"SHE

HE won't want to come here," said Mae Narne. "It stands to reason that she won't. I would n't either. Remember Doll? Does she ever see one of us when she 's motoring down the Avenue?"

"But that's all Jerry Montfort," remarked Jackie Dare. "He would n't let her, on his life. Maybe if Doll was left to herself she 'd like to come round once in a while."

"I wish you could see the fish eye she handed me the other day I ran into her at Bengel's," interposed Laure Lindsay. "It is n't Jerry. It 's Doll herself. Jerry 's got her into that smart Long Island set, and she 's hanging on by the toe-nails."

"You 've said something, Laure," agreed Agnes Bailey. "So did Mae. Doll and Julia are both playing round with ladies now, and they got t' be ladies themselves."

"I don't believe it about Julia," said Jackie Dare. "Julia was some lady herself; now believe me, if she wanted to be." "Yes," Mae Narne agreed calmly, "there was something different about Julia. She could give the best imitation of a lady and do it the quickest of any one of us."

As far as appearance went,-color, contour, sartorial effect,-Mae Narne was herself so perfect an imitation of a lady that she might have been a duchess. Tall, slender, her figure showed only a buddingly rounded fullness in the bust, only a faintly defined salience at the hips.

Golden-blonde, patricianly chiseled, her face showed only a soft pink in the cheek, a rose only slightly deeper in the lip. Her hair lay like a helmet of gold mesh close to her little head, but it revealed all of her classic brow. She was quite without expression, a smooth, lustrous museum piece of pampered female flesh. Her gown was of a heavy raw silk, oyster-white, with insertions of lace. It was a perfect combination of a studied simplicity and a tempered richness. She sat where she could see herself in the dresser glass, and at regular intervals her keen turquoise-blue eyes swept critically the reflection in the mirror. Then, not with the air of a woman of strong personal vanity, but more like a royalty who must be forever on parade, she adjusted a straying lock, smoothed an eyebrow, or pressed to a closer fullness her pink, voluptuous lips.

"I wonder how Julia took it when Vin came back to Broadway. They say he cut a streak through the Tenderloin the last time that cost a thousand dollars a night, and there were three nights of it."

Laure Lindsay contributed these data, but it was evident that they did not much interest her. She sat on the other side of the dresser, so that her reflection also appeared in the mirror. She gazed at herself languidly now and then. She, too, was a tall creature, slim to the point of attenuation, but lissome. The great masses of her shining, brown hair had been pressed flat to her head, then laid in wide, knife-sharp waves over her forehead and

temples and down on her cheeks. Her eyes, like melted goldstone, were set between lashes of an extraordinary thickness and under brows that had been shaved to the merest penciling and shaped to the sweep of a bird's wing. She, also, was without expression, although she smiled always. That smile was a mere mechanical trick. It was only a pearly glimmer, and she had a way of making it seem to tremble into existence. Big mock pearls that matched her teeth in tint clung to her ear-lobes. A chain of mock pearls, which constantly engaged her long, brown fingers, hung about her neck. She wore a gown of creamy linen that nuns had embroidered, and a lustrous sweater of a dull green silk.

"What crowd 's Vin running with now?" asked Agnes Bailey.

would welcome us with screeches of joy. Is Vin home?"

"I should say not, little one," answered Mae Narne. "Vin is in gay Paree, hitting it up. Where I wish I was this very minute."

"How many are there in this Wrighterson push?" Laure Lindsay asked. "Do you know anything about them, Jackie?"

"Not much," answered Jackie. "Only what I read in 'Talk.' There's only old Mrs. Wrighterson, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Wrighterson, beside Julia. man Wrighterson 's in a nut-house somewhere, incurable; been there for years."

Old

"How 've they treated Julia?" Mae Narne asked.

"I don't know," answered Jackie, “except that they put up a swell front of doing the right thing. Whether there was

"I'd like to see Julia," Jackie Dare said, "and I bet she 'd like to see us. You can't tell me she 's happy living in the country, locked in with that bunch of fish eyes. She'd eat us up if she got the chance."

Jackie Dare was dark; indeed, she was several shades darker-blacker, ratherthan Laure Lindsay. She was coarsely. featured, swarthily thatched, sallow, but she showed a certain squaw-like picturesqueness. Her lips were heavy and thick, but as red as blood. She had the look of a suppressed volcano, as though a seething flood of experience was all the time trying to break through her thick skin, to burn itself upon her expression. And it was as though only constant mechanical care of that skin-creaming, massaging, vibratory treatment-held that flood at bay. Two gold flashes glittering from the large, white regularity of her smile accented this look of lava-suppression. She wore a long sport-coat of orange corduroy.

"Well, all you got t' do," Agnes Bailey said impatiently, "is 'phone. She can't any more than throw us down. We 'll have t' stay four hours in this hole, a thousand miles from a drink, and we 've got t' do something or bu'st. I bet Vin

well, by me. Just as soon as Vin married Julia, he notified his family by wire. They got a wire back from Mrs. Wrighterson in no time, saying she 's coming on to New York that night. She came, bringing Mrs. Edward Wrighterson with her. They stayed in New York a day or two, and then they all went back to Boston. I've never seen Julia since. I got a letter or two from her, but it was n't any good our trying to write. Julia can't write letters, and I won't write them. All I know is that later they came to Medwin here, lugging Julia along with them. And she 's been here ever since."

"She's never left this hole since!" Agnes Bailey exclaimed incredulously. "Ring off, Jackie!"

"That's what I'm telling you," asserted Jackie.

"Say," said Mae Narne, covering the tip of an ear that threatened to lift a rosepink arc through the unruffled smoothness of her golden hair, "was n't somebody telling me that Vin did a swell devoted husband impersonation for a while?"

"Sure," answered Laure. "Only a bit, though, in the first act. He was all to the goody-goody, sweetie-cutie, mother's own darling boy, wifie's own devoted lit

tle hubby for about one year. Besides, they'd lost a lot of money just then,—the Wrightersons, and he had t' be good. Then some old gink of an uncle died and left Vin a fresh wad. He 's been scattering golden showers over the Tenderloin ever since, and, believe me, Broadway got the thickest coat of red paint it's had in some moons when Vin hit the trail again. Take it from me, he 's some slick little spender when he gets started."

"Edward Wrighterson," Agnes Bailey repeated meditatively-"that has a kind. of familiar holler. Who the devil is Edward Wrighterson? Did n't I read something?"

"Sure, you did," answered Jackie. "Vin's only brother. He was thrown from his horse fox-hunting, all smashed up. Paralyzed now; lives in a wheelchair."

"Who'd he marry?" Mae asked.

"There is a story about that," Jackie explained. "Regular drama; ought to be filmed. They say that Edward Wrighterson had always been crazy about this girl, but she did n't care a rap for him. Her father had a lot of money,-made it in lumber out in the high timber, but he got into some fierce deal, and it looked as if he not only was going to lose every red cent, but he 'd go to the pen, too. Wrighterson handed him everything he had. He saved the old guy, but they 've both been poorer than poverty ever since. The girl married Edward Wrighterson out o' gratitude, they say."

"Fool!" commented Mae Narne. She reached for a gold cigarette-case on the dresser, lighted a cigarette, puffed meditatively. She kept her critical, turquoiseblue gaze on the mirror, and every movement of arm, wrist, and fingers was heavy with studied grace. She looked like some half-seen vision, her cool, blonde coloring gleaming, her frail, regular chiseling cutting through the soft smoke. "Any brats I mean kiddies?"

"No," Jackie answered.

"Let's call Julia up!" Agnes suggested. "Muggie won't be back before dark. It'll take all that time to get the machine re

paired and, say, I can't stand this." She went to the window and gazed out on the quiet street. "If there's one thing I hate, it's sitting in a hotel room. It gives me a blue bean quicker than anything. Let's 'phone her now before she gets away somewhere. All she can do is throw us down." "She won't turn us down," prophesied Jackie.

"Sure, she will," contradicted Laure. "Of course she will," echoed Mae. "Where'd Julia come from?" Laure

asked.

"God only knows," Jackie answered, "and He won't tell. The first thing Julia knows about herself, she 's in a foundlingasylum, just left on somebody's door-step in a basket. That's all she ever finds out. The next thing, she 's about fifteen, out o' the convent, pretty as she could stick, and got t' do for herself. She tries it in a shop for a while at six bones per, with a fat kike of a floor-man trying to get gay. Then, by accident, she gets into a lawyer's office at eight bones per. She can't do anything, of course, but old Sideburns, who runs the joint, don't expect her to do anything but go through the motions. He's got her there for a different purpose. When she quits him,it's quit or give up,—she gets a chance to go in a musical comedy. I met her in "The Girl from the Submarine' company. We were pals together until Vin married her."

"She could have married lots of swells, could n't she?" Agnes asked.

"Sure, she could n't," Mae answered with satisfaction.

"Not so 's you 'd notice it," Laure reinforced her with an equal sense of satisfaction.

"Well, Julia was about like the rest of us," Jackie said, "except maybe she was a little more like a lady, as you just said, Mae. But Julia was always a good fellow and a sport. Money never meant anything to her. I know that. In those days we were both washing our underwear overnight, hanging our handkerchiefs to dry on the window-panes, and cooking our breakfasts over the gas. Of