“She got more as one feller,” she remarked discouragingly.  Billy, outfaced, departed, feeling rather contemptible as she walked down the street.  Joe was at home; she had left him in bed when she left the house at ten o’clock, and little Breck had been rather listlessly chatting with the colored boy in the elevator, and had begged his mother to take him downtown.  Billy was really sorry for the little boy, but she did not know what to do about it; she wondered what other women did with little lonely boys of six.  If she went home, it would not materially better the situation; the cook was cross to-day anyway, and would be crosser if Joe shouted for his breakfast in his usual ungracious manner.  She could not go to Jacqueline and talk dresses unless she was willing to pay something on the last bill.

Billy thought of the bank, as she always did think of the bank, when her reflections reached this point.  There were the bonds, not as many as they had been, but still fine, salable bonds.  She could pay the cook, pay the dressmaker, take Breck home a game, look at hats, spend the day in exactly the manner that pleased her best.  She had promised Joe that they would discuss the sale of the next one together when they had sold the last bond, a month ago, and avoid it if possible.  But what difference did one make?—­a paltry fifty dollars a year!  Perhaps it would be possible not to tell Joe—­

Billy looked in her purse.  She had a dollar bill and fifty cents, more than enough to take her to the bank in appropriate style.  She signalled a taxicab.

Magsie did not see Warren the next day, but they had tea and a talk on the day following.  She told him gayly that he needed cheering, and presently took him into Tiffany’s, where Warren found himself buying her a coveted emerald.  Somehow during the afternoon he found himself talking and planning as if they really loved each other, and really were to be married.  But it was an unsatisfactory hour.  Magsie was excited and nervous, and was rather relieved than otherwise that her interviews with her admirer were necessarily short.  As a matter of fact, the undisciplined little creature was overtired and unreasonable.  She would have given her whole future for a quiet week in bed, with frivolous novels to read, and Anna to spoil her, no captious manager to please, no exhausting performances to madden her with a sense of her own and other people’s imperfections, and no Warren to worry her with his long face.

Added to Magsie’s trials, in this dreadful week, was an interview with the imposing mother of young Richie Gardiner, a handsome, florid lady, who had inherited a large fortune from the miner husband whose fortunes she had gallantly shared through some extraordinary adventures in Nome.  Mrs. Gardiner idolized her son; she was not inclined to be generous to the little flippant actress who had broken his heart.  Richie would not go to the healing desert, he would not go