w gave way to grim determination. "Yes, you are coming my
way--sometime, if not now! And now if I can make you!"

Their embattled gazes gripped each other. But now Larry was seeing more
than just Maggie. He was also taking in the room. It was close kin to
the room in which he had left Miss Grierson: ornate, undistinguished,
and very expensive. He noted one slight difference: a tiny hallway
giving on the corridor, its inner door now opened.

But the greatest difference was what he saw over Maggie's smooth white
shoulders: a table all set with china and glass and silver, and arranged
for five.

"Maggie, what's this game you're up to?" he demanded.

"It's none of your business!" she said fiercely, but in a low tone--for
both were instinctively remembering Miss Grierson in the adjoining room.
And then she added proudly: "But it's big! Bigger than anything you ever
dreamed of! And you can see I am putting it across so far--and I'll be
putting it across at the finish! Compare it to the cheap line you talked
about. Bah!"

"Listen, Maggie!" In his intensity he gripped her bare forearm. "This is
bad business, and if you had any sense you'd know it! Don't you think
I get the layout? Barney is your cousin, Old Jimmie is your uncle, that
dame in the next room and this suite and your swell clothes to help put
up a front! And your sickness that wouldn't let you go to the theater
is just a fake, so that, not wanting to disappoint them entirely, you'd
have an excuse for having supper here--and thus adroitly draw some
person into the trap of a more intimate relationship. It's a clever and
classy layout. Maggie, exactly what's your game?"

"I'll not tell you!"

"Who's that man that's coming here?"

"I'll not tell you!"

"Is he the sucker you're out to trim?"

"I'll not tell you!"

"You will tell me!" he cried dominantly. "And you're going to get out
of all this! You hear me? It may look good to you now. But I tell you it
has only one finish! And that's a rotten finish!"

She tore free from his punishing grip, and pantingly glared at him--her
former defiance now an egoistic fury.

"I won't have you interfering with my life!--you fake preacher!--you
stool, you squealer!" she flung at him madly. "Stool--squealer!" she
repeated. "I tell you I'm going my own way--and it's a big way--and I
tell you again nothing you can say or do can stop me! If I could have my
best wish, all I'd wish for would be something to keep you from alw