with a famous
woman, whose face smiled out at him from his morning paper or, huge and
shockingly colored, from the sheets on the bill boards.

He formed the habit of calling on her in the afternoons at her hotel,
and he saw that she liked it. It was often lonely, she explained. He
sent her flowers and cigarettes, and he found her poised and restful,
and sometimes, when she was off guard, with the lines of old suffering
in her face.

She sat still. She didn't fidget, as Nina did. She listened, too.
She was not as beautiful as she appeared on the stage, but she was
attractive, and he stilled his conscience with the knowledge that she
placed no undue emphasis on his visits. In her world men came and went,
brought or sent small tribute, and she was pleased and grateful. No
more. The next week, or the week after, and other men in other places
would be doing the same things.

But he wondered about her, sometimes. Did she ever think of Judson
Clark, and the wreck he had made of her life? What of resentment
and sorrow lay behind her quiet face, or the voice with its careful
intonations which was so unlike Nina's?

Now and then he saw her brother. He neither liked nor disliked Gregory,
but he suspected him of rather bullying Beverly. On the rare occasions
when he saw them together there was a sort of nervous tension in the
air, and although Leslie was not subtle he sensed some hidden difference
between them. A small incident one day almost brought this concealed
dissension to a head. He said to Gregory:

"By the way, I saw you in Haverly yesterday afternoon."

"Must have seen somebody else. Haverly? Where's Haverly?"

Leslie Ward had been rather annoyed. There had been no mistake about the
recognition. But he passed it off with that curious sense of sex loyalty
that will actuate a man even toward his enemies.

"Funny," he said. "Chap looked like you. Maybe a little heavier."

Nevertheless he had a conviction that he had said something better left
unsaid, and that Beverly Carlysle's glance at her brother was almost
hostile. He had that instantaneous picture of the two of them, the man
defiant and somehow frightened, and the woman's eyes anxious and yet
slightly contemptuous. Then, in a flash, it was gone.

He had meant to go home that evening, would have, probably, for he was
not ignorant of where he was drifting. But when he went back to the
office Nina was on the wire, with the news that they were to go with a
party