o cling to him, possibly to involve him
in disagreeable and even dangerous complications, but she had no
strength to do what she would have denounced another as base for not
doing. Instead of the lofty words that flow so freely from the lips of
stage and fiction heroines, instead of the words that any and every
reader of this history would doubtless have pronounced in the same
circumstances, she said:

"You're quite sure you want to go on?"

"Why not?" came instantly back over the wire.

"He is a very, very relentless man," replied she.

"Did he try to frighten you?"

"I'm afraid he succeeded."

"You're not going back on the career!" exclaimed he excitedly. "I'll
come down there and--"

"No, no," cried she. "I was simply giving you a chance to free
yourself." She felt sure of him now. She scrambled toward the heights
of moral grandeur. "I want you to stop. I've no right to ask you to
involve yourself in my misfortunes. Stanley, you mustn't. I can't
allow it."

"Oh, fudge!" laughed he. "Don't give me these scares. Don't
forget--Jennings at three. Good-by and good luck."

And he rang off that she might have no chance on impulse to do herself
mischief with her generous thoughtfulness for him. She felt rather
mean, but not nearly so mean as she would have felt had she let the
opportunity go by with no generous word said. "And no doubt my
aversion for that little wretch," thought she, "makes me think him more
terrible than he is. After all, what can he do? Watch me--and discover
nothing, because there'll be nothing to discover."

Jennings came exactly at three--came with the air of a man who wastes
no one's time and lets no one waste his time. He was a youngish man of
forty or thereabouts, with a long sharp nose, a large tight mouth, and
eyes that seemed to be looking restlessly about for money. That they
had not looked in vain seemed to be indicated by such facts as that he
came in a private brougham and that he was most carefully dressed,
apparently with the aid of a valet.

"Miss Stevens," he said with an abrupt bow, before Mildred had a chance
to speak, "you have come to New York to take singing lessons--to
prepare yourself for the stage. And you wish a comfortable place to
live and to work." He extended his gloved hand, shook hers frigidly,
dropped it. "We shall get on--IF you work, but only if you work. I do
not waste myself upon triflers." He drew a card from his pocket. "If
you wil