had herself in hand, and 
 when finally she took up her pen and turne'd 
 193
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 about, she appeared conscious for the first of 
 his presence. 
 
 "Here still 1" she exclaimed. 
 
 "I thought I might do for a safety valve, 
 Lily. You could let some of your anger out on 
 me." 
 
 The duchess left her desk and came over to 
 him. 
 
 "I expect you despise me thoroughly, don't 
 you, Gordon?" 
 
 They had not been alone together since her 
 engagement to Blair, for she had taken pains to 
 avoid every opportunity for a tete-a-tete. 
 
 "Despise you?" he repeated gently. "It's 
 awfully hard, isn't it, for a chap like me to de- 
 spise anybody ? We're none of us used to the best 
 quality of behavior, you know, my dear girl." 
 
 "Don't talk rot, Gordon," she murmured. 
 
 "You didn't ask my advice," he continued, 
 "but I don't hesitate to tell you that I have done 
 everything I could to save the boy." 
 
 She accepted this philosophically. "Oh, I 
 194,
 
 THE MUSICALE PROGRAM 
 
 knew you would ; I quite expected it, but " and 
 in the look she threw at him there was more lik- 
 ing than resentment "I knew you, too; you 
 couldn't go very far, my dear fellow." 
 
 "I think Dan Blair is excellent stuff," Gordon 
 said. 
 
 "He is the greenest, youngest, most ridicu- 
 lous infant," she exclaimed with irritation, and 
 he laughed. 
 
 "His money is old enough to walk, however, 
 isn't it, Lily?" She made an angry gesture. 
 
 "I expected you'd say something loathsome." 
 
 Hef companion met her eyes directly. She 
 left her chair and came and sat down beside him 
 on the small sofa. As he did not move, or look 
 at her, but regarded his cigarette with interest, 
 she leaned close to him and whispered : "Gordon, 
 try to be nice and decent. Try to forget your- 
 self. Don't you see what a wonderful chance it 
 is for me, and that, as far as you and I are con- 
 cerned, it can't go on?" 
 
 The face of the man by her side grew somber. 
 195
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 The charm this woman had for him had never 
 lessened since the day when he told her he loved 
 her, long before his marriage, and they were 
 both too poor. 
 
 "We have always been too poor, and Edith is 
 jealous of me every day and hour of her life. 
 Can't you be generous ?" 
 
 He rose and stood over her, looking down at 
 her beautiful form and her somewhat softened 
 face, but his eyes were hard and his face very 
 pale. 
 
 "You had better go, Gordon," she said slowly ; 
 "you had better go. . . ." 
 
 Then, as he obeyed her and went like a flash 
 as far as the door, she followed him and whis- 
 pered softly: "If you're really only jealous, I 
 can forgive you." 
 
 He managed to get out : "His father was my 
 friend ; he sent the boy to me and I've been a bad 
 guardian." He made a gesture of despair. "Put 
 yourself in my place. Let Dan Blair go, Lily ; 
 let him go." 
 
 196
 
 THE MUSICALE PROGRAM 
 
 Her eyelids flickered a little, and she said 
 sharply : "You're out of your senses, Gordon 
 and what if I love him?" 
 
 With a low exclamation he caught her hand 
 at the wrist so hard that she cried out, and he 
 said between his teeth: "You don't love him! 
 Take those words back !" 
 
 "Of course I do. Let me free !" 
 "No," he said passionately, holding her fast. 
 "Not until you take that back." 
 
 His face, his tone, his force, dominated her; 
 the remembrance of their past, a possible future, 
 made her waver under his eyes, and the woman 
 smiled at him as Blair had never seen her smile. 
 "Very well, then, goose," she capitulated al- 
 most tenderly ; "I don't love that boy, of course. 
 I'm marrying him for his money. Now, will you 
 let me go?" 
 
 But he held her still more firmly and kissed her 
 
 several times before he finally set her free, and 
 
 went out of the house miserable bound to her 
 
 by the strongest chains bound in his conscience 
 
 197
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 and by honor to his trust to Dan's father, and 
 yet handicapped by another sense of honor 
 which decrees that man must keep silence to the 
 end. 
 
 198
 
 CHAPTER XVH 
 
 LETTY LANE SINGS 
 
 HE house of the Duchess of Breakwater 
 JL in Park Lane was white, with green blinds 
 and green balconies ; beautiful, distinguished and 
 old, mellow with traditions, and the tide of fash- 
 ion poured its stream into the music-room to 
 listen to the Sunday concert. Without, the day 
 was bland and beautiful, mild spring in the deep 
 sweet air, and already the bloom lay over the 
 park and along the turf. Piccadilly was ablaze 
 with flowers, and in the windows and in the flow- 
 er-women's baskets they were so sweet as to make 
 the heart ache and to make the senses thrill. 
 Keen to the spring beauty, the last guest to go 
 into the drawing-room of the Duchess of Break- 
 water was the young American man in whom the 
 magic of the season had stirred the blood. He 
 199
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 seemed the youngest and the brightest guest to 
 cross the sill of the great house whose debts he 
 was going to pay, and whose future he was go- 
 ing to secure with American money. 
 
 Close after him a motor car rolled up to the 
 curb, and under the awning Letty Lane passed 
 quickly, as though thistledown, blown into the 
 distinguished house. The actress was taken pos- 
 session of by several people and shown up-stairs. 
 
 Dan spoke to his hostess, who wore, over her 
 azure dress, a necklace given her by Dan. She 
 said he was "too late for words," and why hadn't 
 he come before. After greeting him she set him 
 free, and he went eagerly to find his place next 
 an elderly woman whom he liked immensely, Lady 
 Caiwarn. She had given him twenty pounds for 
 some of his poor. Lady Caiwarn had a calm, 
 kind face, and Dan sat down beside her, well out 
 of the crush, and they talked amiably through- 
 out the violin solo. 
 
 "Think of it," she said, "Letty Lane of the 
 Gaiety is going to sing. I'd sit through a great 
 200
 
 LETTY LANE SINGS 
 
 deal for that. Let that man with the fiddle do 
 his worst." 
 
 Blair laughed appreciatively. He thought 
 Lady Caiwarn would be a good friend ?or Miss 
 Lane, better than the duchess herself. "I wish 
 Lily could hear you talk about her violinist," he 
 said, delighted ; "she thinks he's the whole show." 
 And tentatively, his ingenuous eyes fixed on 
 his friend, he asked: "I wonder how you would 
 like to meet Miss Lane. She's perfectly ripping, 
 and she's from my State." 
 
 "Meet her!" Lady Caiwarn exclaimed, but be- 
 fore she could finish, through the room ran the 
 little anticipatory rustle that comes before the 
 great, and which, when they have gone, breaks 
 into applause. The great actress had appeared 
 to give her number. Dan and Lady Caiwarn, 
 behind the palms in a little corner of their own, 
 watched her. 
 
 A clever understanding of the world into 
 which she was to come this day, had made the 
 girl dress like a charm. She stood quietly by 
 201
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 the piano, her hands folde'd. Among the high 
 ladies of the English world in their splendid 
 frocks, their jewels and feathers, she was a sim- 
 ple figure, her dress snow white, high to her 
 throat, unadorned by any gay color, according 
 to the fashion of the time. It was such a dress as 
 Romney might have painted, and under her 
 arms and from across her breast there fell a 
 soft coral-colored silken scarf. The costume 
 was daring in its simplicity. She might have 
 been Emma, Lady Hamilton, because perfectly 
 beautiful, perfectly talented, she could risk se- 
 vere simplicity, having in herself the fire and the 
 art and the seduction. Her hair was a golden 
 crown and her eyes like stars. She was excited, 
 and the scarlet had run along her cheeks like 
 wine spilled over ivory. 
 
 She looked around the room, failed to see 
 Blair, but saw the Duchess of Breakwater in her 
 velvet and her jewels. Letty Lane began to sing. 
 Dan and she had chosen Mandalay and she be- 
 gan with it. Her dress only was simple. All 
 202
 
 LETTY LANE SINGS 
 
 the complexity of her talent, whatever she knew 
 of seduction and charm, she put in the rendering 
 of her song. Even the conventional audience, 
 most of which knew her well, were enchanted 
 over again, and they went wild about her. She 
 had never been so charming. The men clapped 
 her until she began in self-defense another fa- 
 vorite of the moment, and ended in a perfect 
 huzzah of applause. 
 
 She refused to sing again until, in the dis- 
 tance, she saw Dan standing by the column near 
 his seat. Then indicating to the pianist what 
 she wanted, she sang The Earl of Moray, such 
 a rendering of the old ballad as had not been 
 heard in London, and coming, as it did, from 
 the lips of a popular singer whose character 
 and whose verve were not supposed to be sym- 
 pathetic to a piece of music of this kind, the 
 effect was startling. Letty Lane's face grew 
 pale with the touching old tragedy, the scarlet 
 faded from her cheeks, her eyes grew dark and 
 moist, she might indeed herself have been the 
 203
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 lady looking from the castle wall while they 
 carried the body of her dead lover under those 
 beautiful eyes. 
 
 Dan felt his heart grow cold. If she had 
 awakened him when he was a little boy, she 
 thrilled him now ; he could have wept. Lady Cai- 
 warn did wipe tears away. When the last note 
 of the accompaniment had ended, Dan's friend at 
 his side said: "How utterly ravishing! What 
 a beautiful, lovely creature ; how charming and 
 how frail !" 
 
 He scarcely answered. He was making his 
 way to Letty Lane, and he wrung her hand, 
 murmuring, "Oh, you're great; you're great!" 
 And the pleasure on his face repaid her over 
 and over again. "Come, I want you to meet 
 the Duchess of Breakwater, and some other 
 friends of mine." 
 
 As he let her little cold hand fall and turned 
 
 about, the room as by magic had cleared. The 
 
 prime minister had arrived late and was in the 
 
 other room. The refreshments were also being 
 
 #04
 
 LETTY LANE SINGS 
 
 served. There was no one to meet Letty Lane, 
 except for several young men who came up 
 eagerly and asked to be presented, Gordon Ga- 
 lorey among them. 
 
 "Where's Lily?" Dan asked him; "I want her 
 to meet Miss Lane." 
 
 "In the conservatory with the prime minis- 
 ter," and Galorey looked meaningly at Dan, as 
 much as to say, "Now don't be an utter fool." 
 
 But Letty Lane herself saved the situation. 
 She shook hands with the utmost cordiality and 
 sweetness with the men who had been presented 
 to her, and asked Dan to take her to her motor. 
 He waited for her at the door and she came 
 down wrapped around as usual in her filmy scarf. 
 
 "Are you better?" he asked eagerly. "You 
 look awfully stunning, and I don't think I can 
 ever thank you enough." 
 
 She assured him that she was "all right," and 
 
 that she had a "lovely new role to learn and that 
 
 it was coming on next month." He helped her 
 
 in and she seemed to fill the motor like a basket 
 
 205
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN; 
 
 of fresh white flowers. Again he repeated, as 
 he held the door open : 
 
 "I can't thank you enough : you were a great 
 success." 
 
 She smiled wickedly, and couldn't resist : 
 
 "Especially with the women." 
 
 Dan's face flushed; he was already deeply 
 hurt for her, and her words showed him that the 
 insult had gone home. 
 
 "Where are you going now ?" 
 
 "Right to the Savoy." 
 
 Without another word, hatless as he was, he 
 got into the motor and closed the door. 
 
 "I'm going to take you home," he informed 
 her quietly, "and there's no use in looking at 
 me like that either ! When I'm set on a thing I 
 get it !" 
 
 They rolled away in the bland sunset, passed 
 the park, down Piccadilly, where the flowers in 
 the streets were so sweet that they made the 
 heart ache, and the air through the window was 
 so sweet that it made the senses swim ! 
 206
 
 CHAPTER XVHI 
 
 A WOMAN'S WAY 
 
 WHEN the duchess thought of looking 
 for Blair later in the afternoon he was 
 not to be found. Galorey told her finally he had 
 gone off in the motor with Letty Lane, bare- 
 headed. The duchess was bidding good-by to 
 the last guest; she motioned Galorey to wait 
 and he did so, and they found themselves alone 
 in the room where the flowers, still fresh, offered 
 their silent company; the druggets strewn with 
 leaves of smilax, the open piano with its scat- 
 tered music, the dark rosewood that had served 
 for a rest for Letty Lane's white hand. Ga- 
 lorey and the duchess turned their backs on the 
 music-room, and went into a small conservatory 
 looking out over the park. 
 
 "He's nothing but a cowboy," the lady ex- 
 claimed. "He must be quite mad, going off 
 bareheaded through London with an actress." 
 207
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "He's spoiled," Lord Galorey said peacefully. 
 
 She carried a bunch of orchids Dan had given 
 her, and regarded them absently. "I've made 
 him angry, and he's taking this way of exhibit- 
 ing his spleen." 
 
 Galorey said cheerfully : "Oh, Dan's got lots 
 of spirit." 
 
 Looking up from the contemplation of her 
 flowers to her friend, the duchess murmured 
 with a charming smile: "I don't hit it off very 
 well with Americans, Gordon." 
 
 His color rising, Galorey returned: "I think 
 you'll have to let Dan go, Lily !" 
 
 For a second she thought so herself ; and they 
 both started when the voice of the young man 
 himself was heard in the next room. 
 
 "Good-by, I'll let you make your peace, Lily," 
 and Gordon passed Dan in the drawing-room in 
 leaving, and thought the boy's face was a study. 
 
 The duchess held out her hand to Dan as he 
 came across the room. 
 
 "Come here," she called agreeably. "Every 
 208
 
 A WOMAN'S WAY 
 
 one has gone, thank heaven ! I've been waiting 
 for you for an age. Let's talk it all over." 
 
 "Just what I've come back to do." 
 
 There had been royalty at the musicale, and 
 the hostess spoke of her guests and their ap- 
 proval, mentioning one by one the names of the 
 great. It might have impressed the ear of a 
 man more snob than was the Montana copper 
 king's son. "I did so want you to meet the 
 Bishop of London," she said. "But nobody 
 could find you. You look most awfully well, 
 Dan," and with the orchids she held, she touched 
 his hand. 
 
 He was so direct, so incapable of anything 
 but the honest truth, that Dan didn't know deceit 
 when he saw it, and his lady spoke so naturally 
 that he thought for a moment her rudeness had 
 been unintentional. Perhaps she hadn't really 
 meant Everybody in her set was rude, great 
 and rude, but she could be deliciously gracious, 
 and was so now. 
 
 "Don't you think it went off well?" 
 209
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 Dan said that it had been ripping and no mis- 
 take. 
 
 "I like Lady Caiwarn ; she's bully, and I liked 
 the king. He spoke to me as if he had known 
 me for a year." 
 
 She began to be a little more at her ease. 
 
 "I didn't care much for the fiddling, but Letty 
 Lane made up for all the rest," said Dan. 
 "Wasn't she great?" 
 
 "Ra-ther!" The duchess' tone was so warm 
 that he asked frankly: "Well, why didn't you 
 speak to her, Lily?" And the directness caught 
 her unprepared. The insult to the actress by 
 which she had planned to teach him a lesson failed 
 to give her the bravado she found she needed to 
 meet Dan's question. Her part of the trans- 
 action, deliberate, unkind, seemed worse and 
 more serious through his headlong act, when he 
 had driven off, braving her, in the motor of an 
 actress. She didn't dare to be jealous. 
 
 "Wasn't it too dreadful?" she murmured. "Do 
 you think she noticed it too awfully? I was just 
 210
 
 A WOMAN'S WAY 
 
 about to go up and speak to her when the prime 
 minister " 
 
 Dan interrupted the duchess. He blushed for 
 her. 
 
 "Never mind, Lily." His tone had in it some- 
 thing of benevolence. "If you really didn't 
 mean to be mean " 
 
 She was enchanted by her easy victory. "It 
 was abominable." 
 
 "Yes," he accepted, "it was just that! I was 
 mortified. You wouldn't treat a beggar so. But 
 she's got too much sense to care." 
 
 Eager to do the duchess justice, even though 
 he was little by little being emancipated, he was 
 all the more determined to be fair to her. 
 
 "It was too sweet of her not to mind. I dare 
 say her check helped to soothe her feelings," the 
 woman said. 
 
 "You don't know her," he replied quietly. 
 "She wouldn't touch a cent." 
 
 The duchess exclaimed in horror: "Then she 
 did mind." 
 
 211
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 And he returned slowly: "She's eaten and 
 drunk with kings, and if the king hadn't gone 
 so early you can bet he would have set the fash- 
 ion differently. Let's drop the question. She 
 sent you back your check, and I guess you're 
 quits." 
 
 With a sharp note in her voice she said: "I 
 hope it won't be in the papers that you drove 
 bareheaded back to the hotel with her. Don't 
 forget that we are dining with the Galoreys, 
 and it's past seven." 
 
 After Dan had left her, the duchess glanced 
 over the dismantled room which the servants 
 were already restoring to order. She was not at 
 ease and not at peace, but there was something 
 else besides her tiff with Dan that absorbed her, 
 and that was Galorey. She couldn't quite shake 
 him off. He was beginning to be imperious in 
 his demands on her; and, in spite of her cupid- 
 ity and her debts, in spite of the precarious posi- 
 tion in which she found herself with Dan, she 
 could not break with Galorey yet. She went up-
 
 A WOMAN'S WAY 
 
 stairs humming under her breath the ballad 
 Letty Lane had sung in the music- room : 
 
 "And long will his lady look from the castle 
 wall." 
 
 813
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 DAN AWAKES 
 
 THE next night Dan, magnetically drawn 
 down the Strand to the Gaiety, arrived 
 just before the close of the last act, slipped in, 
 and sat far back watching Letty Lane close her 
 part. After hearing her sing as she had the after- 
 noon before in the worldly group, it was curious 
 to see her before the public in her flashing dress 
 and to realize how much she was a thing of the 
 people. To-night she was a completely personal 
 element to Dan. He could never think of her 
 again as he had hitherto. The sharp drive 
 through the town that afternoon in her motor 
 had made a change in his feelings. He had been 
 hurt for her, with anger at the Duchess of 
 Breakwater's rudeness, and from the first he had 
 always known that there was in him a hot cham-
 
 DAN AWAKES 
 
 pionship for the actress. To-night, whenever 
 the man who sang with her, put his arms around 
 her, danced with her, held her, it was an of- 
 fense to Dan Blair; it had angered him before, 
 but to-night it did more. One by one everything 
 faded out of his foreground but the brilliant lit- 
 tle figure with her golden hair, her lovely face, 
 her beautiful graceful body, and in her last 
 gesture on the stage before the curtain went 
 down, she seemed to Blair to call him and dis- 
 tinctly to make an appeal to him : 
 
 "You might rest your weary feet 
 If you came to Mandalay." 
 
 Well, there was nothing weary about the 
 young, live, vigorous American, as, standing 
 there in his dark edge of the theater, his hands in 
 his pockets, his bright face fixed toward the 
 stage, he watched the slow falling of the curtain 
 on the musical drama. Dan realized how full of 
 vigor he was ; he felt strong and capable, indeed 
 a feeling of power often came to him delight- 
 215
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 fully, but it had never been needful for him to 
 exert his forces, he had never had need to show 
 his mettle. Now he felt at those words : 
 
 "You might rest your weary feet" 
 
 how, with all his heart, he longed that the 
 dancer should rest those lovely tired little feet 
 of hers, far away from any call of the public, 
 far away on some lovely shore which the hymn 
 tune called the coral strand. As he gazed at 
 her mobile, sensitive face, whose eyes had seen 
 the world, and whose lips Dan's thoughts 
 changed here with a great pang, and the close 
 of all his meditations was : "Gosh, she ought to 
 rest!" 
 
 The boy walked briskly back of the scenes to- 
 ward the little door, behind which, as he tapped, 
 he hoped with all his heart to hear her voice bid 
 him come in. But there were other voices in the 
 room. He rattled the door-knob and Letty Lane 
 herself called to him without opening the door : 
 216
 
 DAN AWAKES 
 
 "Will you go, please, Mr. Blair? I can't see 
 any one to-night." 
 
 He had nothing to do but to go to grind his 
 heel as he turned to swear deeply against Po- 
 niotowsky. His late ecstasy was turned to gall. 
 The theater seemed horrible to him : the chatter- 
 ing of the chorus girls, their giggles, their 
 laughter as he passed the little groups, all 
 seemed weird and infernal, and everything be- 
 came an object of irritation. 
 
 As he went blindly out of the theater he struck 
 his arm against a piece of stage fittings and the 
 blow was sharp and stinging, but he was glad of 
 the hurt. 
 
 Without, in the street, Dan took his place 
 with the other men and waited, a bitter taste 
 in his mouth and anger in his breast, waited 
 until Letty Lane fluttered down, followed by 
 Poniotowsky, and the two drove away. 
 
 The young man could have gone after, run- 
 ning behind the motor, but there was a taxicab 
 at hand; he jumped in it, ordering the man to
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 follow the car to the Savoy. There the boy had 
 the pleasure of seeing Miss Lane enter the hotel, 
 Poniotowsky with her had the anguish of see- 
 ing them both go up in the lift to her apart- 
 ments. 
 
 When Dan came to himself he heard the 
 chimes of St. Martin's ring out eleven. He then 
 remembered for the first time that he had prom- 
 ised to dine alone at home with the Duchess of 
 Breakwater. 
 
 "Gosh, Lily will be wild!" 
 
 In spite of the lateness of the hour he hur- 
 ried to Park Lane. The familiar fa'ce of the 
 man-servant who let him in blurred before the 
 young man's eyes. Her grace was out at the 
 theater? Blair would wait then, and he went 
 into the small drawing-room, quiet, empty, re- 
 poseful, with a fire across the andirons, for the 
 evening was damp and cool. Still dazed by his 
 jealous, passionate emotions, he glanced about 
 the room, chose a long leather sofa, and stretch- 
 ing out his length, fell asleep. There in the 
 218
 
 DAN AWAKES 
 
 shadow he slept profoundly, waking suddenly 
 to find that he was not alone. Across the room 
 the Duchess of Breakwater stood by the table ; 
 she was in evening dress, her cloak and gloves 
 on the chair at her side. She laughed softly 
 and the man to whom she laughed, on whom she 
 smiled, was Lord Galorey. 
 
 Blair raised himself up on the sofa without 
 making any noise, and" he saw Galorey take the 
 woman in his arms. The sight didn't make the 
 fiance angry. He realized instantly that he 
 wanted to believe that It was true, and as there 
 was nothing theatrical in the young Westerner, 
 he sprang up, slang so much a part of his na- 
 ture that the first words that came to his lips 
 was a phrase in vogue. 
 
 "Look who's here !" he cried, and came blithely 
 forward, his head clear, his lips smiling. 
 
 The duchess gave a little scream and Dan 
 lounged up to the two people and held his hand 
 frankly out to the lady. 
 
 "That's all right, Lily! Go right on, Gordon, 
 219
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 please. Onlj I had to let you know when I 
 waked up ! Only fair. I guess I must have been 
 asleep quite a while." 
 
 The Duchess of Breakwater shrugged. "I 
 don't know what you dreamed," she said acidly, 
 "if you were asleep." 
 
 "Well, it was a very pretty dream," the boy 
 returned, "and showed what a stupid ass I've 
 been to think I couldn't have dreamed it when I 
 was awake." 
 
 "I think you are crazy," the duchess ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 But Blair repeated: "That's all right. I 
 mean to say as far as I am concerned " 
 
 And Galorey, in order to stand by his lady, 
 murmured : 
 
 "My dear chap, you have been dreaming." 
 
 But Blair met the Englishman's gray eyes 
 with his blue ones. "I did have a bottle of cham- 
 pagne, Gordon, that's a fact, but it couldn't 
 make me see what I did see." 
 
 "Dan," the Duchess of Breakwater broke in,
 
 DAN AWAKES 
 
 "let Gordon take you home, like a dear. You're 
 really ragging on in a ridiculous way." 
 
 Blair looked at her steadily, and as he did so 
 he repeated: 
 
 "That's all right, Lily. Gordon cares a lot, 
 and the truth of the matter is that I do not." 
 
 She grew very pale. 
 
 "I would have stuck to my word, of course," 
 he went on, "but we'd have been infernally un- 
 happy and ended up in the divorce courts. Now, 
 this little scene here of yours lets me out, and I 
 don't lay it up against either of you." 
 
 "Gordon !" she appealed to her lover, "why, in 
 Heaven's name, don't you speak !" 
 
 The Englishman realized that while he was 
 glad at heart, he regretted that he had been the 
 means of her losing the chance of her life. 
 
 "What do you want me to say, Lily?" he ex- 
 claimed with a desperate gesture. "I can't tell 
 him I don't love you. I have loved you, God 
 help me, for ten years." 
 
 She could have killed him for it. 
 221
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "I can tell you, Dan, if you want me to," Ga- 
 lorey went on, "that I don't believe she cares a 
 penny for any one on the face of the earth, for 
 you or me." 
 
 Old Dan Blair's son showed his business train- 
 ing. His one idea was to "get out," and as he 
 didn't care who the Duchess of Breakwater loved 
 or didn't love, he wanted to break away as fast 
 as he could. He sat down at the table under the 
 light of the lamp and drew out his wallet with 
 its compact, thick little check book, the million- 
 aire's pass to most of the things that he wants. 
 
 "You've taught me a lot," he said to the 
 Duchess of Breakwater, "and my father sent me 
 over here for that. I have been awfully fond of 
 you, too. I thought I was fonder than I am, I 
 guess. At any rate I want to stand by one of my 
 promises. That old place of yours Stainer 
 Court now that's got to be fixed up." 
 
 He made a few computations on paper, lifted 
 the pad to her with the figures on it, round, gen- 
 erous and full.
 
 DAN AWAKES 
 
 "At home," he said, "in Blairtown, we have 
 what we call ^engagement* parties, when each 
 fellow brings a present to the girl, but this is 
 what we might call a 'broken engagement par- 
 ty.' Now, I can't," the boy went on, "give this 
 money to you very well ; it won't look right. We 
 will have to fix that up some way or other. You 
 will have to say you got an unexpected inher- 
 itance from some uncle in Australia." He smiled 
 at Galorey: "We will fix it up together." 
 
 His candor, his simplicity, were so charming, 
 he stood before the two so young, so clear, so 
 clean, that a sudden tenderness for him, and a 
 sense of what she had lost, what she never had 
 had, made her exclaim : 
 
 "Dan, I really don't care a pin for the money 
 I don't" but the hand she held out was seized 
 by the other man and held fast. Galorey said : 
 
 "Very well, let it go at that. You don't care 
 for the money, but you will take it just the same. 
 Now, don't, for God's sake, tell him that you 
 care for him." 
 
 223
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 He made her meet his eyes this time : stronger 
 than she, Galorey forced her to be sincere. She 
 set Dan free and he turned and left them stand- 
 ing there facing each other. He softly crossed 
 the room, and looking back, he saw them, tall, 
 distinguished, both of them under the lamplight 
 enemies, and yet the closest friends bound by 
 the strongest tie in the world. 
 
 As Dan went out through the curtains of the 
 room and they fell behind him, the Duchess of 
 Breakwater sank down in the chair by the side of 
 the table ; she buried her face. Gordon Galorey 
 bent over her and again took her in his arms, 
 and she suff ered it. 
 
 224
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 A HAND CLASP 
 
 IT WAS one o'clock. Blair called a hansom 
 and told the driver to take him to the Carl- 
 ton, and leaning back in the vehicle he breathed 
 a long sigh. He looked like his father, but he 
 didn't know it. He felt old. He was a man and a 
 tired one and a free one, and the sense of this 
 liberty began to refresh him like a breeze over 
 parched sand. He thought over what he had 
 left for a second, stopped longest in pitying 
 Galorey, then went into the Carlton restaurant 
 to order some supper, for he began to feel the 
 need of food. He had not time to drink his 
 wine and partake of the cold pheasant before he 
 saw that opposite him the two people who had 
 taken their table were Letty Lane and Ponio- 
 towsky. The woman's slender back was turned 
 225
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 to Blair, and his heart gave a leap of pain at the 
 sight of the man with her, and the cruel suffer- 
 ing began again. 
 
 Dan gave up the idea of eating: drank a 
 whole bottle of champagne, then pushed it away 
 from him violently. "Hold up," he told himself, 
 "you're getting dangerous; this drinking won't 
 do." So he sat drumming on the table looking 
 into the air. When those two got up to go, 
 however, he would go with them ; that was sure. 
 He could never see them go out together again ; 
 no no no ! 'As his brain grew a bit clearer he 
 saw that they were having a heated discussion 
 between them, and as the room emptied finally, 
 save for themselves, Dan, though he could not 
 hear what Poniotowsky said, understood that he 
 was urging something which the girl did not 
 wish to grant. When they left he rose as well, 
 and at the door of the restaurant the actress and 
 her companion paused, and Dan saw her face, 
 deadly pale. There were tears in her eyes. 
 
 "For God's sake !" he heard her murmur, and
 
 A HAND CLASP 
 
 she impatiently drew Her cloak around her shoul- 
 ders. Poniotowsky put out his hand tolielp her, 
 but she drew back from him, exclaiming violent- 
 ly : "Oh, no no !" Before he was aware what 
 he was doing, Dan was holding his hand out to 
 Miss Lane. 
 
 How she turned to him ! God of dreams ! How 
 she took in one cold hand his hand; just the 
 grasp a man needs to lead him to offer the serv- 
 ice of his life. Her hand was icy it thrilled 
 him to his marrow. 
 
 "Oh you " she breathed. "Hello!" 
 
 No words could have been more commonplace, 
 less in the category of dramatic or poetic wel- 
 come, but they were music to the boy, and when 
 the actress looked at him with a ghost of a smile 
 on her trembling lips, Dan was sure there was 
 some kind of blessing in the greeting. 
 
 "I am going to see you home," he said with 
 determination, and she caught at it: 
 
 "Yes, yes, do! Will you?" 
 
 The third member of the party had not 
 227
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 spoken. A servant fetched him a light to which 
 he bent, touching his cigar. Then he lifted his 
 head a handsome one with its cold and indif- 
 ferent eyes, to Lettj Lane. 
 
 "Good night, Miss Lane." A deep color crept 
 under his dark skin. 
 
 "Come," said the actress eagerly, "come 
 along; my motor is out there and I am crazy 
 tired. That is all there is about it. Come 
 along." 
 
 Snatched from a marriage contract, still bit- 
 ter from his jealous anger, this to be alone 
 with her by the side of this white, fragrant, 
 wonderful creature to have been turned to by 
 her, to be alone with her, the Duchess of Break- 
 water out of his horizon, Poniotowsky gone 
 Oh, it was sweet to him ! They had rolled out 
 from the Carlton down toward the Square and he 
 put his arm around her waist, his voice shook : 
 
 "You are dead tired! And when I saw that 
 brute with you to-night I could have shot him." 
 
 "Take your arm away, please." 
 228
 
 A HAND CLASP 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Take it away. I don't like it. Let my hand 
 go. What's the matter with you? I thought I 
 could trust you." 
 
 He said humbly: "You can certainly you 
 can." 
 
 "I am tired tired tired!" 
 
 Under his breath he said : "Put your head on 
 my shoulder, Letty, darling." 
 
 And she turned on him nearly as violently as 
 she had on Poniotowsky, and burst into tears, 
 crouching almost in the corner of the motor, 
 away from him, both her hands upon her breast. 
 
 "Oh, can't you see how you bother me? Can't 
 you see I want to rest and be all alone ? You are 
 like them all like them all. Can't I rest any- 
 where?" 
 
 The very words she used were those he had 
 thought of when he saw her dance at the theater, 
 and his heart broke within him. 
 
 "You can," he stammered, "rest right Here. 
 God knows I want you to rest more than any- 
 829
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 thing. I won't touch you or breathe again or 
 do anything you don't want me to." 
 
 She covered her face with her hands and sat 
 so without speaking to him. The light in her 
 motor shone over her like a kindly star, as, 
 wrapped in 4 her filmy things she lay, a white 
 rose blown into a sheltered nook. After a little 
 she wiped her eyes and said more naturally : 
 
 "You look perfectly dreadfully, boy! What 
 have you been doing with yourself?" 
 
 They had reached the Savoy. It seemed to 
 Dan they were always just driving up to where 
 some one opened a door, out of which she was to 
 fly away from him. He got out before her and 
 helped her from the car. 
 
 "Well, I've got a piece of news to tell you. I 
 have broken my engagement with the duchess." 
 
 This brought her back far enough into life to 
 make her exclaim: "Oh, I am glad! That's 
 perfectly fine! I don't know when I've heard 
 anything that pleased me so much. Come and 
 see me to-morrow and tell me all about it." 
 230
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 KUGGLES RETURNS 
 
 DAN did not fall asleep until morning, and 
 then he dreamed of Blairtown and the 
 church and a summer evening and something 
 like the drone of the flies on the window-pane 
 soothed him, and came into his waking thoughts, 
 for at noon he was violently shaken by the shoul- 
 der and a man's voice called him as he opened his 
 eyes and looked into Ruggles' face. 
 
 "Gee Whittaker !" Ruggles exclaimed. "You 
 are one of the seven sleepers! I've been here 
 something like seventeen minutes, whistling and 
 making all kinds of barnyard noises." 
 
 As Dan welcomed him, rubbing the sleep from 
 his eyes, Ruggles told him that he had come over 
 "the pond" just for the wedding. 
 
 "There isn't going to be any wedding, Josh! 
 Got out of all that last night." 
 
 Ruggles had the breakfast card in his hand,
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 which the waiter had brought in, and Dan, tak- 
 ing it from his friend, ordered a big breakfast. 
 
 "I'm as hungry as the dickens, Rug, and I 
 guess you are, too." 
 
 "What was the matter with the duchess?" 
 Ruggles asked. "Were you too young for her, 
 or not rich enough?" 
 
 Significantly the boy answered: "One too 
 many, Josh," and Ruggles winced at the re- 
 sponse. 
 
 "Here are the fellows with my trunks and 
 things," he announced as the porters came in 
 with his luggage. "Just drop them there, boys ; 
 they're going to fix some kind of a room later." 
 
 Blair's long silk-lined coat lay on a chair where 
 he had flung it, his hat beside it, and Ruggles 
 went over to the corner and lifted up a fragrant 
 glove. It was one of Letty Lane's gloves which 
 Dan had found in the motor and taken possession 
 of. The young man had gone to his dressing- 
 room and begun running his bath, and Ruggles, 
 laying the glove on the table, said to himself :
 
 RUGGLES RETURNS 
 
 "I knew he would get rid of the duchess, all 
 right" 
 
 But when Dan came back into the room later 
 in his dressing-gown for breakfast, Ruggles 
 said: 
 
 "You'll have to send her back her glove, 
 Dannie." 
 
 At the sight of it beside the breakfast tray, 
 Dan blushed scarlet. He picked up the fragrant 
 object. 
 
 "That's all right; I'll take care of it." 
 
 "Is Mandalay running the same as ever?" 
 Ruggles asked over his bacon and eggs. 
 
 "Same as ever." 
 
 Ruggles saw he had not returned in vain, and 
 that he was destined to take up his part of the 
 business just as he had laid it out for himself 
 to Lord Galorey. "It's up to me now : I'll have 
 to take care of the actress, and I'm darned 
 if I haven't got a job. If Dan colors up like 
 that at the sight of her glove, I wonder what he 
 does when he holds her hand !"
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 WHAT WILL YOU TAKE? 
 
 WHEN Dan, on the minute o'f two, went 
 to the Savoy, Higgins, as was her cus- 
 tom, idid not meet him. Miss Lane met him 
 herself. She was reading a letter by the table, 
 and when Dan was announced she put it back 
 in its envelope. Blair had seen her only in 
 soft clinging evening dresses, in white vision- 
 ary clothes, or in her dazzling part costume, 
 where the play dress of the dancer displayed her 
 beauty and her charms. To-day she wore a 
 tailor-made gown, and in her dark cloth dress, 
 in her small hat, she seemed a new woman some 
 one he hadn't known and did not know, and he 
 experienced the thrill a man always feels when 
 the woman he loves appears in an unaccustomed 
 dress and suggests a new mystery. 
 
 "Oh, I say ! You're not going out, are you?" 
 234
 
 WHAT WILL YOU TAKE? 
 
 In the lapel of her close little coat was a flower 
 he had given her. He wanted to lean forward 
 and kiss it as it rested there. She assured him : 
 
 "I have just come in ; had an early lunch and 
 took a long walk think of it ! I haven't taken 
 a walk alone since I can remember !" 
 
 Her walk had given her only the ghost of a 
 flush, which rose over her delicate skin, fading 
 away like a furling flag. Her frailness, her 
 slenderness, the air of good-breeding her dress 
 gave her, added to Dan's deepening emotions. 
 She seemed infinitely dear, and a thing to be 
 protected and fostered. 
 
 "Can't you sit down for a minute? I've come 
 to make you a real call." 
 
 "Of course," she laughed. "But, first, I must 
 answer this letter." 
 
 His jealousy rose and he caught hold of 
 her hand that held the envelope. "Look here, 
 you are not to write it if it is to that damned 
 scoundrel. I took you away from him last night 
 and you are never to see him again."
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN" 
 
 For the first time the two really looked at 
 each other. Her lips parted as though she would 
 reprove him, and the boy murmured : 
 
 "That's all right. I mean what I say never 
 to see him again! Will you promise me? Prom- 
 ise me I can't bear it ! I won't have it !" 
 
 'A film of emotion crossed his clear young eyes 
 and her slender hands were held fast in his clasp. 
 His face was beautiful in its tenderness and in a 
 righteous anger as he bent it on her. Instead 
 of reproving him as she had done before, instead 
 of snatching away her hands, she swayed, and 
 at the sight of her weakness his eyes cleared, and 
 the film lifted like a curtain. She was not faint- 
 ing, but, as her face turned toward his, he saw 
 it transformed, and Dan caught her in her dark 
 dress, the flowers in her bodice, to his heart. He 
 held her as if he had snatched her from a wreck 
 and in a safe embrace lifted her high to the 
 shore of a coral strand. He kissed her, first tim- 
 idly, wonderingly, with the sacrament of first 
 love on his lips. Then he kissed her as his heart 
 236
 
 WHAT WILL YOU TAKE? 
 
 bade him, and when he set her free she was cry- 
 ing, but the tears on his face were not all her 
 tears. 
 
 "Little boy, how crazy, how perfectly crazy ! 
 Oh, Dan Dan !" 
 
 She clung to him, looking up at him just as 
 his boy-dreams had told him a girl would look 
 some day. Her face was suffused and softened, 
 her lips her coral-red, fine, lovely lips were 
 trembling, and her eyes were as gray, as pro- 
 found as those seas his imagination had longed 
 to explore. Made poet for the first time in his 
 life, as his arms were around her, he whispered : 
 "You are all my dreams come true. If any man 
 comes near you I'll kill him just as sure as fate. 
 I'll kill him!" 
 
 "Hush, hush! I told you you were crazy. 
 We're both perfectly mad. I have tried my best 
 not to come to this with you. What would your 
 father say ? Let me go, let me go ; I'll call Hig- 
 gins." 
 
 The boy laughed aloud, the laugh of happy 
 237
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 youth. He held her so close that she might as 
 well have tried to loose herself from an iron im- 
 age of the Spanish Inquisition as from his 
 young arms. This slender, delicious, willowy 
 thing he held was Letty Lane, the adored star 
 London went mad over: the triumph of it! It 
 flashed through him as his pulses beat and his 
 heart was high with the conquest, but it was to 
 the woman only that he whispered : 
 
 "I've said a lot of stuff and I am likely to say 
 a lot more, but I want you to say something to 
 me. Don't you love me?" 
 
 The word on his lips to him was as strange, 
 as wonderful, as though it had been made for 
 him. 
 
 "I guess I must love you, Dan. I guess I 
 must have for a long time." 
 
 "God, I'm so glad ! How long?" 
 
 "Why, ever since you used to come to the soda 
 fountain and ask for chocolate. You don't know 
 how sweet you were when you were a little boy." 
 
 She put her slender hand against his hot- 
 238
 
 WHAT WILL YOU TAKE? 
 
 cheek. "And you are nothing but a little boy 
 now ! I think I must be crazy !" 
 
 As he protested, as she listened intently to 
 what his emotion taught him to say to her, she 
 whispered close to his ear : 
 
 "What will you take, little boy?" 
 
 And he answered : "I'll take you you !" 
 
 At a slight sound in the next room Letty Lane 
 started as though the interruption really 
 brought her to her senses, put her hand to her 
 disheveled hair, and before she could prevent it, 
 Dan had called Mrs Higgins to "come in," and 
 the woman, in response, came into the sitting- 
 room. The boy went up to her and took her 
 hands eagerly, and said : 
 
 "It's all right, all right, Mrs. Higgins. Just 
 think of it ! She belongs to me !" 
 
 "Oh, don't be a perfect lunatic, Dan," the 
 actress exclaimed, half laughing, half crying, 
 "and don't listen to him, Higgins. He's just 
 crazy." 
 
 But the old woman's eyes went bright at the 
 239
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 boy's face and tone. "I never was so glad of 
 anything in my life." 
 
 "As of what?" asked her mistress sharply, 
 and the tone was so cold and so suddenly altered 
 that Dan felt a chill of despair. 
 
 "Why, at what Mr. Blair says, Miss." 
 
 "Then," said her mistress, "you ought to be 
 ashamed of yourself. He's only twenty-two, 
 he doesn't know anything about life. You must 
 be crazy. He's as mad as a March hare and he 
 ought to be in school." 
 
 Then, to their consternation, she burst into a 
 passion of weeping; threw herself on Higgins' 
 breast and begged her to send Dan away to 
 send everybody away and to let Her die in 
 peace. 
 
 In utter despair the boy obeyed the dresser's 
 motion to go, and his transport was changed 
 into anxiety and dread. He hung about down- 
 stairs in the Savoy for the rest of the afternoon, 
 finally sending up to Higgins for news in sheer 
 desperation, and the page fetched Blair a note 
 240
 
 WHAT WILL YOU TAKE? 
 
 in Letty Lane's own hand. His eyes blurred so 
 as he opened the sheet, he could hardly read the 
 scrawl which said : 
 
 "It was perfectly sweet of you to wait down 
 there. I'm all right just tired out! Better 
 get on a boat and go to Greenland's Icy Moun- 
 tains and cool off. But if you don't, come in to- 
 morrow and have lunch with me. LETTY." 
 
 241
 
 CHAPTER XXHI 
 
 IN THE SUNSET GLOW 
 
 HE LIVED through a week of bliss and of 
 torture. One minute she promised to 
 marry him, give up the stage, go around the 
 world on a yacht, whose luxuries, Dan planned, 
 should rival any boat ever built, or they would 
 motor across Asia and see, one by one, the vari- 
 ous coral strands and the golden sands of the 
 East. He could not find terms to express how 
 he would spend upon her this fortune of his, 
 which, for the first time, began to have value in 
 his eyes. Money had been lavished on her, 
 still she seemed dazzled. Then she would push 
 it all away from her in disgust tell him she 
 was sick of everything that she didn't want 
 any new jewels or any new clothes, and that she 
 never wanted to see the stage again or any place
 
 IN THE SUNSET GLOW 
 
 again ; that there was nowhere she wanted to go, 
 nothing she wanted to see that he must get 
 some fresh girl to whom he could show life, not 
 one whom he must try to make forget it. Then, 
 again, she would say that she loved the stage and 
 her art wouldn't give it up for any one in the 
 world that it was fatal to marry an actress 
 that it was mad for him to think of marrying 
 her, anyway that she didn't want to marry any 
 one and be tied down that she wanted to be her 
 own mistress and free. 
 
 He found her a creature of a thousand 
 whims and caprices, quick to cry, quick to laugh, 
 divine in everything she did. He never 
 knew what she would want him to do next, or 
 how her mood would change, and after one of 
 their happiest hours, when she had been like a 
 girl with him, she would burst into tears, beg 
 him to leave the room, telling him that she was 
 tired tired tired, and wanted to go to sleep 
 a\nd never to wake up again. Between them was 
 tlve figure of Poniotowsky, though neither spoke
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 of him. She appeared to have forgotten him. 
 Dan would rather have cut out his tongue than 
 to speak his name, and yet he was there in the 
 mind of each. During the fortnight Dan spent 
 thousands of pounds on her, bought her jewels 
 which she alternately raved over or but half 
 looked at. He had made his arrangements with 
 Galorey peacefully, coolly and between the two 
 men it had been understood that the world 
 should think the engagement broken by the duch- 
 ess, and Dan's attention to Letty Lane, already 
 the subject of much comment, already conspicu- 
 ous, was enough to justify any woman in taking 
 offense. 
 
 One day, the pearl of warm May days, when 
 England even in springtime touches summer, 
 Blair was so happy as to persuade his sweet- 
 heart to go with him for a little row on the river. 
 The young fellow waited for her in the boat he 
 had secured, and she, motoring out with Hig- 
 gins, had appeared, running down to the edge 
 of the water like a girl, gay as a child let out 
 44
 
 IN THE SUNSET GLOW 
 
 from school, in a simple frock, in a marvelousty 
 fetching hat, white gloves, white parasol, whitf 
 shoes, and as Dan helped her into the boat, 
 pushed it out, pushed away with her on the crest 
 of the sun-flecked waters, spring was in his 
 heart, and he found the moment almost too great 
 to bear. 
 
 The actress had been a girl with him all 
 day, giving herself to his moods, doing what 
 he liked without demur, talking of their mutual 
 past, telling him one amusing story after an- 
 other, proving herself an ideal companion, 
 fresh, varied, reposeful ; and no one to have seen 
 Letty Lane with the boy on that afternoon would 
 have dreamed that she ever had known another 
 love. They had moored their boat down near 
 Maidenhead, and he had helped her up the bank 
 to the little inn, where tea had been made for 
 them, and served to him by her own beautiful 
 white hands. He had called for strawberries, 
 and, like a shepherd in a pastoral, had fed them 
 to her, and as they lingered the sunset came 
 245
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 creeping steadily in through the windows where 
 they sat. 
 
 As they neither called for their account nor 
 to have the tea things taken away, after a while 
 the woman stealthily opened the door and, un- 
 known, looked at one of the prettiest pictures 
 ever within her walls. Letty Lane sat on the 
 window-seat, her golden head, her white form 
 against the glow, and the boy by her side had 
 his arms around her, and her head was on his 
 breast. They were both young. They might 
 have been white birds blown in there, nesting in 
 the humble inn, and the woman of the house, 
 who had not heard the waters of the Thames 
 flow softly for nothing, judged them gently and 
 sighed with pleasure as she shut the door. 
 
 Here at Maidenhead Dan had left his boat 
 and the motor took them back. Nothing spoiled 
 his bliss that day, and he said her name a thou- 
 sand times that night in his dreams. Jealousies 
 and, when he would let himself think, they were 
 not one, they were many faded away. The 
 246
 
 IN THE SUNSET GLOW 
 
 duties that a life with her would involve did not 
 disturb him. For many a long year, come what 
 might, be what would, he would recall the glow- 
 ing of that sunset reflected under the inn win- 
 dows, the singing of the thrushes and the flash 
 of the white dress and the fine little white shoes 
 which he had held in the palm of his ardent 
 hand, which he had kissed, as he told her with all 
 his heart that she should rest her tired feet for 
 ever. 
 
 There grew in him that day a reverence for 
 her, determined as he was to bring into her life 
 by his wealth and devotion everything of good. 
 His loving plans for her forming in his brain 
 somewhat chaotic and very much fevered, 
 brought him nearer than he had ever been be- 
 fore to the picture of his mother. His father 
 it wasn't easy for Dan to think of in connection 
 with the actress. He didn't dare to dwell on 
 the subject, but he had never known his mother, 
 and that pale ideal he could create as he would. 
 In thinking of her he saw only tenderness for 
 247
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 Letty Lane only love; and in his room the 
 night after the row on the river, the night after 
 the long idyl in the sunset-room of the inn, 
 something like a prayer came to his young lips, 
 and, when its short form was finished, a smile 
 brought it to an end as he remembered the line 
 in Letty Lane's own opera : 
 
 "She will teach you how to pray in an Eastern 
 form of prayer." 
 
 The ring he had given the Duchess of Break- 
 water had been her own choice, a ruby. He had 
 asked her, through Galorey, to keep it and to 
 wear it later, when she could think of him kind- 
 ly, in an ornament of some kind or another. The 
 duchess had not refused. The ring he bought 
 for Letty Lane, although there was no engage- 
 ment announced between them, was the largest, 
 purest diamond he could with decency ask her 
 to put on her hand! It sparkled like a great 
 drop of clear water from some fountain on a 
 magic continent. In another shop strands of 
 248
 
 IN THE SUNSET GLOW 
 
 pink coral set through with diamonds caught 
 his fancy and he bought her yards of them, 
 ropes of them, smiling to think how his boy- 
 hood's dreams were come true. 
 
 He never saw Ruggles except at meals, hardly 
 spoke to the poor man at all, and the boy's 
 absorbed face, his state of mind, made the older 
 man feel like death. He repeated to himself 
 that he was too late too late, and usually 
 wound up his reflections by ejaculating: 
 
 "Gosh almighty, I'm glad I haven't got a 
 son!" 
 
 249
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 HE FELT as he waited for her in that 
 flower-filled room, for she had recovered 
 from her distaste for flowers, as he glanced at 
 the photographs of women like herself in cos- 
 tumes more or less frank, more or less vulgar, he 
 felt as though he wanted to knock down the walls 
 and let in a big view of the West of Montana 
 of the hills. With such a setting he thought 
 he could better talk with the lady whom he had 
 come to see. 
 
 Ruggles held an unlighted cigar between his 
 fingers and goose-flesh rose all over him. His 
 glasses bothered him. He couldn't get them 
 bright enough, though he polished them half a 
 dozen times on his silk handkerchief. His clothes 
 felt toe large. He seemed to have shrunken. He 
 250
 
 RUGGLES' OFFER 
 
 moistened his lips, cleared his throat, tried to re- 
 member what kind of fellow he had been at 
 Dan's age. At Dan's age he was selling a sus- 
 pender patent on the road, supporting his 
 mother and his sisters hard work and few 
 temptations ; he was too tired and too poor. 
 
 Miss Lane kept him waiting ten minutes, and 
 they were hours to her guest. He was afraid 
 every minute that Dan would come in. The 
 thoughts he had gathered together, the plan of 
 action, disarranged itself in his mind every time 
 he thought of the actress. He couldn't forget 
 his vision of her on the stage or at the Carl- 
 ton, where she had sat opposite them and 
 bewitched them both. When she came into the 
 sitting-room at length, he started so violently 
 that he knocked over a vase of flowers, the water 
 trickling all over the table down on to the floor. 
 
 She had dazzled him before the footlights, 
 
 charmed him at dinner, and it was singular to 
 
 think that he knew how this dignified, quiet 
 
 creature looked in ballet clothes and in a dinner 
 
 251
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 dress, whose frankness had made him catch his 
 breath. It was a third woman who stood before 
 Ruggles now. He had to take her into consid- 
 eration. She had expected him, saw him by ap- 
 pointment. She was a woman of mind and intelli- 
 gence. She had not climbed to her starry posi- 
 tion without having acquired a knowledge of men, 
 and it was the secret of her success. She showed 
 it in the dress in which she received her visitor. 
 She wore a short walking skirt of heavy serge, 
 a simple shirtwaist belted around, a sailor hat 
 on her beautiful little head. She was un jew- 
 eled and unpainted, very pale and very sweet. 
 If it had not been for the marks of fatigue un- 
 der her eyes, she would not have looked more 
 than eighteen. On her left hand a single dia- 
 mond, clear as water, caught the refracted light. 
 "How-de-do ? Glad you are back again." 
 She gave him a big chair and sat down before 
 him smiling. Leaning her elbows on her knees, 
 she sank her face upon her hands and looked at 
 him, not coquettishly in the least, but as a child
 
 RUGGLES' OFFER 
 
 might have looked. From her small feet to her 
 golden head she was utterly charming. 
 
 Ruggles made himself think of Dan. Miss 
 Lane spoke slowly, nodding toward him, in her 
 languid voice: "It's no use, Mr. Ruggles, no 
 use." 
 
 Holding her face between her hands, her eyes 
 gray as winter's seas and as profound, she 
 looked at him intently; then, in a flash, she 
 changed her position and instantly transformed 
 her character. He saw that she was a woman, 
 not an eighteen-year-old girl, but a woman, clev- 
 er, poised, witty, understanding, and that she 
 might have been twenty years older than the boy. 
 
 "I'm sorry you spoke so quick," he said. 
 
 "I knew," she interrupted, "just what you 
 wanted to say from the start. I couldn't help it, 
 could I? I knew you would want to come and 
 see me about it. It isn't any use. I know just 
 what you are going to say." 
 
 "No, ma'am," he returned, "I iJon't believe 
 you do bright as you are." 
 253
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 Ruggles gazed thoughtfully at the cold end 
 of his unlighted cigar. It was a comfort to him 
 to hold it and to look at it, although not for 
 anything in the world would he have asked to 
 light it. 
 
 "Dan's father and me were chums. We went 
 through pretty much together, and I know how 
 he felt on most points. He was a man of few 
 words, but I know he counted on me to stand by 
 the boy." 
 
 Ruggles was so chivalrous that his role at 
 present cost him keen discomfort. 
 
 "A lady like you," he said gently, "knows a 
 great deal more about how things are done than 
 either Dan or me. We ain't tenderfeet in the 
 West, not by a long shot, but we see so few of 
 a certain kind of picture shows that when they 
 do come round they're likely to make us lose our 
 minds ! You know, yourself, a circus in a town 
 fifty miles from a railroad drives the people 
 crazy. Now, Dan's a little like the boy with his 
 eyes on the hole in the tent. He would commit
 
 RUGGLES' OFFER 
 
 murder to get inside and see that show." He 
 nodded and smiled to her as though he expected 
 her to follow his crude simile. "Now, I have 
 seen you a lot of times." And she couldn't help 
 reminding him, "Not of your own accord, Mr. 
 Ruggles." 
 
 "Well, I don't know," he slowly admitted; "I 
 always felt I had my money's worth, and the 
 night you ate with us at the Carlton I under- 
 stood pretty well how the boy with his eyes at 
 the tent hole would feel." But he tapped his 
 broad chest with the hand that held the cigar 
 between the first and second fingers. "I know 
 just what kind of a heart you've got, for I 
 waited at the stage door and I know you don't 
 get all your applause inside the Gaiety The- 
 ater." 
 
 "Goodness," she murmured, "they make an 
 awful fuss about nothing." 
 
 "Now," he continued, leaning forward a trifle 
 toward her languid, half interested figure, "I 
 just want you to think of him as a little boy. 
 255
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 He's only twenty-two. He knows nothing of the 
 world. The money you give to the poor doesn't 
 come so hard perhaps as this will. It's a big 
 sacrifices but I want you to let the boy go." 
 
 She smiled slightly, found her handkerchief, 
 which was tucked up the cuff of her blouse, 
 pressed the little bit of linen to her lips as 
 though to steady them, then she asked abruptly : 
 
 "What has he said to you?" 
 
 "Lord !" Ruggles groaned. "Said to me ! My 
 dear young lady, he is much too rude to speak. 
 Dan sort of breathes and snorts around like a 
 lunatic. He was dangling around that duchess 
 when I was here before, but she didn't scare me 
 any." 
 
 And Letty Lane, now smiling at him, relieved 
 by his break from a more intense tone, asked : 
 
 "Now, you are scared?" 
 
 "Well," Ruggles drawled, "I was pretty sure 
 that woman didn't care anything for the boy. 
 Are you her kind?" 
 
 It was the best stroke he had made. She al- 
 most sprang up from her chair. 
 856
 
 RUGGLES' OFFER 
 
 "Heavens," she exclaimed, "I guess I'm not !" 
 Her face flushed. 
 
 "I had rather see a son of mine dead than 
 married to a woman like that," he said. 
 
 "Why, Mr. Ruggles," she exclaimed passion- 
 ately, addressing him with interest for the first 
 time, "what do you know about me? What? 
 What? You have seen me dance and heard me 
 sing." 
 
 And he interrupted her. 
 
 "Ten times, and you are a bully dancer and a 
 bully singer, but you do other things than dance 
 and sing. There is not a man living that would 
 want to have his mother dress that way." 
 
 She controlled a smile. "Never mind that. 
 People's opinions are very different about that 
 sort of thing. You have seen me at dinner with 
 your boy, as you call him, and you can't say that 
 I did anything but ask him to help the poor. I 
 haven't led Dan on. I have tried to show him 
 just what you are making me go through now." 
 
 If she acted well and danced well, it was hard 
 for her to talk. She was evidently under strong 
 257
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 emotion and it needed her control not to burst 
 into tears and lose her chance. 
 
 "Of course, I know the things you have heard. 
 Of course, I know what is said about me" and 
 she stopped. 
 
 Ruggles didn't press her any further; he 
 didn't ask her if the things were true. Looking 
 at her as he did, watching her as he did, there 
 was in him a feeling so new, so troubling that he 
 found himself more anxious to protect her than 
 to bring her to justice. 
 
 "There are worse, far worse women than I am, 
 Mr. Ruggles. I will never do Dan any harm." 
 
 Here her visitor leaned forward and put one 
 of his big hands lightly over one of hers, patted 
 it a moment, and said : 
 
 "I want you to do a great deal better than 
 that." 
 
 She had picked up a photograph off the table, 
 a pretty picture of herself in Mandalay, and 
 turned it nervously between her fingers as she 
 said with irritation : 
 
 258
 
 RUGGLES' OFFER 
 
 "I haven't been in the theatrical world not to 
 guess at this 'Worried Father' act, Mr. Rug- 
 gles. I told you I knew just what you were go- 
 ing to say." 
 
 "Wrong!" he repeated. "The business is old 
 enough perhaps, lots of good jobs are old, but 
 this is a little different." 
 
 He took the turning picture and laid it on the 
 table, and quietly possessed himself of the small 
 cold hands. Blair's solitaire shone up to him. 
 Ruggles looked into Letty Lane's eyes. "He is 
 only twenty-two ; it ain't fair, it ain't fair. He 
 could count the times he has been on a lark, I 
 guess. He hasn't even been to an eastern college. 
 He is no fool, but he's darned simple." 
 
 She smiled faintly. The man's face, near her 
 own, was very simple indeed. 
 
 "You have seen so much," he urged, "so 
 many fellows. You have been such a queen, I 
 dare say you could get any man you wanted." 
 He repeated. "Most any one." 
 
 "I have never seen any one like Dan." 
 259
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 " Just so : He ain't your kind. That is what I 
 am trying to tell you." 
 
 She withdrew her hand from his violently. 
 
 "There you are wrong. He is my kind. He 
 is what I like, and he is what I want to be like." 
 
 A wave of red dyed her face, and, in a tone 
 more passionate than she had ever used to her 
 lover, she said to Ruggles : 
 
 "I love him I love him!" Her words sent 
 something like a sword through the older man's 
 heart. He said gently: "Don't say it. He 
 don't know what love means yet." 
 
 He wanted to tell her that the girl Dan mar- 
 ried should be the kind of woman his mother 
 was, but Ruggles couldn't bring himself to say 
 the words. Now, as he sat near her, he was 
 growing so complex that his brain was turning 
 round. He heard her murmur : 
 
 "I told you I knew your act, Mr. Ruggles. It 
 isn't any use." 
 
 This brought him back to his position and 
 once more he leaned toward her and, in a differ- 
 260
 
 RUGGLES' OFFER 
 
 ent tone from the one he had intended to use, 
 murmured : 
 
 "You don't know. You haven't any idea. I 
 do ask you to let Dan go, that's a fact. I have 
 got something else to propose in its place. It 
 ain't quite the same, but it is clear marry me !" 
 
 She gave a little exclamation. A slight smile 
 rippled over her face like the sunset across a 
 pale pool at dawn. 
 
 "Laugh," he said humbly ; "don't keep in. I 
 know I am old-fashioned as the deuce, and me 
 and Dan is quite a contrast, but I mean just 
 what I say, my dear." 
 
 She controlled her amusement, if it was that. 
 It almost made her cry with mirth, and she 
 couldn't help it. Between laughing breaths she 
 said to him : 
 
 "Oh, is it all for Dan's sake, Mr. Ruggles? 
 Is it ?" And then, biting her lips and looking at 
 him out of her wonderful eyes, she said: "I 
 know it is I know it Is I beg your pardon." 
 
 "I asked a girl once when I was poor too
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 poor. Now this is the second time in my life. 
 I mean just what I say. I'll make you a kind 
 husband. I am fifty-five, hale as a nut. I dare 
 say you have had many better offers." 
 
 "Oh, dear," she breathed; "oh, dear, please 
 please stop!" 
 
 "But I don't expect you to marry me for any- 
 thing but my money." 
 
 Ruggles put his cigar down on the edge of 
 the table. He looked at his chair meditatively, 
 he took out his silk handkerchief, polished up his 
 glasses, readjusted them, put them on and then 
 looked at her. 
 
 "Now," he said, "I am going to trust you 
 with something, and I know you will keep my 
 secret for me. This shows you a little bit of 
 what I think about you. Dan Blair hasn't got a 
 red cent. He has nothing but what I give him. 
 There's a false title to all that land on the Bent- 
 ley claim. The whole thing came up when I was 
 home and the original company, of which I own 
 three-quarters of the stock, holds the clear titles 
 262
 
 RUGGLES' OFFER 
 
 to the Blairtown mines. It all belongs now to 
 me, if I choose to present my documents. Dan 
 knows nothing about this not a word." 
 
 The actress had never come up to such a dra- 
 matic point in any of her plays. With her hands 
 folded in her lap she looked at him steadily, and 
 he could not understand the expression that 
 crossed her face. He heard her exclamation: 
 "Oh, gracious!" 
 
 "I've brought the papers back with me," said 
 the Westerner, "and it is between you and me 
 how we act. If Dan marries you I will be bound 
 to do what old Blair would have done cut him 
 off let him feel his feet on the ground, and the 
 result of his own folly." 
 
 He had taken his glasses off while he made 
 this assertion. Now he put them on again. 
 
 "If you give him up I'll divide with the boy 
 and be rich enough still to hand over to my wife 
 all she wants to spend." 
 
 She turned her face away from him and 
 leaned her head once more upon her hands. He 
 263
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 heard her softly murmuring under her breath, 
 with an absent look on her face, accompanied by 
 a still more incomprehensible smile. 
 
 "That's how it stands," he concluded. 
 
 She seemed to have forgotten him entirely, 
 and he caught his breath when she turned about 
 abruptly and said : 
 
 "My goodness, how Dan will hate being poor ! 
 He will have to sell all his stickpins and his mo- 
 tor cars and all the things he has given me. It 
 will be quite a little to start on, but he will hate 
 it, he is so very smart." 
 
 "Why, you don't mean to say " Ruggles 
 gasped. 
 
 And with a charming smile as she rose to put 
 their conversation at an end, she said : 
 
 "Why, you don't mean to say that you 
 thought I wouldn't stand by him?" She seemed, 
 as she put her hands upon her hips with some- 
 thing of a defiant look at the older man, as 
 though she just then stood by her pauperized 
 lover. 
 
 264
 
 RUGGLES' OFFER 
 
 "I thought you cared some for the boy," Rug- 
 gles said. 
 
 "Well, I am showing it." 
 
 "You want to ruin him to show it, do you ?" 
 
 As though he thought the subject dismissed 
 he walked heavily toward the door. 
 
 "You know how it stands. I have nothing 
 more to say." He knew that he had signally 
 failed, and as a sudden resentment rose in him 
 he exclaimed, almost brutally : 
 
 "I am darned glad the old man is dead ; I am 
 glad his mother's dead, and I am glad I have got 
 no son." 
 
 The next moment she was at his side, and he 
 felt that she clung to his arm. Her sensitive, 
 beautiful face, all drawn with emotion, was raised 
 to his. 
 
 "Oh, you'll kill me you'll kill me ! Just look 
 how very ill I am ; you are making me crazy. I 
 just worship him." 
 
 "Give him up, then," said Ruggles steadily. 
 
 She faltered: "I can't I can't it won't be 
 265
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 for long" with a terrible pathos in her voice. 
 "You don't know how different I can be: you 
 don't know what a new life we were going to 
 lead." 
 
 Stammering, and with intense meaning, Rug- 
 gles, looking down at her, said: "My dear child 
 my dear child !" 
 
 In his few words something perhaps made her 
 see in a flash her past and what the question 
 really was. She dropped Ruggles' arm. She 
 stood for a moment with her arms folded across 
 her breast, her head bent down, and the man at 
 the door waited, feeling that Dan's whole life 
 was in the balance of the moment. When she 
 spoke again her voice was hard and entirely de- 
 void of the lovely appealing quality which 
 brought her so much admiration from the public. 
 
 "If I give him up," she said slowly, "what will 
 you do?" 
 
 "Why," he answered, "I'll divide with Dan 
 and let things stand just as they are." 
 
 She thought again a moment and then as if
 
 RUGGLES' OFFER 
 
 she did not want him to witness to detect the 
 struggle she was going through, she turned 
 away and walked over toward the window and 
 dismissed him from there. "Please go, will you ? 
 I want very much to be alone and to think." 
 
 267
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 LETTY IANE RUNS AWAY 
 
 HE HAD not got up-stairs to his rooms at 
 the Carlton before a note was handed him 
 from the actress, bidding him to return at once 
 to the Savoy, and Ruggles, his heart hammering 
 like a trip-hammer, rushed up to his rooms, made 
 an evening toilet, for it was then half -past seven, 
 threw his cravats and collars all around the 
 place, cursed like a miner as he got into his 
 clothes, and red almost to apoplexy, nervous and 
 full of emotion, he returned to the rooms he had 
 left not three hours before. 
 
 The three hours had been busy ones at the 
 actress' apartment. Letty Lane's sitting-room 
 was full of trunks, dressing-bags and traveling 
 paraphernalia. She came forward out of what 
 seemed a world of confusion, dressed as though 
 268
 
 LETTY LANE RUNS AWAY 
 
 for a journey, even her veil and her gloves de- 
 noting her departure. She spoke hurriedly and 
 almost without politeness. 
 
 "I have sent for you to come and see me here. 
 Not a soul in London knows I am going away. 
 There will be a dreadful row at the theater, but 
 that's none of your affairs. Now, I want you to 
 tell me before I go just what you are going to 
 do for Dan." 
 
 "Who are you going with?" Ruggles asked 
 shortly, and she flashed at him : 
 
 "Well, really, I don't think that is any of 
 your business. When you drive a woman as you 
 have driven me, she will go far." 
 
 He interrupted her vehemently, not daring to 
 take her hand. "I couldn't do more. I have 
 asked you to marry me. I couldn't do more. I 
 stand by what I have said. Will you?" he stam- 
 mered. 
 
 She knew men. She looked at him keenly. 
 Her veil was lifted above her eyes and its shad- 
 ow framed her small pale face on which there
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 were marks of utter disenchantment, of great 
 ennui. She said languidly: "What I want to 
 know is, what you are going to do for Dan ?" 
 
 "I told you I would share with him." 
 
 "Then he will be nearly as rich?" 
 
 "He'll have more than is good for him." 
 
 That satisfied her. Then she pursued: "I 
 want you to stand by him. He will need you." 
 
 Ruggles lifted the hand he held and kissed it 
 reverently. "I'll do anything you say any- 
 thing you say." 
 
 Down-stairs in the Savoy, as Dan had done 
 countless times, Ruggles waited until he saw her 
 motor car carry her and her small luggage and 
 Higgins away. 
 
 In their sitting-room in the Carlton a half- 
 hour later the door was thrown open and Dan 
 Blair came in like a madman. Without preamble 
 he seized Ruggles by the arm. 
 
 "Look here," he cried, "what have you been 
 doing? Tell me now, and tell me the truth, or, 
 fcy God, I don't know what I'll do. You went to 
 270
 
 LETTY LANE RUNS AWAY 
 
 the Savoy. You went there twice. Anyhow, 
 where is she?" 
 
 Dan, slender as he was beside Ruggles' great 
 frame, shook the elder man as though he had 
 been a terrier. . "Speak to me. Where has she 
 gone?" 
 
 He stared in the Westerner's face, his eyes 
 bloodshot. "Why in thunder don't you say 
 something?" 
 
 And Ruggles prayed for some power to un- 
 loose his thickening tongue. 
 
 "You say she's gone?" he questioned. 
 
 "I say," said the boy, "that you've been med- 
 dling in my affairs with the woman I love. I 
 don't know what you have said to her, but it's 
 only your age that keeps me from striking you. 
 Don't you know," he cried, "that you are spoil- 
 ing my life ? Don't you know that ?" A torrent 
 of feeling coming to his lips, his eyes suffused, 
 the tears rolled down his face. He walked away 
 into his own room, remained there a few mo- 
 ments, and when he came out again he carried in 
 271
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 his hand his valise, which he put down with a 
 bang on the table. More calmly, but still in 
 great anger, he said to his father's friend : 
 
 "Now, can you tell me what you've done or 
 not?" 
 
 "Dan," said Ruggles with difficulty, "if you 
 will sit down a moment we can " 
 
 The boy laughed in his face. "Sit down !" he 
 cried. "Why, I think you must have lost your 
 reason. I have chartered a motor car out there 
 and the damned thing has burst a tire and they 
 are fixing it up for me. It will be ready in about 
 two minutes and then I am going to follow wher- 
 ever she has gone. She crossed to Paris, but I 
 can get there before she can even with this 
 damned accident. But, before I go, I want you 
 to tell me what you said." 
 
 "Why," said Ruggles quietly, "I told her you 
 were poor, and she turned you down." 
 
 His words were faint. 
 
 "God !" said the boy under his breath. "That's 
 the way you think about truth. Lie to a woman 
 272
 
 LETTY LANE RUNS AWAY 
 
 to save my precious soul ! But I expect," he said ; 
 "you think she is so immoral and so bad that she 
 will hurt me. Well," he said, with great empha- 
 sis, "she has never done anything in her life that 
 comes up to what you've done. Never! And 
 nothing has ever hurt me so." 
 
 His lips trembled. "I have lost my respect 
 for you, for my father's friend, and as far as 
 she is concerned, I don't care what she marries 
 me for. She has got to marry me, and if she 
 doesn't" he had no idea, in his passion, what 
 he was saying or how "why, I think I'll kill 
 you first and then blow my own brains out!" 
 And with these mad words he grabbed up his 
 valise and bolted from the room, and Ruggles 
 could hear his running feet tearing down the 
 corridor. 
 
 273
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 WHITE AND COEAL 
 
 SPRING in Paris, which comes in a fashion 
 so divine that even the most calloused and 
 indifferent are impressed by its beauty, awak- 
 ened no answering response in the heart of the 
 young man who, from his hotel window, looked 
 out on the desecrated gardens of the Tuileries 
 on the distant spires of the churches whose 
 names he did not know on the square block of 
 old palaces. He had missed the boat across the 
 Channel taken by Letty Lane, and the delay had 
 made him lose what little trace of her he had. 
 In the early hours of the morning he had flung 
 himself in at the St. James, taken the indifferent 
 room they could give him in the crowded season, 
 and excited as he was he slept and did not waken 
 until noon. Blair thought it would be a matter 
 274
 
 WHITE AND CORAL 
 
 of a few hours only to find the whereabouts of 
 the celebrated actress, but it was not such an 
 easy job. He had not guessed that she might 
 be traveling incognita, and at none of the hotels 
 could he hear news of her, nor did he pass her 
 in the crowded, noisy, rustling, crying streets, 
 though he searched motors for her with eager 
 eyes, and haunted restaurants and cafes, and 
 went everywhere that he thought she might be 
 likely to be. 
 
 At the end of the third day, unsuccessful 
 and in despair, having hardly slept and scarcely 
 eaten, the unhappy young lover found himself 
 taking a slight luncheon in the little restau- 
 rant known as the Perouse down on the Quais. 
 His head on his hand, for the present mo- 
 ment the joy of life gone from him, he looked 
 out through the windows at the Seine, at the 
 bridge and the lines of flowering trees. He was 
 the only occupant of the upper room where, of 
 late, he had ordered his luncheon. 
 
 The tide of life rolled slowly in this quieter 
 275
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 part of the city, and as Blair sat there under the 
 window there passed a piper playing a shrill, 
 sweet tune. It was so different from any of the 
 loud metropolitan clamors, with which his ears 
 were full, that he got up, walked to the window 
 and leaned out. It was a pastoral that met his 
 eyes. A man piping, followed by little pattering 
 goats ; the primitive, unlooked-for picture caught 
 his tired attention, and, just then, opposite the 
 Quais, two women passed flower sellers, their 
 baskets bright with crocuses and girofles. The 
 bright picture touched him and something of the 
 springlike beauty that the day wore and that 
 dwelt in the May light, soothed him as nothing 
 had for many hours. 
 
 He paid his bill, took courage, picked up his 
 hat and gloves and stick and walked out briskly, 
 crossing the bridge to the Rue de Rivoli, deter- 
 mined that night should not fall until he found 
 the woman he sought. Nor did it, though the 
 afternoon wore on and Dan, pursuing his old 
 trails, wandered from worldly meeting place to 
 276
 
 WHITE AND CORAL, 
 
 worldly meeting place. Finally, toward six 
 o'clock, he saw the lengthening shadows steal 
 into the woods of the Bois de Boulogne, and in 
 one of the smaller alleys, where the green- 
 trunked trees of the forests were full of purple 
 shadows and yellow sun discs, flickering down, 
 he picked up a small iron chair and sat himself 
 down, with a long sigh, to rest. 
 
 While he sat there watching the end of the 
 allee as it gave out into the broader road, a 
 beautiful red motor rolled up to the conjunction 
 of the two ways and Letty Lane, in a summer 
 frock, got out alone. She had a flowing white 
 veil around her head and a flowing white scarf 
 around her shoulders. As the day on the 
 Thames, she was all in white like a dove. But 
 this time her costume was made vivid and pic- 
 turesque by the coral parasol she carried, a 
 pair of coral-colored kid shoes, around her neck 
 and falling on their long chain, she wore his coral 
 beads. He saw that he observed her before she 
 did him. All this Dan saw before he dashed 
 277
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 into the road, came up to her with something 
 like a cry on his lips, bareheaded, for his hat 
 and his stick and his gloves were by his chair 
 in the woods. 
 
 Letty Lane's hands went to her heart and her 
 face took on a deadly pallor. She did not seem 
 glad to see him. Out of his passionate descrip- 
 tion of the hours that he had been through, of 
 how he had looked for her, of what he thought 
 and wanted and felt, the actress made what she 
 could, listening to him as they both stood there 
 under the shadows of the green trees. Scanning 
 her face for some sign that she loved him, for it 
 was all he cared for, Dan saw no such indication 
 there. He finished with : 
 
 "You know what Ruggles told you was a lie. 
 Of course, I've got money enough to give you 
 everything you want. He's a lunatic and ought 
 to be shut up." 
 
 "It may have been a lie, all right," she said 
 with forced indifference ; "I've had time to think 
 it over. You are too young. You don't know 
 278
 
 WHITE AND CORAL 
 
 what you want." She stopped his protestations : 
 "Well, then, / am too old and I don't want to be 
 tied down." 
 
 When he pressed her to tell him whether or 
 not she had ceased to care for him, she shook her 
 head slowly, marking on the ground fine tracery 
 with the end of her coral parasol. He had been 
 obliged to take her back to the red motor, but 
 before they were in earshot of her servants, he 
 said: 
 
 "Now, you know just what } r ou have done to 
 me, you and Ruggles between you. For my fa- 
 ther's sake and the things I believed in I've 
 kept pretty straight as things go." He nodded 
 at her with boyish egotism, throwing all the 
 blame on her. "I want you to understand that 
 from now, right now, I'm going to the dogs just 
 as fast as I can get there, and it won't be a very 
 gratifying result to anybody that ever cared." 
 
 She saw the determination on his fine young 
 face, worn by his sleepless nights, already ma- 
 tured and changed, and she believed him. 
 279
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "Paris," he nodded toward the gate of the 
 woods which opened upon Paris, "is the place to 
 begin in right here. A man," he went on, and 
 his lips trembled, "can only feel like this once in 
 his life. You know all the talk there is about 
 young love and first love. Well, that's what I've 
 got for you, and I'm going to turn it now 
 right now into just what older people warn 
 men from, and do their best to prevent. I have 
 seen enough of Paris," he went on, "these days I 
 have been looking for you, to know where to go 
 and what to do, and I am setting off for it now." 
 
 She touched his arm. 
 
 "No," she murmured. "No, boy, you are not 
 going to do any such thing !" 
 
 This much from her was enough for him. He 
 caught her hand and cried: "Then you marry 
 me. What do we care for anybody else in the 
 world?" 
 
 "Go back and get your hat and stick and 
 gloves," she commanded, keeping down the tears. 
 
 "No, no, you come with me ( > Letty ; I'm not 
 280
 
 WHITE AND CORAL 
 
 going to let you run to your motor and escape 
 me again." 
 
 "Go; I'll wait here," she promised. "I give 
 you my word." 
 
 As he snatched up the inanimate objects from 
 the leaf-strewn ground where he had thrown 
 them in despair, he thought how things can 
 change in a quarter of an hour. For he had 
 hope now, as he hurried back, as he walked with 
 her to her car, as he saw the little coral shoes 
 stir in the leaves when she passed under the trees. 
 The little coral shoes trod on his heart, but now 
 it was light under her feet ! 
 
 Jubilant to have overcome the fate which had 
 tried to keep her hidden from him in Paris, he 
 could hardly believe his eyes that she was before 
 them again, and, as the motor rolled into the 
 Avenue des Acacias, he asked her the question 
 uppermost in his mind: 
 
 "Are you alone in Paris, Letty?" 
 
 "Don't you count?" 
 
 "No no honestly, you know what I mean." 
 281
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "You haven't any right to ask me that." 
 
 "I have I have. You gave me a right. 
 You're engaged to me, aren't you? Gosh, you 
 haven't forgotten, have you?" 
 
 "Don't make me conspicuous in the Bois, 
 Dan," she said; "I only let you come with me 
 because you were so terribly desperate, so ridic- 
 ulous." 
 
 "Are you alone?" he persisted. "I have got 
 to know." 
 
 "Higgins is with me." 
 
 "Oh, God," he cried wildly, "how can you joke 
 with me ? Don't you understand you're breaking 
 my heart?" 
 
 But she did not dare to be kind to him, know- 
 ing it would unnerve her for the part she had 
 promised to play. 
 
 He sat gripping his hands tightly together, 
 his lips white. "When I leave you now," he said 
 brokenly, "I am going to find that devil of a 
 Hungarian and do him up. Then I am going to 
 tackle Ruggles." 
 
 288
 
 WHITE AND CORAL 
 
 "Why, what's poor Mr. Ruggles got to do 
 with it?" 
 
 Dan cried scornfully: "For God's sake, don't 
 keep this up! You know the rot he told you? 
 I made him confess. He has had this mania all 
 along about money being a handicap; he was 
 bent on trying this game with some girl to see 
 how it worked." He continued more passionate- 
 ly. "I don't care a rap what you marry me for, 
 Letty, or what you have done or been. I think 
 you're perfect and I'll make you the happiest 
 woman in the world." 
 
 She said : "Hush, hush ! Listen, dear ; listen, 
 little boy. I am awfully sorry, but it won't do. 
 I never thought it would. You'll get over it all 
 right, though you don't, you can't believe me 
 now. I can't be poor, you know ; I really couldn't 
 be poor." 
 
 He interrupted roughly: "Who says you'll 
 be? What are you talking about? Why, I'U 
 cover you with jewels, sweetheart, if I have to 
 rip the earth open to get them out." 
 283
 
 THE GIBL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 She understood that Dan believed Ruggles' 
 story to have been a cock-and-bull one. 
 
 "You talk as though you could buy me, Dan. 
 Wait, listen." She put him back from her. 
 "Now, if you won't be quiet, I'm going to stop 
 my car." 
 
 He repeated: "Tell me, are you alone in 
 Paris? Tell me. For three days I have wan- 
 dered and searched for you everywhere; I have 
 hardly eaten a thing, I don't believe I have slept 
 a wink." And he told her of his weary search. 
 
 She listened to him, part of the time her white- 
 gloved hand giving itself up to the boy ; part of 
 the time both hands folded together and away 
 from him, her arms crossed on her breast, her 
 small shoes of coral kid tapping the floor of the 
 car. Thus they rolled leisurely along the road 
 by the Bois. Through the green-trunked trees 
 the sunlight fell divinely. On the lake the swans 
 swam, pluming their feathers; there were chil- 
 dren there in their ribbons and furbelows. The 
 whole world went by gay and careless, while for 
 88*
 
 WHITE AND CORAL 
 
 Dan the problem of his existence, his possibility 
 for happiness or pain was comprised within the 
 little room of the motor car. 
 
 "Are you alone in Paris, Letty?" 
 
 And she said: "Oh, what a bore you are! 
 You're the most obstinate creature. Well, I am 
 alone, but that has nothing to do with you." 
 
 A glorious light broke over his face; his re- 
 lief was tremendous. 
 
 "Oh, thank God!" he breathed. 
 
 "Poniotowsky" and she said his name with 
 difficulty "is coming to-night from Carlsbad." 
 
 The boy threw back his bright head and 
 laughed wildly. 
 
 "Curse him ! The very name makes me want 
 to commit a crime. He will go over my body to 
 you. You hear me, Letty. I mean what I say." 
 
 People had already remarked them as they 
 passed. The actress was too well known to pass 
 unobserved, but she was indifferent to their curi- 
 osity or to the existence of any one but this ex- 
 cited boy. 
 
 285
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 Blair, who had not opened a paper since he 
 came to Paris, did not know that Letty Lane's 
 flight from London had created a scandal in the 
 theatrical world, that her manager was suing 
 her, and that to be seen with her driving in the 
 Bois was a conspicuous thing indeed. She 
 thought of it, however. 
 
 "I am going to tell the man to drive you to 
 the gate on the other side of the park where it's 
 quieter, we won't be stared at, and then I want 
 you to leave me and let me go to the Meurice 
 alone. You must, Dan, you must let me go to the 
 hotel alone." 
 
 He laughed again in the same strained fashion 
 and forced her hand to remain in his. 
 
 "Look here. You don't suppose I am going 
 to let you go like this, now that I have seen you 
 again. You don't suppose I am going to give 
 you up to that infamous scoundrel? You have 
 got to marry me." 
 
 Bringing all her strength of character to bear, 
 she exclaimed : "I expect you think you are the 
 286
 
 WHITE AND CORAL 
 
 only person who has asked me to marry him, 
 Dan. I am going to marry Prince Poniotowsky. 
 He is perfectly crazy about me." 
 
 Until that moment she had not made him think 
 that she was indifferent to him, and the idea that 
 such a thing was possible, was too much for his 
 overstrained heart to bear. Dan cried her name 
 in a voice whose appeal was like a hurt creature's, 
 and as the hurt creature in its suffering some- 
 times springs upon its torturer, he flung his 
 arms around her as she sat in the motor, held her 
 and kissed her, then set her free, and as the 
 motor flew along, tore open the door to spring 
 out or to throw himself out, but clinging to him 
 she prevented his mad act. She stopped the 
 car along the edge of the quiet, wooded atiee. 
 Blair saw that he had terrified her. She covered 
 her beating heart with her hands and gasped at 
 him that he was "crazy, crazy," and perhaps a 
 little late his dignity and self-possession re- 
 turned. 
 
 "I am mad," he acknowledged more calmly, 
 287
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "and I am sorry that I frightened you. But 
 you drive me mad." 
 
 Without further word he got out and left her 
 agitated, leaning toward him, and Blair, less 
 pale and thoroughly the man, lifted his hat to 
 her and, with unusual grace, bowed good night 
 and good-by. Then, rushing as he had come, he 
 walked off down through the allee, his gray fig- 
 ure in his gray clothes disappearing through 
 the vista of meeting trees. 
 
 For a moment she stared after him, her eyes 
 fastened on the tall slender beautiful young man. 
 Blair's fire and ardor, his fresh youthfulness, 
 his protection and his chivalry, his ardent devo- 
 tion, touched her profoundly. Tears fell, and 
 one splashed on her white glove. Was he really 
 going to ruin his life ? The old ballad, The Earl 
 of Moray, ran through her head : 
 
 "And long may his lady look from the castle 
 wall." 
 
 Dan had neither title nor, according to Rug- 
 288
 
 WHITE AND CORAL 
 
 gles, had he any money, and she could marry the 
 prince ; but Dan, as he walked so fast away, mis- 
 ery snapping at his heels as he went, stamping 
 through the woods, seemed glorious to Letty 
 Lane and the only one she wanted in the world. 
 What if anything should happen to him really? 
 What if he should really start out to do the town 
 according to the fashion of his Anglo-Saxon 
 brothers, but more desperately still? She took 
 a card from the case in the corner of the car, 
 scribbled a few words, told the man to drive 
 around the curve and meet the outlet of the 
 path by which Dan had gone. When she saw 
 him within reaching distance she sent the chauf- 
 feur across the woods to give Mr. Blair her 
 scribbled word and consoled herself with the be- 
 lief that Dan wouldn't "go to the dogs or throw 
 himself in the river until he had seen her again." 
 
 289
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 AT MAXIM'S 
 
 AT THE Meurice, Miss Lane gave strict 
 orders to admit only Mr. Blair to her 
 apartments. She described him. No sooner had 
 she drunk her cup of tea, which Higgins gave 
 her, than she began to expect Dan. 
 
 He didn't come. 
 
 Her dinner, without much appetite, she ate 
 alone in her salon; saw a doctor and made him 
 prescribe something for the cough that racked 
 her chest; looked out to the warm, bright gar- 
 dens of the Tuileries fading into the pallid love- 
 liness of sunset, indifferent to everything in the 
 world except Dan Blair. She believed she 
 would soon be indifferent to him, too ; then every- 
 thing would be done with. Now she wondered 
 had he really gone had he done what he threat- 
 290
 
 AT MAXIM'S 
 
 ened? Why didn't he come? At twelve o'clock 
 that night, as she lay among the cushions of 
 her sofa, dozing, the door of her parlor was 
 pushed in. She sprang up with a cry of delight ; 
 but when Poniotowsky came up to her she ex- 
 claimed : 
 
 "Oh, you!" And the languor and boredom 
 with which she said his name made the prince 
 laugh shortly. 
 
 "Yes, I. Who did you think it was?" Cyn- 
 ically and rather cruelly he looked down at Letty 
 Lane and admired the picture she made: small, 
 exquisite, her blond head against the dark velvet 
 of the lounge, her gray eyes intensified by the 
 fatigue under them. 
 
 "Just got in from Carlsbad; came directly 
 here. How-de-do? You look, you know " he 
 scrutinized her through his single eye-glass 
 "most frightfully seedy." 
 
 "Oh, I'm all right." She left the sofa, for she 
 wanted to prevent his nearer approach. "Have 
 you had any supper? I'll call Higgins." 
 291
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "No, no, sit down, please, will you? I want 
 to know why you sent to Carlsbad for me? Have 
 you come to your senses ?" 
 
 He was as mad about the beautiful creature 
 as a man of his temperament could be. Exhaust- 
 ed by excess and bored with life, she charmed 
 and amused him, and in order to have her with 
 him always, to be master of her caprices, he was 
 willing to make any sacrifice. 
 
 "Have you sent off that imbecile boy?" And 
 at her look he stopped and shrugged. "You 
 need a rest, my child," he murmured practically, 
 "you're neurasthenic and very ill. I've wired to 
 have the yacht at Cherbourg It'll reach there 
 by noon to-morrow." 
 
 She was standing listlessly by the table. A 
 mass of letters sent by special messenger from 
 London after her, telegrams and cards lay there 
 in a pile. Looking down at the lot, she mur- 
 mured: "All right, I don't care." 
 
 He concealed his triumph, but before the look
 
 AT MAXIM'S 
 
 had faded from his face she saw it and ex- 
 claimed sharply: 
 
 "Don't be crazy about it, you know. You'll 
 have to pay high for me; you know what I 
 mean." 
 
 He answered gallantly : "My dear child, I've 
 told you that you would be the most charming 
 princess in Hungary." 
 
 Once more she accepted indifferently: 4< A11 
 right, all right, I don't care tuppence not tup- 
 pence" and she snapped her fingers; "but I 
 like to see you pay, Frederigo. Take me to 
 Maxim's." 
 
 He demurred, saying she was far too ill, but 
 she turned from him to call Higgins, determined 
 to go if she had to go alone, and said to him 
 violently : "Don't think I'll make your life easy 
 for you, Frederigo. I'll make it wretched; as 
 wretched " and she held out her fragile arms, 
 and the sleeves fell back, leaving them bare 
 "as wretched as I am myself." 
 293
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 But she was lovely, and he said harshly : "Get 
 yourself dressed. I'll go change and meet you at 
 the lift." 
 
 She made him take a table in the corner, where 
 she sat in the shadow on the sofa, overlooking 
 the brilliant room. Maxim's was no new scene 
 to either of them, no novelty. Poniotowsky 
 scarcely glanced at the crowd, preferring to 
 feast his eyes on his companion, whose indiffer- 
 ence to him made his abstraction easy. She was 
 his property. He would give her his title; she 
 had demanded it from the first. The Hungarian 
 was a little overdressed, with his jeweled buttons, 
 his large boutonniere, his faultless clothes, his 
 single eye-glass through which he stared at Letty 
 Lane, whose delicate beauty was in fine play: 
 her cheeks faintly pink, her starry eyes humid 
 with a dew whose luster is of the most precious 
 quality. Her unshed tears had nothing to do 
 .with Poniotowsky they were for the boy. Her 
 heart sickened, thinking where he might be ; and 
 294
 
 AT MAXIM'S 
 
 more than that, it cried out for him. She wanted 
 him. 
 
 Oh, she would have been far better for Dan 
 than anything he could find in this mad city, 
 than anything to which in his despair he would 
 go for consolation. She had kept her word, 
 however, to that old man, Mr. Ruggles ; she had 
 got out of the business with a fatal result, as 
 far as the boy was concerned. She thought Dan 
 would drift here probably as most Americans 
 on their wild nights do for a part of the time, 
 and she had come to see. 
 
 She wore a dress of coral pink, tightly fitting, 
 high to her little chin, and seemed herself like 
 a coral strand from neck to toe, clad in the 
 color she affected, and which had become cele- 
 brated as the Letty Lane pink. Her feathered 
 hat hid her face, and she was completely shielded 
 as she bent down drawing pictures with her bare 
 finger on the cloth. After a little while she said 
 to Poniotowsky without glancing at him : 
 
 "If you stare any longer like that, Frederigo, 
 295
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 you'll break your eye-glass. You know how I 
 hate it." 
 
 Used as he was to her sharpness, he never- 
 theless flushed and sat back and looked across 
 the room, where, to their right, protected from 
 them as they were from him by the great door, 
 a young man sat alone. Whether or not he had 
 come to Maxim's intending to join a congenial 
 party, should he find one, or to choose for a 
 companion some one of the women who, at the 
 entrance of the tall blond boy, stirred and in- 
 vited him with their raised lorgnons and their 
 smiles, will not be known. Dan Blair was alone, 
 pale as the pictures Letty Lane had drawn on 
 the cloth, and he, too, feasted his eyes on the 
 Gaiety girl. 
 
 "By Jove!" said the Hungarian under his 
 breath, and she eagerly asked: "What? Whom? 
 Whom do you see?" 
 
 Turning his back sharply he evaded her ques- 
 tion and she did not pursue the idea, and as a 
 physical weakness overwhelmed her, when Ponio-
 
 AT MAXIM'S 
 
 towsky after a second said, "Come, cherie, for 
 heaven's sake, let's go" she mechanically rose 
 and passed out. 
 
 Several young men supping together came 
 over eagerly to speak to her and claim ac- 
 quaintance with the Gaiety girl, and walked 
 along out to the motor. There Letty Lane dis- 
 covered she had dropped her handkerchief, and 
 sent the prince back for it. 
 
 As though he had been waiting for the re- 
 appearance of Poniotowsky, Dan Blair stood 
 close to the little table which Letty Lane had 
 left, her handkerchief in his hand. As Ponio- 
 towsky came up Dan thrust the small trifle of 
 sheer linen into his waistcoat pocket. 
 
 "I will trouble you for Miss Lane's handker- 
 chief," said Poniotowsky, his eyes cold. 
 
 "You may," said Dan as quietly, his blue eyes 
 like sparks from a star, "trouble me for hell!" 
 And lifting from the table Poniotowsky's own 
 half-emptied glass of champagne, the boy flung 
 the contents full in the Hungarian's face. 
 297
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 The wine dashed against Poniotowsky's lips 
 and in his eyes. Blair laughed out loud, his 
 hands in his pockets. The insult was low and 
 noiseless ; the little glass shattered as it fell so 
 softly that with the music its gentle crash was 
 unheard. 
 
 Poniotowsky wiped his face tranquilly and 
 bowed. 
 
 "You shall hear from me after I have taken 
 Miss Lane home." 
 
 "Tell her," said the boy, "where you left the 
 handkerchief, that's all." 
 
 298
 
 CHAPTER XXVIH 
 
 SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS 
 
 DAN was in his room at the hotel. He woke 
 and then slept again. Nothing seemed 
 strange to him nothing seemed real. It was 
 three o'clock in the morning, the rumble of Paris 
 was dull; it did not disturb him, for he seemed 
 without the body and to have grown giantlike, 
 and to fill the room. He had a sense of suffoca- 
 tion and the need to break through the windows 
 and to escape into ether. 
 
 The entrance of Poniotowsky's two friends 
 was a part with the unreal naturalness. One was 
 a Roumanian, the other a Frenchman both 
 spoke fluent English. Dan, his eyes fixed on 
 the foreign faces, only half saw them; they 
 blurred, their voices were small and far away. 
 Finally he said: 
 
 "All right, all right, I can shoot well enough ; 
 299
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 this kind of thing isn't our custom, you know 
 I'd as soon kill him one way as another, as a 
 matter of fact. No, I don't know a darned 
 soul here." There was a confab incomprehen- 
 sible to Dan. "It's all one to me, gentlemen," 
 he said. "I'd rather not drag in my friends, 
 anyhow. Fix it up to suit yourselves." 
 
 He wanted them to go to be alone to 
 stretch his arms, to rid himself of the burden of 
 sense, and be free. And after they had left, he 
 remained in his window till dawn. It came soon, 
 midsummer dawn, a singularly tender morning 
 in his heart. His mind worked with great rapid' 
 ity. He had made his will in the States. He 
 wished he could have left everything to Letty 
 Lane, but if, as Ruggles said, he was a pauper? 
 Perhaps it wasn't a lie after all. Dan had writ- 
 ten and telegraphed Ruggles asking for the 
 solemn truth, and also telling him where he was 
 and asking the older man to come over. If 
 Ruggles proved he was poor, why, some of his 
 burden was gone. His money had been a bur- 
 300
 
 SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS 
 
 den, he knew it now. He might have no use for 
 money the next day. What good could it do him 
 in a fix like this? He was to meet Peniotowsky 
 at five o'clock in a place whose name he couldn't 
 recall. He had sen it advertised, though ; peo- 
 ple went there for lunch. 
 
 They were to shoot at twenty-five paces he 
 might be a Rockefeller or a beggar for all the 
 good his money could do him in a pinch like this. 
 
 His father wouldn't approve, the old man 
 wouldn't approve, but he had sent him here to 
 learn the ways of the old world. A flickering 
 smile crossed his beautiful, set face. His lessons 
 hadn't done him much good; he would like to 
 have seen good old Gordon Galorey again; he 
 loved him he had no use for Ruggles, no use 
 it had been all his fault. His mind reached out 
 to his father, and the old man's words came din- 
 ning back: "Buy the things that stay above 
 ground, my boy." What were those things? 
 He had thought they were passion he had 
 thought they were love, and he had put all on 
 301
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 one woman. She couldn't stand by him, now 
 that he was poor. 
 
 The spasm in his heart was so sharp that he 
 made a low sound in his throat and leaned 
 against the casing of the window. He must see 
 her, touch her once more. 
 
 The fellows Poniotowsky's seconds had chosen 
 to be Dan's representatives came in to "fix him 
 up." They were in frock-coats and carried their 
 silk hats and their gloves. He could have laughed 
 at them. Then they made him think of under- 
 takers, and his blood grew cold. He handled 
 the revolvers with care and interest. 
 
 "I'm not going to let him murder me, you 
 know," he told his seconds. 
 
 They helped him dress, at least one of them 
 did, while the other took Dan's place by the 
 window and looked to the boy like a figure of 
 death. 
 
 The hour was getting on ; He heard his own 
 motor drive up, and they went down, through 
 the deserted hotel. The men who had consented 
 302
 
 SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS 
 
 to act for Dan regarded their principal curi- 
 ously. He wasn't pale, there was a brightness 
 on his face. 
 
 "Partonsy" said one of them, and told Blair's 
 chauffeur where to go and how to run. "Par- 
 tons." 
 
 303
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 THE PICTUBE OF IT ALL 
 
 AS far as his knowing anything of the cus- 
 toms of it all, it was like leading a lamb 
 to slaughter. 
 
 Villebon, lovely, vernal, at a later hour the 
 spot for gay breakfasts and gentle rendezvous, 
 had been designated for the meeting between 
 Dan and Poniotowsky. There in his motor he 
 gave up his effort to set his thoughts clear. 
 Nothing settled down. Even the ground they 
 flew over, the trees with their chestnut plumes, 
 blurred, were indistinct, nebulous, as if seen 
 through a diving-bell under the sea. Fear 
 he didn't know the word. He wasn't afraid it 
 wasn't that; yet he had a certainty that it was 
 all up with him. He was young very young 
 and he hadn't done much with the job. His 
 304
 
 THE PICTURE OF IT ALL 
 
 father would have been ashamed of him. Then 
 all his thoughts went to Her. The two men in 
 the motor floated off and she sat there as she 
 had sat yesterday in her marvelously pretty 
 clothes her little coral shoes. 
 
 He had held those bright, little feet in his 
 hand on the Thames day: they had just filled 
 his great hands. Mechanically he spread out 
 his firm, broad palms on the soft shoes. Letty 
 Lane Letty Lane a shiver passed through his 
 body; the sense of her, the touch of her, the 
 kisses he had taken, the way she had blown up 
 against him like a cloud a cloud that, as he held 
 her, became the substance of Paradise. This 
 brought him back to physical life, brutally. He 
 was too young to die. 
 
 Those little, red shoes would dance on his 
 grave. Was she asleep now? How would she 
 know? What would she know? 
 
 Then Letty Lane, too, spirited away, and the 
 boy's thoughts turned to the man he was to 
 meet. "The affairs are purely formal," he had 
 305
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 heard some one say, "an exchange of balls, 
 without serious results." 
 
 One of his companions offered Blair a cigar. 
 He refused, the idea sickened him. Here the 
 gentlemen exchanged glances, and one mur- 
 mured, "Is he afraid?" 
 
 The other shrugged. 
 
 "Not astonishing he's a child." 
 
 At this Dan glanced up and smiled what 
 Lily, Duchess of Breakwater, had called his di- 
 vine young smile. The two secretly were ashamed 
 he was charming. 
 
 As they got out of the motor Dan said : 
 
 "I want to ask a question of Prince Ponio- 
 towsky if it is allowed. I'll write it on my 
 card." 
 
 After a conference between Prince Poniotow- 
 sky's seconds and Dan's, the slip was handed 
 the prince. 
 
 "If you get out all right, will you marry Miss 
 Lane? I shall be glad to know." 
 
 306
 
 THE PICTURE OF IT ALL 
 
 The Hungarian, who read it under the tree, 
 half smiled. The naivete of it, the touching 
 youth of it, the crude lack of form was per- 
 fect enough to touch his sense of humor. On 
 the back of Dan's card Poniotowsky scrawled : 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 It was a haughty inclination, a salute of 
 honor before the fight. 
 
 The meeting place was within sight of the 
 little rustic pavilion of Les Trois Agneaux, 
 celebrated for its pre sale and belgnets: the ad- 
 vertisements had confronted Dan everywhere 
 during his wanderings those miserable days. 
 Under a group of chestnut trees in bright feath- 
 ery flower Prince Poniotowsky and his seconds 
 waited, their frock-coats buttoned up and their 
 gloves and silk hats in their hands. As Blair 
 and his companions came up the others stood 
 uncovered, grim and formal, according to the 
 code. 
 
 On the highroad a short distance away ranged 
 the motors which had fetched the gentlemen 
 307
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 from Paris, and the car in which the physician 
 had come an ugly and sinister gathering in 
 the peace and beauty of the serene summer 
 morning. 
 
 Finches and thrushes sang in the bushes, over 
 the grass the dew still hung in crystals, and a 
 peasant walking at his horses' heads on the slow 
 tramp back from the Paris market, was held up 
 and kept stolidly waiting at a few hundred 
 yards away. 
 
 Twenty-five paces. They were measured off 
 by the four seconds, and at their signal Dan 
 Blair and the prince took their positions, the 
 revolvers raised perpendicularly in their right 
 hands. 
 
 Still more indistinctly the boy saw the sharp- 
 cut picture of it all . . . the diving-bell was 
 sinking deeper deeper into the sea. 
 
 "If I aim," he said to himself, "I shall kill 
 sure sure." 
 
 Blair heard the command : "Fire !" and sup- 
 posed that after that he fired. 
 308
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 SODAWATER FOUNTAIN GIRL 
 
 HIS next sensation was that a warm stream 
 flowed about his heart. 
 
 "My life's blood," he could dimly think, 
 "my heart's blood." Redder than coral, more 
 precious, more costly than any gift his millions 
 could have bought her. "I've spent it for the 
 girl I love." The stream pervaded him, caressed 
 him, folded his limbs about, became an en- 
 chanted sea on which he floated, and its color 
 changed from crimson to coral pale, and then to 
 white, and became a cold, cold polar sea and 
 he lay on it like a frozen man, whose explora- 
 tion had been in vain, and above him Green- 
 land's icy mountains rose like emerald, on every 
 side. 
 
 That is it "Greenland's icy mountains." 
 309
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 How she sang it down down. Her voice fell 
 on him like magic balm. He was a little boy 
 in church, sitting small and shy in the pew. 
 The tune was deep and low and heavenly sweet. 
 What a pretty mouth the soda-fountain girl had 
 like coral; and her eyes like gray seas. The 
 flies buzzed, they droned so loudly that he 
 couldn't hear her. Ah, that was terrible he 
 couldn't hear her. 
 
 No no, it wouldn't do. He must hear the 
 hymn out before he died. Buzz buzz drone 
 drone. Way down he almost heard the soft 
 note. It was ecstasy. Sky high up too 
 faint. Ah, Sodawater Fountain Girl sing 
 sing with all your heart so that it may reach 
 his ears and charm him to those strands to- 
 ward which he floats. 
 
 The expression of anguish on the young fel- 
 low's face was so heartbreaking that the doctor, 
 his ear at Dan's lips, tried to learn what thing 
 his poor, fading mind longed for. 
 310
 
 SODAWATER FOUNTAIN GIRL 
 
 From tHe bed's fool', where he stood, Dan's 
 chauffeur came to his gentleman's side, and 
 nodded : 
 
 "Right, sir, right, sir I'll fetch Miss Lane 
 I'll 'ave 'er 'ere, sir keep up, Mr. Blair." 
 
 He was going barefoot, a boy still following 
 the plow through the mountain fields. Miles 
 and miles stretched away before him of dark, 
 loamy land. He saw the plow tear up the waving 
 furrows, tossing the earth in sprinkling lines. 
 He heard the shrill note of the phoebe bird, and 
 looking heavenward saw it darting into the pale 
 sky. 
 
 "What a dandy shot !" he thought. "What a 
 bully shot!" 
 
 Prince Poniotowsky had made a good 
 shot. . . . 
 
 Ah, there was the smell of the hayfields no 
 
 violets that sweetly laid their petals on his 
 
 lips and face. He was back again in church, 
 
 lying prone before an altar. If she would only 
 
 311
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 sing, he would rise again that he knew and 
 her coral shoes would not dance over his grave. 
 
 He opened his eyes wide and looked into Lett J 
 Lane's. She bent over him, crying. 
 
 "Sing," he whispered. 
 
 She didn't understand. 
 
 "Sodawater Fountain Girl if you only knew 
 how . . . the flies buzzed, and how the dron- 
 ing was a living pain. ..." 
 
 She said to Ruggles: "He wants something 
 so heartbreakingly what can we do?" She saw 
 his hands stir rhythmically on the counterpane 
 he didn't look to her more than ten years old. 
 . . . What a cruel thing he was a boy just 
 of age a boy 
 
 Ruggles remembered the nights he had spent 
 before the footlights of the Gaiety, and that the 
 pale woman trembling there weeping was a great 
 singer. 
 
 "I guess he wants to hear you sing." 
 
 She kneeled down by him ; she trembled so she 
 couldn't stand. 
 
 The others, the doctor and Ruggles, the wait- 
 312
 
 SODAWATER FOUNTAIN GIRL 
 
 ers and porters gathered in the hall, heard. No 
 one of them understood the Gaiety girl's Eng- 
 lish words. 
 
 "From Greenland's icy mountains, 
 From India's coral strands . 
 
 They were merciful and let him listen in 
 peace. Through the blur in his brain, over the 
 beat of his young ardent heart, above the short 
 breaths the notes reached his failing senses, and 
 lifted him lifted him. There wasn't a very 
 long distance between his boyhood and his 
 twenty-two years to go, and he was not so 
 weak but that he could travel so far. 
 
 He sat there by his father again and heard. 
 The flies buzzed, and he didn't mind them. The 
 smell of the fields came in through the windows 
 and the Sodawater Fountain Girl sang and 
 sang ; and as she sang her face grew holy to his 
 eyes radiant with a beauty he had not dreamed 
 a woman's face could wear. Above the choir rail 
 she stood and sang peerlessly, and the church 
 313
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 began to fade and fade, and still she stood there 
 in a shaft of light, and her face was like an 
 angel's, and she held her arms out to him as the 
 waters rose to his lips. She bent and lifted him 
 lifted him high upon the strands. . . . 
 
 314
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 IN REALITY 
 
 DAN awoke from his dream, and sat sud- 
 denly up in bed in his shirt sleeves, and 
 stared at the people in his room, a hotel boy 
 and two strangers, not unlike the men in his 
 dream. He brushed his hand across his eyes. 
 
 "Sit down, will you? Do you speak Eng- 
 lish?" 
 
 They were foreigners, but they did speak 
 English, no doubt far more perfectly than did 
 Dan Blair. 
 
 "Look here," the boy said, "I don't know 
 what's the matter with me I must have had a 
 ripping jag on last night let me put my head 
 in a basin of water, will you ?" 
 
 He dived into the dressing-room, and came 
 out in another second, his blond head wet, 
 315
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 wiping his face and hair furiously with a towel. 
 He hadn't beamed as he did now on these two 
 strange men for weeks. 
 
 "Well," he asked slowly, "I expect you've 
 come to ask me to fight with Prince Poniotow- 
 sky yes? It's against our principles, you 
 know, in the States we don't do that way. 
 Personally, I'd throw anything at him I could 
 lay my hands on, but I don't care to have him 
 let daylight through me, and I don't care to kill 
 your friend. See? I'm an American yes, I 
 know, I know," he nodded sagely, "but we don't 
 have your kind of fights out our way. It means 
 business when we go out to shoot." 
 
 He threw the towel down on the table, soak- 
 ing wet as it was, put his hands in the pockets 
 of his evening clothes, which he still wore, for 
 he had not undressed, threw his young, blond 
 head back and frankly told his visitors : 
 
 "I'm not up on swords. I've seen them in pic- 
 tures and read about them, but I'll be darned if 
 I've ever had one in my hand." 
 316
 
 IN REALITY 
 
 His expression changed at the quiet response 
 of Poniotowsky's seconds. 
 
 "Gee. Whew!" he exclaimed, "he does, does 
 he? Twenty paces revolvers why, he's a bird 
 a bird!" 
 
 A slight flush rose along Dan's cheeks. "I 
 never liked him, and you don't want to hear what 
 I think of him. But I'll be darned if he isn't a 
 bird." 
 
 His eyes caught sight of a blue envelope on 
 the table. He tore the telegram open. It was 
 Ruggles' answer to his question: 
 
 "Quite true. Tell you about it. Arrive 
 your hotel around noon." 
 
 The despatch informed him that he was really 
 a pauper and also that he had a second for his 
 duel with Poniotowsky. His guests stood for- 
 mally before the young barbarian. 
 
 "Look here," he continued amiably, "I can't 
 meet your Dago friend like this, it's not fair. 
 He hasn't seen me shoot ; it isn't for me to say 
 317
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 it, but I can't miss. Hold," he interrupted, 
 "he has, too. He was at the Galoreys' at that 
 first shoot. Ah well, I refuse, tell him so, will 
 you? Tell him I'm an American and a cowboy 
 and that for me a duel at twenty paces with a 
 pistol would mean murder. I like his pluck 
 it's all right tell him anything you like. He 
 ought to have chosen swords. He would have 
 had me there." 
 
 They retired as formally as they had en- 
 tered, and took his answer to their client, and 
 after a bath and careful toilet Dan went out, 
 leaving a line for Ruggles, to say that he would 
 be at the hotel to meet him at noon. 
 
 318
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 THE PRINCE ACCEPTS 
 
 THE Hungarian, in the Continental, was 
 drinking his coffee in his room when his 
 friends found him. He listened to what they 
 had to say coolly. His eye-glass gave him an air 
 of full dress even at this early hour. Ponio- 
 towsky had not fallen into a deep sleep and had 
 a dream as Dan Blair had indeed he had only 
 reached his rooms the night before when a letter 
 had been brought him from Miss Lane. He 
 was used to her caprices, which were countless, 
 and he never left her with any certainty that 
 he should see her again, or with any idea of 
 what her next move would be. The letter read : 
 
 "It's no use. I just can't. I've always told 
 you so, and I mean it. I'm tired out I want 
 to go away and never see any one again. I 
 
 319
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 want to die. I shall be dead next year, and I 
 don't care. Please leave me alone and don't 
 come to see me, and for heaven's sake don't bore 
 me with notes." 
 
 When Poniotowsky received this note he had 
 shrugged, and decided that if he lived after his 
 duel with the young savage he would go to see 
 the actress, taking a jewel or a gift he would 
 get her a Pomeranian dog, and all would be 
 well. He listened coolly to what his friends had 
 to say. 
 
 "C'est un enfant," one of them remarked 
 sneeringly. 
 
 "In my mind, he is a coward," said the 
 other. 
 
 "On the contrary," answered Poniotowsky 
 coolly, "he shoots to perfection. You will be 
 surprised to hear that I admire his refusal. I 
 accept his decision, as his skill is unquestioned 
 with arms. I choose to look upon this reply as 
 an apology. I would like to have you inform 
 Mr. Blair of this fact. He's young enough to 
 320
 
 THE PRINCE ACCEPTS 
 
 be my son, and lie is a barbarian. The incident 
 is closed." 
 
 He put Letty Lane's note in his pocket, and 
 leisurely prepared to go out on the Rue de Cas- 
 tiglione to buy her a Pomeranian dog. 
 
 321
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 THE THINGS ABOVE GROUND 
 
 HIGGINS let him in, and across the room 
 Blair saw the figure of the actress 
 against the light of the long window. Her 
 back was to him as he came up, and though she 
 knew who it was, she was far from dreaming 
 how different a man it was that came in to see 
 her this morning from the one she had known. 
 
 "Won't you turn around and bid me good- 
 by?" he asked her. "I'm going away." 
 
 She gave him a languid hand without looking 
 at him. 
 
 "Has Higgins gone?" 
 
 "Yes. Won't you turn round and say how- 
 de-do, and good-by? Gosh," he cried as she 
 turned, "how pale you are, darling." And he 
 took her in his arms.
 
 THE THINGS ABOVE GROUND 
 
 The vision he had had of her in her coral- 
 colored dress at Maxim's gave place to the more 
 radiant one which had shone on him in his curi- 
 ous dream. 
 
 "Are you very ill?" he murmured. "Speak to 
 me tell me are you going to die?" 
 
 "Don't be a goose, boy." 
 
 "I've had a wire from Ruggles," Dan said; 
 "he tells me it's true. I have nothing but my 
 own feet to stand on, and I'm as poor as 
 Job's turkey." Looking at her impressively, he 
 added, "I only mind because it will be hard on 
 you." 
 
 "Hard on me?" 
 
 "Yes, you'll have to start poor. Mother did 
 with father, out there in Montana. It will be 
 rough at first, but others have done it and been 
 happy, and we've got each other." The eyes 
 fixed on her were as blue as the summer skies. 
 "Money's a darned poor thing to buy happiness 
 with, Letty. It didn't buy me a thing fit to 
 keep, that's the truth. I've never been so gay 
 323
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 since I was born as I am to-day. Why, I feel," 
 he said, and would have stretched out his arms, 
 only he held her with them, "like a king. Later 
 I'll have money again, all right don't fret 
 and then I'll know its worth. I'll bet you 
 weren't all unhappy there in Blairtown before 
 you turned the heads of all those Johnnies." 
 He put one hand against her cheek and lifted 
 her drooping head. "Lean on me, sweetheart," 
 he said with great tenderness. "It will be all 
 right." 
 
 A coral color stole along her cheek: it rose 
 like a sweet tide under his hand. She looked at 
 him, fascinated. 
 
 "It's not a real tragedy," he went on. "I've 
 got my letter of credit, and old Ruggles will let 
 me hang on to that, and you'll find the motor 
 cars and jewels will look like thirty cents when 
 we stand in the door of our little shack and 
 look out at the Value Mine." He lifted her hand 
 to his lips, held it there, and the spark ignited 
 in her; his youth and confidence, his force and
 
 THE THINGS ABOVE GROUND 
 
 passion, woke a woman in Letty Lane that had 
 never lived before that hour. 
 
 He murmured: "I'll be there with you, dar- 
 ling night and day night and day!" He 
 brought his bright face close to hers. 
 
 She found breath to say, "What has hap- 
 pened to you, Dan what?" 
 
 "I don't know," he gravely replied. "I guess 
 I came up pretty close against it last night; 
 things got into their right places, and then and 
 there I knew you were the girl for me, and I the 
 man for you, rich or poor." 
 
 He kissed her and she passively received his 
 caresses, so passively, so without making him 
 any sign, that his magnificent assurance began 
 to be shaken his arms fell from her. 
 
 "It's quite true," he murmured, "I am poor." 
 
 She led him to the lounge and made him sit 
 down by her. He waited for her to speak, but 
 she remained silent, her eyes fixed on her frail 
 hands, ringless tears forced themselves under 
 her eyelids, but she kept them back. 
 325
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 "I guess," she said in a veiled tone, "you've 
 no idea all I've been through, Dan, since I stood 
 there in the church choir." 
 
 American though he was, and down on for- 
 eign customs he wouldn't fight a duel he got 
 down on his knees and put his arms around her 
 from there. 
 
 "I know what you are, all right, Letty. You 
 are an angel." 
 
 She gave way and burst into tears and hid 
 her face on his shoulder, and sobbed. 
 
 "I believe you do I believe you do. You've 
 saved my soul and my life. I'll go with you 
 I'll go I'll go!" 
 
 Later she told him how she would learn to 
 cook and sew, and that together they would 
 stand in the door of their shack at sunset, or 
 that she would stand and watch for him to come 
 home ; and, the actress in her strong, she sprang 
 up for a minute and stood shielding her eyes 
 with her slender hand to show him how. And 
 326
 
 THE THINGS ABOVE GROUND 
 
 he gazed, charmed at her, and drew her back to 
 him again. 
 
 "You've made dad's words come true." Dan 
 wouldn't tell her what they were he said she 
 wouldn't understand. "I nearly had to die to 
 learn them myself," he said. 
 
 She leaned toward him, a slight shadow 
 crossed her face as if memories laid a darkling 
 wing for a moment there. Such shadows must 
 have passed, for she kissed him of her own ac- 
 cord on the lips and without a sigh. 
 
 Side by side they sat for a long time. Hig- 
 gins softly opened a door, saw them, and stepped 
 back, unheard. 
 
 Ruggles came in, and his steps in the soft 
 carpet made no sound ; and he looked at the pair 
 long and tenderly before he spoke. They sat 
 there before him like children, holding hands. 
 
 Letty Lane's hat lay on the floor. Her hair 
 was a halo around her pale, charming face; she 
 had caught youth from the boy, she was laugh- 
 ing like a girl they were making plans. And 
 327
 
 THE GIRL FROM HIS TOWN 
 
 as the subject was Love, and there was no 
 money in the question, and as there was sacri- 
 fice on the part of each, it is safe to think that 
 old Dan Blair's son was planning to purchase 
 those things that stay above ground and per- 
 sist in the hearts of us all.
 
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