orderly manner to the exit,

Sally.

CHAPTER XIII. STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF A SPARRING-PARTNER

1

Sally's emotions, as she sat in her apartment on the morning of her
return to New York, resembled somewhat those of a swimmer who, after
wavering on a raw morning at the brink of a chill pool, nerves himself
to the plunge. She was aching, but she knew that she had done well. If
she wanted happiness, she must fight for it, and for all these months
she had been shirking the fight. She had done with wavering on the
brink, and here she was, in mid-stream, ready for whatever might befall.
It hurt, this coming to grips. She had expected it to hurt. But it was
a pain that stimulated, not a dull melancholy that smothered. She felt
alive and defiant.

She had finished unpacking and tidying up. The next move was certainly
to go and see Ginger. She had suddenly become aware that she wanted very
badly to see Ginger. His stolid friendliness would be a support and a
prop. She wished now that she had sent him a cable, so that he could
have met her at the dock. It had been rather terrible at the dock.
The echoing customs sheds had sapped her valour and she felt alone and
forlorn.

She looked at her watch, and was surprised to find how early it was. She
could catch him at the office and make him take her out to lunch. She
put on her hat and went out.

The restless hand of change, always active in New York, had not spared
the outer office of the Fillmore Nicholas Theatrical Enterprises Ltd. in
the months of her absence. She was greeted on her arrival by an entirely
new and original stripling in the place of the one with whom at her last
visit she had established such cordial relations. Like his predecessor
he was generously pimpled, but there the resemblance stopped. He was a
grim boy, and his manner was stern and suspicious. He peered narrowly at
Sally for a moment as if he had caught her in the act of purloining the
office blotting-paper, then, with no little acerbity, desired her to
state her business.

"I want Mr. Kemp," said Sally.

The office-boy scratched his cheek dourly with a ruler. No one would
have guessed, so austere was his aspect, that a moment before her
entrance he had been trying to balance it on his chin, juggling the
while with a pair of paper-weights. For, impervious as he seemed
to human weaknesses, it was this lad's ambition one day to go into
vaudeville.

"What name?" he said, coldly.

"Nic