, yes, everybody knows the beautiful Mrs. Doran's address. I'll write
or telegraph _every_ day. My heart will be with you."

He squeezed her hand so desperately that she could have screamed with
pain from the pressure of the blue diamond. But with touching
self-control she only smiled a strained, sympathetic little smile. And
Max had forgotten all about the ring!

"Thank you, my beautiful one, my angel," he said. And Billie's large
brown eyes (so effective with her delicate dark brows and rippling
yellow hair) gave him a lovely look. She had been called many things by
many adoring men, but perhaps never before an "angel." Max Doran was
very young, in some ways even younger than his years. "Good-bye," she
murmured. "But no--not 'good-bye.' That's a terrible word. _Au revoir._
You'll come to me when you can, I know. I shall be in Chicago a
fortnight. But if you can't leave Mrs. Doran, why, in six weeks I shall
be in New York."

"Don't speak of six weeks!" he exclaimed. "It's like six years. I _must_
see you before that. But--my mother is before everything just now."

They bade each other farewell with their eyes. Then he took her to Mrs.
Liddell, the small gray aunt, and hardly was Billie seated when Major
Naylor dashed up to claim her for Gaeta's waltz in the first act of
"Girls' Love."

After that, things happened quickly with Max Doran. He seemed to dream
them, and was still in the dream, tearing toward Chicago in a special
train whose wheels rushed through the night in tune with that first-act
music from "Girls' Love."

CHAPTER II

THE BLOW

The name that signed the telegram was that of Mrs. Doran's lawyer and
man of business. It was that also of Max Doran's old-time chum, Grant
Reeves, Edwin Reeves' son. And when Max stepped out of the limited in
the Grand Central Station of New York, among the first faces he saw were
those of the two Reeveses, who had come to meet him. He shook hands with
both, warmly and gratefully with Grant. He had never been able really to
like his friend's father. But it was to him he turned with the question:
"How is she?"

The elder, tall, thin, clean-shaven, with carrot-red hair turning gray,
had prominent red eyebrows over pale, intelligent eyes that winked
often, owing to some weakness of the lids, which had lost most of their
lashes. This disfigurement he concealed as well as he could with rimless
_pince-nez_, which some people said were not necessary as an aid to
eyes