as direct information.  This young woman was not of the type that gratuitously relates a life-story.  That she had been left resourceless with a young daughter and had fought the world unaided and unembittered, herself retaining the seeming of a child, Paul now knew, but he knew all too little to satisfy his interest.  She had been secretary in a business house and an interpreter of German and Spanish.  Now she was the only actress he knew—­untypical and unemployed.

Paul felt that in the presence of her superior mind and larger education he ought to be abashed, yet he was not, because when she laughed it was with the merriment of a gay child and when she was serious she was sweetly grave.  Sometimes he played for her and sometimes she sang for him, and both did what they did so well that the critic in the other found no disappointment.

Unpremeditatedly and very naturally they had struck the basis of a dependable comradeship.  She saw the occasional flash of genius in his musical creativeness and his need of practical attributes.  To him she was something of a mystery.  To her, save for his well-kept secret of loving Loraine, he was an easily read human document.  She told him of her broader experiences, always tinging them with a delicious humor in the recital, which twisted into comedy what might have been related as little tragedies, and because she had seen so much of life, where he had seen so little, she was willing to recognize his lovable qualities and overlook his weaknesses.

But just as Paul did not talk much to her of his own affairs and the people of his set, so he did not talk with them of her.

At first she had interested him as an experiment; then as affording the possibility for a new type of adventure in friendship, and when he came to know her in that degree which represented their present association, he ceased to ask why she interested him, and only knew that she did.

Of late she had been unusually gay because of revival of hope.  A part which she knew she could play had been half-promised her which would bring Broadway recognition and the chance to be judged on her merits.  More than that it would mean the possibility of bringing her small daughter back from the relatives who were playing parents in these days of uncertainty.

CHAPTER XXI

One gray and penetrating afternoon laid its depressing fingers on Paul Burton’s heart with a heavier touch than usual.  Even Hamilton was wearing a frowning and unsympathetic brow these days, and when the musician saw Mary, despite the inflexible courage of her eyes, there was something in them that hurt him to the quick.  He knew and shared his mother’s grief, but could not bear the trace of unshed tears in her voice.  So, seeking asylum from the anxious ghosts that stalked between the walls of his house, he made his way down-town and rang the bell on Marcia Terroll’s door.  There are women men go to in triumph and women they go to when hurt.  Often they are not the same women.  It was a raw, bleak afternoon of disheartening drizzle and a reek of fog which veiled the tops of the taller buildings.  As he waited for an answer to his ring, he could hear the fog-horn voice groaning over river and bay as though some huge monster were troubled in its sleep.