her limpid gaze, the velvety curve of throat and cheek, these were gone.  Billy had been spirited, now she was noisy.  She had been amusingly precocious, now she was assuming an innocence, a naivete, that were no longer hers, had never been natural to her at any time.  She had always been coolly indifferent to the lives of other men and women.  Now she was embittered as to her own destiny, and full of ugly and eager gossip concerning everyone she knew.  She chanced upon the name of Magsie Clay, little dreaming how straight the blow went to Rachael’s heart, but had excellent reasons of her own for not expressing the belief that Magsie would soon leave the stage, and so gave no hint of Magsie’s rich and mysterious lover.  She did tell Rachael that she herself meant to go on the stage, but imparted no details as to her hopes for doing so.

“Just how much money is left, Billy?” Rachael presently felt herself justified in asking.

“Oh, well”—­Billy had always hated statistics—­“we sold the Belvedere Bay place last year, you know, but it was a perfect wreck, and the Moultons said they had to put seventeen thousand dollars into repairs, but I don’t believe it, and that money, and some other things, were put into the bank.  Joe was just making a scene about it—­we have to draw now and then—­we sank I don’t know what into those awful ponies, and we still have that place—­it’s a lovely house, but it doesn’t rent.  It’s too far away.  The kid adores it of course, but it’s too far away, it gives me the creeps.  It’s just going to wreck, too.  Joe says sometimes that he’s going to raise chickens there.  I see him!” Billy scowled, but as Rachael did not speak, she presently came back to the topic.  “But just how much of my money is left, I don’t know.  There are two houses in East One Hundredth—­way over by the river.  Daddy took them for some sort of debt.”

Rachael remembered them perfectly.  But she could not revert to the days when she was Clarence’s wife without a pang, and so let the allusion go.

“Why he took them I don’t know,” Billy resumed, “ten flats, and all empty.  They say it would cost us ten thousand dollars to get them into shape.  They’re mortgaged, anyway.”

“But Billy, wouldn’t that bring you in a fair income, in itself, if it was once filled?”

“My dear, perhaps it would.  But do you think you could get Joe Pickering to do it?  As long as the money in the bank lasts—­I forget what it is, several thousand, more than twenty, I think—­ we’ll go along as we are.  Joe has a half-interest in a patent, anyway, some sort of curtain-pole; it’s always going to make us a fortune!”

“But, Billy, if you and the boy took a little place somewhere, and you had one good maid—­up there on the pony farm, for instance—­ surely it would be saner, surely it would be wiser, than trying to think of the stage now with him on your hands!”

“Except that I would simply die!” Billy said.  “I love the city, and the excitement of not knowing what will turn up.  And if Joe would behave himself, and if I should make a hit, why, we’ll be all right.”