Her eyes were heavy now.  She glanced indifferently at the newspaper, smiled a contented little smile, and, murmuring, “I wonder—­I wonder—­” and fell into delicious sleep.

She slept for a long time.  Wallace, coming in at two o’clock, awakened her.  Afternoon sunlight was streaming into the room, which was scented with the decaying sweetness of orange peel.  Dazed and stupid, yet dreamily content, Martie smiled upon him.  He hated Sunday rehearsals:  she could see that he was in a bad mood, and his obvious effort to think of her and to disguise his own feeling touched her.

“Tired?” she asked affectionately.  “Isn’t it hot?”

“How are you?” Wallace questioned in turn.  “You felt so rotten yesterday.”

He sat down beside her, and pushed the dark hair from his big forehead, and she saw that his face was damp and pale.

“Fine!” she assured him, laying her hand over his.

They remained so for a full minute, Wallace staring gloomily at nothing, Martie’s eyes idly roving about the room.  Then the man reached for a section of the paper, glanced at it indifferently, and flung it aside.

“There wasn’t any rehearsal this morning,” he observed after a pause.  He cleared his throat self-consciously before speaking and Martie, glancing quickly at him, saw that he intended the statement to have a significance.

“Where were you then?” she asked duly.

“I was—­I was—­” He hesitated, expelling a long breath suddenly.  “Something came up,” he amended, “and I had to see about it.”

“What came up?” Martie pursued, more anxious to set his mind at rest, than curious.

“Well—­it all goes back to some time ago, Mart; before I knew you,” Wallace said, in a carefully matter-of-fact tone.  But she could see that he was troubled, and a faint stir of apprehension shook her own heart.

“Money?” she guessed quickly.

“No,” he said reassuringly, “nothing like that!”

He got up, and restlessly circled the room, drawing the shade that was rattling gently at the window, flinging his coat across a chair.

Then he went back, and sat down by the bed again, locking his dropped hands loosely between his knees, and looking steadily at the worn old colourless carpet.

“You see this Golda—­” he began.

“Golda who?” Martie echoed.

“This girl I’ve been talking to this morning,” Wallace supplied impatiently; “Golda White.”

“Who is she?” Martie asked, bewildered, as his heavy voice stopped on the name.

“Oh, she’s a girl I used to know!  I haven’t seen her for eight or ten years—­since I left Portland, in fact.”

“But who is she, Wallie?” Martie had propped herself in pillows, she was wide awake now, and her voice was firm and quick.

“Well, wait and I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you the whole thing.  I don’t believe there’s anything in it, but anyway, I’ll tell you, and you and I can sort of talk it over.  You see I met this girl in Portland, when I was a kid in my uncle’s lumber office.  I was about twenty-two or three, and she was ten years older than that.  But we ran with the same crowd a lot, and I saw her all the time—–­”