nking me not stupid. I am stupid--stupid--stupid. The old
fellow I told you about, Mr. O., and the way I telephoned him out of
the flat that night--it was--"

"Ramsay!"

I nodded, and then crumbled to the floor.

It was then that they sent for you, Mag.

Why didn't I tell it straight at the first, you dear old Mag? Because I
didn't know the straight of it, then, myself. I was so heavy-witted I
never once thought of Edward. He must have taken the bills out of the
purse and then crammed them in his pocket while he was waiting there on
the lounge and I was pretending to telephone and--

But it's best as it is--oh, so best! Think, Mag! Two people who knew
her--who knew her, mind--believed in Nancy Olden, in spite of
appearances: Obermuller, while we were in the thick of it, and; you,
you dear girl, while I was telling you of it.

XII.

When Obermuller sent for me I thought he wanted to see me about that
play he's writing in which I'm to star--when the pigs begin to fly.

Funniest thing in the world about that man, Mag. He knows he can't get
bookings for any play on earth; that if he did they'd be canceled and
any old excuse thrown at him, as soon as Tausig heard of it and could
put on the screws. He knows that there isn't an unwatched hole in
theatrical America through which he can crawl and pull me and the play
in after him. And yet he just can't let go working on it. He loves
it, Mag; he loves it as Molly loved that child of hers that kept her
nursing it all the years of its life, and left her feeling that the
world had been robbed of everything there was for a woman to do when it
died.

Obermuller has told me all the plot. In fact, he's worked it out on
me. I know it as it is, as he wanted it to be, and as it's going to
be. He tells me he's built it up about me; that it will fit me as
never a comedy fitted a player yet, and that we'll make such a hit--the
play and I together--that ...

And then he remembers that there's no chance; not the ghost of one; and
he falls to swearing at the Trust.

"Don't you think, Mr. O.," I said, as he began again when I came into
his office, "that it might be as well to quit cursing the Syndicate
till you've got something new to say or something different to rail
about? It seems to me a man's likely to get daffy if he keeps harping
on--"

"Oh, I've got it all right, Nance, be sure of that! I've got something
different to say of them and something new to swe