Hart answered, her brow clearing after a
frown of concentration. "I can't remember exactly when, but it was
before the show closed--certainly a few weeks before, because the poor
child was a deserted bride days before the closing notice was posted."

"Deserted!" Dundee exclaimed. "Did you meet her husband, Miss Hart?"

"No," Serena Hart replied. "As a matter of fact, she told me
extraordinarily little about him, and did not discuss her marriage with
the other girls of the chorus at all. I got the impression that Mr.
Selim--Mat, she called him--wanted it kept secret for a while, but I
don't know why.... This was early in 1918, as I've told you, though I
have no way of fixing even the approximate date, and New York was full
of soldiers. I remember I jumped to the conclusion that Nita had
succumbed to a war romance, but I don't think she said anything to
confirm my suspicion."

"When did she tell you of her marriage--that is, when--in relation to
the date of the wedding itself?" Dundee asked.

"The very day she was married," Serena Hart answered. "She was late for
the matinee. Our dressing-tables were side by side, and as she slipped
out of her dress----"

"This dress?" Dundee asked, and handed her the photograph of dead Nita
in the royal blue velvet dress she had kept for twelve years.

"Yes," and Serena Hart shuddered. "And her hair was dressed like that,
too, although she had been wearing it in long curls, and had to take it
down before she would go on for the opening number. She whispered to me
that she had been married that day, that she was terribly happy, very
much in love, and that her husband had asked her to dress her hair in
the French roll, a favorite hair-dress with him. Between numbers she
whispered to me again, telling me that her husband was 'so different',
'such a lamb'--totally unlike any man she had met on Broadway, poor
child.... For she was a child still--only twenty, but she had been in
the 'show business' since she was a motherless, fatherless little
drifter of sixteen.... No, she did not tell me how old he was, where he
came from, his business, or what he looked like, and I did not inquire.
As the days passed--weeks, probably, she became more and more silent and
reserved, though once or twice she protested she was still 'terribly
happy.' Then came a day when she did not show up for the performance at
all. The next night she told me--in just a few words, that her husband
had left her, after a q