“Well?” he inquired shortly.  “What is it?  This is Smitherton.”

At once he recognized the voice which replied, and recognized that it came faintly and full of indecision.

“This is Mary Burton, Mr. Smitherton.  Do you—­do you think you could still find me work in vaudeville?”

“Oh!” The reporter’s office brusqueness fell away, and his tone changed.  He knew that this was the girl’s last stand, and that she had not admitted its necessity until every other effort had failed, every path of escape closed.  “I don’t think, Miss Burton,” he assured her, “I am certain.”

“Do you think—­” the voice was even fainter—­“it would be possible to get just a little money—­some sort of advance—­soon—­tomorrow?”

“Leave that to me,” he confidently commanded.  “Just give me your address—­and I’ll be at your place in the morning.”

Mary slept little that night.  Against her windows screamed and whined the wind, driving a swish of fine, hard snow in its breath.  From two rivers came the dull groaning of the fog horns.  But the storm which kept her eyes hot and sleepless was one within her own breast.

Over and over again she told herself that the work for which she was volunteering was in no wise disgraceful.  Probably many women who were her superiors were doing it with willingness, even with warrantable pride.  It would mean for her mother, as the reporter had reminded her, comfort and competent nursing.  Perhaps, in surroundings of greater ease, her father might even yet rehabilitate himself into a manlier old age.  Save to serve them her own life was already lived out.

But the shudder of disgust would return despite her efforts at its banishment and shake her like a chill.  In her case it was not vaudeville—­and it was only lying to herself to call it so.  No manager was considering the payment of a salary to her for anything she could legitimately do.  It was what Smitherton had described it, capitalizing the publicity of a misfortune so sweeping as to possess a morbid public interest.  In whatever generosity of terms her contract was drawn its essential meaning would be that in ten-and a hundred-fold it would come back to the management for that one reason.  It would so come because people would flock in vulgar curiosity to see the woman who had reigned in exclusive sets of society from which they were themselves barred; whose brother had reigned as a magnificent dictator of dollars.  They would come because they had heard of this beauty, and had glutted themselves with column upon column of yellow and sensational news recording untold opulence, and afterward of tragedy building on tragedy to this climax; herself standing there on exhibition in the pillory of their gaze.

Seats would be filled and applicants turned away from the box-office, because a large part of the American public differs in no wise from that of Rome when it gathered in the circus to see a captive princess thrown to the beasts—­or claimed as a captor’s slave.  Her value could be based only on pandering to the mob spirit of gloating over the fall of the great.