ry one, and he wants to forget me himself. If I were on
the spot, poor, and hustling to get on somehow or other in business, it
might worry him a little to be seen spending money that used to be
mine."

Perhaps it was morbid to attribute these motives to Grant Reeves, who
had once been his friend, but he did attribute them; and conscious that
he was actually encouraging morbid thoughts, Max wondered if he, too,
were getting the _cafard_, the madness of the Legion? Lying there, the
only waking one among the sleepers, fear of unseen, mysterious things,
the fear that sometimes attacks a brave man in the night, leaped at him
out of the shadows. He could almost feel the sharp little claws of the
dreaded beetle scratching in his brain. Yes, he'd been a fool to join
the Legion, and to hand over Jack Doran's house and fortune to Grant
Reeves! It was impossible that Grant had married Josephine for love. He
had simply taken her with the money, and he meant to have the spending
of it.

In the letter, Grant said that they planned to alter the old Doran house
and "bring it up to date." It was he, Grant, who had all the ideas,
apparently. Josephine was letting him do as he pleased. What should she
know about such matters? If she could have all the dresses and jewels
and fur she wanted, Grant would be allowed to go his own way with other
things. He was clever enough to understand that, and to manage
Josephine.

With the letter Grant had posted a bundle of Sunday newspapers and
illustrated magazines, such a bundle of old news as one sends to an
invalid in hospital. Max had glanced through some of the papers before
going to bed, looking with a sad, far-off sort of interest at portraits
of people whose names he knew. There had been a page of "America's most
beautiful actresses" in one Sunday supplement, and among them, of
course, was Billie Brookton. No such page would be complete without her!
It was a new photograph that Max had never seen. The smiling face, head
drooped slightly in order to give Billie's celebrated upward look from
under level brows, had the place of honour in the middle of the page.
And a paragraph beneath announced that Billie would leave the stage on
her marriage with "Millionaire Jeff Houston, of Chicago."

No doubt Houston was the man she had mentioned in her last letter. Round
her neck, in the picture, Max thought he recognized his pearls, and on
the pretty hand, raised to play with a rope of bigger pearls--"