note significant.

"Who's your letter from?" Wallace asked idly. She tossed it to him
unconcernedly: she had told him of John's call. "He must have a case on
you, Mart!" Wallace said indifferently.

"Well, in his curious way, perhaps he has," she answered honestly.

Ten days later she wrote him an answer. She thanked him for the books,
and announced that her daughter Margaret was just a week old, and sent
her love to Uncle John. Adele immediately sent baby roses and a card to
say that she was dying to see the baby, and would come soon. She never
came: but after that John wrote occasionally to Martie, and she
answered his notes. They did not try to meet.

CHAPTER VI

Wallace was playing a few weeks' engagement in the vaudeville houses of
New Jersey and Brooklyn when his second child was born. He had been at
home for a few hours that morning, coming in for clean linen, a good
breakfast, and a talk with his wife. He was getting fifty dollars a
week, as support for a woman star, and was happy and confident. The
hard work--twelve performances a week--left small time for idling or
drinking, and Martie's eager praise added the last touch to his content.

She was happy, too, as she walked back into the darkened, orderly
house. It was just noon. Isabeau, having finished her work, had
departed with Teddy to see a friend in West One Hundredth Street; John
had sent Martie Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee," and a fat, inviting
brown book, "All the Days of My Life." She had planned to go to the
hospital next week, Wallace coming home on Sunday to act as escort, and
she determined to keep the larger book for the stupid days of
convalescence.

She stretched herself on the dining-room couch, reached for the smaller
book, and began to read. For a second, a look of surprise crossed her
face, and she paused. Then she found the opening paragraph, and plunged
into the story. But she had not read three sentences before she stopped
again.

Suddenly, in a panic, she was on her feet. Frightened, breathless,
laughing, she went into the kitchen.

"Isabeau out ... Heavenly day! What shall I do!" she whispered. "It
can't be! Fool that I was to let her go ... what SHALL I do!"

Life caught her and shook her like a helpless leaf in a whirlwind. She
went blindly into the bedroom and began feverishly to fling off her
outer garments. Presently she made her way back to the kitchen again,
and put her lips to the janitor's telephone.

Wr