yours alone. Mine too!"

"And when our fairy garments turn back to rags?"

"We'll have had our hour--_our hour_! No one can take that away from us.
Its memories----"

"To me it will be the memory of white lilac."

Elaine felt for the flowers in the tall vase by her side, and broke off
a small spray.

"Keep this in symbol."

She kissed it before she gave it into his hands.

CHAPTER XXVI

A CHALLENGE

Olive was at her dressing-table at Thornton Chase, looking searchingly
into a mirror.

That afternoon she had been dragged unwillingly to the consulting-room
of a Cavendish Square physician by her father, who had insisted on
having "a tonic or something" prescribed for her. The physician was one
of those men who achieve a fashionable practice by an outrageous
bluntness--a calculatedly outrageous bluntness. He had found that women
like to be bullied by their doctors.

"You're drugging yourself to a lunatic asylum," he had told her after a
very brief examination.

"Drugs? I, doctor?" she had replied with a little surprised raising of
her eyebrows.

"Don't prevaricate! Don't try to deceive _me_. You look a perfect wreck.
All the signs of it. Come, which is it--morphia, hashish or what?"

"You're mistaken, doctor. I'm run down, that's all. I want a tonic."

"And I'm a busy man." He rose brusquely and strode to the door to open
it for her. "I must wish you good afternoon!"

Olive caved in. "Well, perhaps now and again, when I feel absolutely in
need of it, I do take a little stimulant," she conceded.

The physician cross-examined her ruthlessly. Finally he prescribed an
absolute cessation of drug-taking, and gave her a special dietary and
mixture of his own which would help to create a distaste for the
morphia.

"Remember," he warned her as they parted, "you're looking an absolute
wreck. Everyone can see it. Three months more of the same pace would
make you a hag."

Olive was searching her mirror for refutation of his words, trying to
stroke away the flabbiness of her cheek and chin muscles and the heavy
strained shadows under the eyes. Yes, it was true--the drug was stamping
its mastery on her face, grinning from behind her eyelids.

She must fight it down!

The resolution came hot upon the thought that Clifford had noticed the
change in her. No doubt he would like her to drug herself to death. That
would suit his plans to perfection. Then he would be free to marry that
Verney woman. She must