I
stared up at him like a silly creature. His face was suffused with a
dull red, and his eyes were unbelievably blue and bright. He had my
hands in his great grip, but his voice was very quiet and contained.

"You are married," he said. "Never forget that for a moment. You are
bound, hard and fast and tight. And you are for no man. You are married
as much as though that poor creature in the mad house were here working
for you, instead of the case being reversed as it is. So."

"What do you mean!" I cried, wrenching myself away indignantly. "What
right have you to talk to me like this? You know what my life has been,
and how I have tried to smile with my lips and stay young in my heart! I
thought you understood. Norah thought so too, and Max--"

"I do understand. I understand so well that I would not have you talk as
you did a moment ago. And I said what I said not so much for your sake,
as for mine. For see, I too must remember that you write madam before
your name. And sometimes it is hard for me to remember."

"Oh," I said, like a simpleton, and stood staring after him as he
quietly gathered up his hat and gloves and left me standing there.

CHAPTER VII. BLACKIE'S PHILOSOPHY

I did not write Norah about Von Gerhard. After all, I told myself, there
was nothing to write. And so I was the first to break the solemn pact
that we had made.

"You will write everything, won't you, Dawn dear?" Norah had pleaded,
with tears, in her pretty eyes. "Promise me. We've been nearer to each
other in these last few months than we have been since we were girls.
And I've loved it so. Please don't do as you did during those miserable
years in New York, when you were fighting your troubles alone and we
knew nothing of it. You wrote only the happy things. Promise me you'll
write the unhappy ones too--though the saints forbid that there should
be any to write! And Dawn, don't you dare to forget your heavy underwear
in November. Those lake breezes!--Well, some one has to tell you, and I
can't leave those to Von Gerhard. He has promised to act as monitor over
your health."

And so I promised. I crammed my letters with descriptions of the Knapf
household. I assured her that I was putting on so much weight that the
skirts which formerly hung about me in limp, dejected folds now refused
to meet in the back, and all the hooks and eyes were making faces at
each other. My cheeks, I told her, looked as if I were wearing plumpers,
and I