o back to the studio building and keep watch in the corridors until she
was ready. Then, after breakfast, he would personally conduct her to
the security of Louise Ordway's home. Louise need not see her, if she
did not feel up to it, but she would surely give her asylum after
hearing Laurie's experiences of the night.

That was his plan. It seemed a good one. He did not admit even to
himself that under the air of sang-froid he wore as a garment, every
instinct in him was crying out for the sound of Doris's voice. Also, as
he hurried along, he was conscious that a definite change was taking
place in his attitude toward Herbert Ransome Shaw. Slowly, reluctantly,
but fully, he had now accepted the fact that "Bertie" represented a
force that must be reckoned with.

He inserted the latch-key into the door of his apartment with an inward
prayer that Bangs would not be visible, and for a moment he hoped it had
been granted. But when he entered their common dressing-room he found
his chum there, in the last stages of his usual careful toilet. He
greeted Laurie without surprise or comment, in the detached, absent
manner he had assumed of late, and Laurie hurried into the bath-room and
turned on the hot water, glad of the excuse to escape even a
tete-a-tete.

That greeting of Bangs's added the final notes to the minor symphony
life was playing for him this morning. As he lay back in the hot water,
relaxing his stiff, bruised body, the thought came that possibly he and
Rodney were really approaching the final breaking-point. Bangs was not
ordinarily a patient chap. He was too impetuous and high-strung for
that. But he had been wonderfully patient with this friend of his heart.
If it were true that the friendship was dying under the strain put upon
it, and Laurie knew how possible this was, and how swift and intense
were Bangs's reactions, life henceforth, however full it might be, would
lack an element that had been singularly vital and comforting. He tried
to think of what future days would be without Bangs's exuberant
personality to fill them with work and color; but he could not picture
them; and as the effort merely added to the gloom that enveloped him, he
abandoned it and again gave himself up to thoughts of Doris.

As he hurried into his clothes a strong temptation came to him to tell
Bangs the whole story. Then Bangs would understand everything, and he,
Laurie, would have the benefit of Rodney's advice and help in untyi