Street about the
disagreement in the board of directors of the new Rubber Syndicate and
the effort to oust the president whose escapades were something more
than mere whispers of scandal.

This was the woman in the case. Constance looked at Stella now with
added interest as she rose languidly, drew her bathrobe about her
superb figure carelessly in such a way as to show it at best advantage.

"I've had more or less to do with Wall Street myself," observed
Constance.

"Oh, have you? Isn't that interesting," cried Stella.

"I hope you're not putting money in Rubber?" queried Constance.

"On the contrary," rippled Stella, then added, "You're going to stay?
Let me tell you something. Have Floretta do your hair. She's the best
here. Then come around to see me in the dormitory if I'm here when you
are through, won't you?"

Constance promised and Stella fluttered away like the pretty butterfly
that she was, leaving Constance to wonder at the natural gravitation of
plungers in the money market toward plungers in the white lights.

Charmant's Beauty Parlor was indeed all its name implied, a temple of
the cult of adornment, the last cry in the effort to satisfy what is
more than health, wealth, and happiness to some women--the fundamental
feminine instinct for beauty.

Constance had visited the beauty specialist to have an incipient
wrinkle smoothed out. Frankly, it was not vanity. But she had come to
realize that her greatest asset was her personal appearance. Once that
had a chance to work, her native wit and keen ability would carry her
to success.

Madame Charmant herself was a tall, dark-skinned, dark-haired,
dark-eyed, well-groomed woman who looked as if she had been stamped
from a die for a fashion plate--and then the die had been thrown away.
All others like her were spurious copies, counterfeits. More than that,
she affected the name of Vera, which in itself had the ring of truth.

And so Charmant had prevailed on Constance to take a full course in
beautification and withhold the wrinkle at the source.

"Besides, you know, my dear," she purred, "there's nothing discovered
by the greatest minds of the age that we don't apply at once."

Constance was not impervious to feminine reason, and here she was.

"Has Miss Larue gone?" she asked when at last she was seated in a
comfortable chair again sipping a little aromatic cup of coffee.

"No, she's resting in one of the little dressing rooms."

She followed F