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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

Magnetism. A short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald



MAGNETISM


THE PLEASANT, ostentatious boulevard was lined at prosperous
intervals with New England Colonial houses without ship models
in the hall. When the inhabitants moved out here the ship models
had at last been given to the children. The next street was a complete
exhibit of the Spanish-bungalow phase of West Coast architecture ;
while two streets over, the cylindrical windows and round towers of
1897 melancholy antiques which sheltered swamis, yogis, fortune
tellers, dressmakers, dancing teachers, art academies and chiro-
practors looked down now upon brisk buses and trolley cars. A
little walk around the block could, if you were feeling old that day,
be a discouraging affair.

On the green flanks of the modern boulevard children, with their
knees marked by the red stains of the mercurochrome era, played
with toys with a purpose beams that taught engineering, soldiers
that taught manliness, and dolls that taught motherhood. When the
dolls were so banged up that they stopped looking like real babies
and began to look like dolls, the children developed affection for
them. Everything in the vicinity even the March sunlight was
new, fresh, hopeful and thin, as you would expect in a city that had
tripled its population in fifteen years.

Among the very few domestics in sight that morning was a hand-
some young maid sweeping the steps of the biggest house on the
street. She was a large, simple Mexican girl with the large, simple
ambitions of the time and the locality, and she was already conscious
of being a luxury she received one hundred dollars a month in re-
turn for her personal liberty. Sweeping, Dolores kept an eye on the
stairs inside, for Mr. Hannaford's car was waiting and he would soon
be coming down to breakfast. The problem came first this morning,
however the problem as to whether it was a duty or a favor when
she helped the English nurse down the steps with the perambulator.
The English nurse always said "Please," and "Thanks very much,"
but Dolores hated her and would have liked, without any special
excitement, to beat her insensible. Like most Latins under the stimu-
lus of American life, she had irresistible impulses toward violence.

The nurse escaped, however. Her blue cape faded haughtily into
the distance just as Mr. Hannaford, who had come quietly down-
stairs, stepped into the space of the front door.

"Good morning." He smiled at Dolores ; he was young and extraor-
dinarily handsome. Dolores tripped on the broom and fell off the
stoop. George Hannaford hurried down the steps, reached her as she
was getting to her feet cursing volubly in Mexican, just touched her
arm with a helpful gesture and said, "I hope you didn't hurt your-
self."

"Oh, no."

"I'm afraid it was my fault; I'm afraid I startled you, coming
out like that."

His voice had real regret in it; his brow was knit with solici-
tude.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"Aw, sure."

"Didn't turn your ankle?"

"Aw, no."

'Tm terribly sorry about it."

"Aw, it wasn't your fault."

He was still frowning as she went inside, and Dolores, who was
not hurt and thought quickly, suddenly contemplated having a love
affair with him. She looked at herself several times in the pantry
mirror and stood close to him as she poured his coffee, but he read
the paper and she saw that that was all for the morning.

Hannaford entered his car and drove to Jules Rennard's house.
Jules was a French Canadian by birth, and George Hannaford's best
friend ; they were fond of each other and spent much time together.
Both of them were simple and dignified in their tastes and in their
way of thinking, instinctively gentle, and in a world of the volatile
and the bizzare found in each other a certain quiet solidity.

He found Jules at breakfast.

"I want to fish for barracuda," said George abruptly. "When will
you be free? I want to take the boat and go down to Lower Cali-
fornia."

Jules had dark circles under his eyes. Yesterday he had closed out
the greatest problem of his life by settling with his ex-wife for two
hundred thousand dollars. He had married too young, and the former
slavey from the Quebec slums had taken to drugs upon her failure
to rise with him. Yesterday, in the presence of lawyers, her final
gesture had been to smash his finger with the base of a telephone. He
was tired of women for a while and welcomed the suggestion of a
fishing trip.

"How's the baby?" he asked.

"The baby's fine."

"And Kay?"

"Kay's not herself, but I don't pay any attention. What did you do
to your hand ?"

"I'll tell you another time. What's the matter with Kay, George?"

"Jealous."

"Of who?"

"Helen Avery. It's nothing. She's not herself, that's all." He got
up. "I'm late," he said. "Let me know as soon as you're free. Any
time after Monday will suit me."

George left and drove out an interminable boulevard which nar-
rowed into a long, winding concrete road and rose into the hilly coun-
try behind. Somewhere in the vast emptiness a group of buildings ap-
peared, a barnlike structure, a row of offices, a large but quick restau-
rant and half a dozen small bungalows. The chauffeur dropped
Hannaford at the main entrance. He went in and passed through
various enclosures, each marked off by swinging gates and inhabited
by a stenographer.

"Is anybody with Mr. Schroeder?" he asked, in front of a door
lettered with that name.

"No, Mr. Hannaford."

Simultaneously his eye fell on a young lady who was writing at a
desk aside, and he lingered a moment.

"Hello, Margaret," he said. "How are you, darling?"

A delicate, pale beauty looked up, frowning a little, still abstracted
in her work. It was Miss Donovan, the script girl, a friend of many
years.

"Hello. Oh, George, I didn't see you come in. Mr. Douglas wants
to work on the book sequence this afternoon."

"All right."

"These are the changes we decided on Thursday night." She smiled
up at him and George wondered for the thousandth time why she
had never gone into pictures.

"All right," he said. "Will initials do?"

"Your initials look like George Harris'."

"Very well, darling."

As he finished, Pete Schroeder opened his door and beckoned him.
"George, come here ! " he said with an air of excitement. "I want you
to listen to some one on the phone."

Hannaford went in.

"Pick up the phone and say 'Hello,' " directed Schroeder. "Don't
say who you are."

"Hello," said Hannaford obediently.

"Who is this?" asked a girl's voice.

Hannaford put his hand over the mouthpiece. "What am I sup-
posed to do?"

Schroeder snickered and Hannaford hesitated, smiling and sus-
picious.

"Who do you want to speak to ?" he temporized into the phone.

"To George Hannaford, I want to speak to. Is this him?"

"Yes."

"Oh, George ; it's me."

"Who?"

"Me Gwen. I had an awful time finding you. They told me "

"Gwen who?"

"Gwen can't you hear? From San Francisco last Thursday
night."

"I'm sorry," objected George. "Must be some mistake."

"Is this George Hannaford?"

"Yes."

The voice grew slightly tart : "Well, this is Gwen Becker you spent
last Thursday evening with in San Francisco. There's no use pre-
tending you don't know who I am, because you do."

Schroeder took the apparatus from George and hung up the re-
ceiver.

"Somebody has been doubling for me up in Frisco," said Hanna-
ford.

"So that's where you were Thursday night ! "

"Those things aren't funny to me not since that crazy Zeller girl.
You can never convince them they've been sold because the man
always looks something like you. What's new, Pete?"

"Let's go over to the stage and see."

Together they walked out a back entrance, along a muddy walk,
and opening a little door in the big blank wall of the studio building
entered into its half darkness.

Here and there figures spotted the dim twilight, figures that turned
up white faces to George Hannaford, like souls in purgatory watch-
ing the passage of a half-god through. Here and there were whispers
and soft voices and, apparently from afar, the gentle tremolo of a
small organ. Turning the corner made by some flats, they came upon
the white crackling glow of a stage with two people motionless
upon it.

An actor in evening clothes, his shirt front, collar and cuffs tinted
a brilliant pink, made as though to get chairs for them, but they
shook their heads and stood watching. For a long while nothing hap-
pened on the stage no one moved. A row of lights went off with a
savage hiss, went on again. The plaintive tap of a hammer begged
admission to nowhere in the distance ; a blue face appeared among
the blinding lights above and called something unintelligible into the
upper blackness. Then the silence was broken by a low clear voice
from the stage :

"If you want to know why I haven't got stockings on, look in my
dressing room. I spoiled four pairs yesterday and two already this
morning. . . . This dress weighs six pounds."

A man stepped out of the group of observers and regarded the
girl's brown legs ; their lack of covering was scarcely distinguishable,
but, in any event, her expression implied that she would do nothing
about it. The lady was annoyed, and so intense was her personality
that it had taken only a fractional flexing of her eyes to indicate the
fact. She was a dark, pretty girl with a figure that would be full-
blown sooner than she wished. She was just eighteen.

Had this been the week before, George Hannaford's heart would
have stood still. Their relationship had been in just that stage. He
hadn't said a word to Helen Avery that Kay could have objected to,
but something had begun between them on the second day of this
picture that Kay had felt in the air. Perhaps it had begun even
earlier, for he had determined, when he saw Helen Avery's first re-
lease, that she should play opposite him. Helen Avery's voice and
the dropping of her eyes when she finished speaking, like a sort of
exercise in control, fascinated him. He had felt that they both toler-
ated something, that each knew half of some secret about people and
life, and that if they rushed toward each other there would be a
romantic communion of almost unbelievable intensity. It was this
element of promise and possibility that had haunted him for a fort-
night and was now dying away.

Hannaford was thirty, and he was a moving-picture actor only
through a series of accidents. After a year in a small technical college
he had taken a summer job with an electric company, and his first
appearance in a studio was in the role of repairing a bank of Klieg
lights. In an emergency he played a small part and made good, but
for fully a year after that he thought of it as a purely transitory
episode in his life. At first much of it had offended him the almost
hysterical egotism and excitability hidden under an extremely thin
veil of elaborate good-fellowship. It was only recently, with the ad-
vent of such men as Jules Rennard into pictures, that he began to
see the possibilities of a decent and secure private life, much as his
would have been as a successful engineer. At last his success felt
solid beneath his feet.

He met Kay Tompkins at the old Griffith Studios at Mamaroneck
and their marriage was a fresh, personal affair, removed from most
stage marriages. Afterward they had possessed each other com-
 pletely, had been pointed to: "Look, there's one couple in pictures
who manage to stay together." It would have taken something out
of many people's lives people who enjoyed a vicarious security in
the contemplation of their marriage if they hadn't stayed to-
gether, and their love was fortified by a certain effort to live up to
that.

He held women off by a polite simplicity that underneath was hard
and watchful ; when he felt a certain current being turned on he be-
came emotionally stupid. Kay expected and took much more from
men, but she, too, had a careful thermometer against her heart. Until
the other night, when she reproached him for being interested in
Helen Avery, there had been an absolute minimum of jealousy be-
tween them.

George Hannaford was still absorbed in the thought of Helen
Avery as he left the studio and walked toward his bungalow over the
way. There was in his mind, first, a horror that anyone should come
between him and Kay, and second, a regret that he no longer carried
that possibility in the forefront of his mind. It had given him a tre-
mendous pleasure, like the things that had happened to him during
his first big success, before he was so "made" that there was scarcely
anything better ahead ; it was something to take out and look at a
new and still mysterious joy. It hadn't been love, for he was critical
of Helen Avery as he had never been critical of Kay. But his feeling
of last week had been sharply significant and memorable, and he was
restless, now that it had passed.

Working that afternoon, they were seldom together, but he was
conscious of her and he knew that she was conscious of him.

She stood a long time with her back to him at one point, and when
she turned at length, their eyes swept past each other's, brushing like
bird wings. Simultaneously he saw they had gone far, in their way ;
it was well that he had drawn back. He was glad that someone came
for her when the work was almost over.

Dressed, he returned to the office wing, stopping in for a moment
to see Schroeder. No one answered his knock, and, turning the knob,
he went in. Helen Avery was there alone.

Hannaford shut the door and they stared at each other. Her face
was young, frightened. In a moment in which neither of them spoke,
it was decided that they would have some of this out now. Almost
thankfully he felt the warm sap of emotion flow out of his heart and
course through his body.

"Helen!"

She murmured "What?" in an awed voice.

"I feel terribly about this." His voice was shaking.

Suddenly she began to cry; painful, audible sobs shook her. "Have
you got a handkerchief?" she said.

He gave her a handkerchief. At that moment there were steps out-
side. George opened the door halfway just in time to keep Schroeder
from entering on the spectacle of her tears.

"Nobody's in," he said facetiously. For a moment longer he kept
his shoulder against the door. Then he let it open slowly.

Outside in his limousine, he wondered how soon Jules would be
ready to go fishing.

II

From the age of twelve Kay Tompkins had worn men like rings
on every finger. Her face was round, young, pretty and strong; a
strength accentuated by the responsive play of brows and lashes
around her clear, glossy, hazel eyes. She was the daughter of a senator
from a Western state and she hunted unsuccessfully for glamour
through a small Western city until she was seventeen, when she ran
away from home and went on the stage. She was one of those people
who are famous far beyond their actual achievement.

There was that excitement about her that seemed to reflect the
excitement of the world. While she was playing small parts in Zieg-
feld shows she attended proms at Yale, and during a temporary
venture into pictures she met George Hannaford, already a star of
the new "natural" type then just coming into vogue. In him she
found what she had been seeking.

She was at present in what is known as a dangerous state. For six
months she had been helpless and dependent entirely upon George,
and now that her son was the property of a strict and possessive
English nurse, Kay, free again, suddenly felt the need of proving her-
self attractive. She wanted things to be as they had been before the
baby was thought of. Also she felt that lately George had taken her
too much for granted ; she had a strong instinct that he was interested
in Helen Avery.

When George Hannaford came home that night he had minimized
to himself their quarrel of the previous evening and was honestly sur-
prised at her perfunctory greeting.

"What's the matter, Kay?" he asked after a minute. "Is this going
to be another night like last night?"

"Do you know we're going out tonight?" she said, avoiding an
answer.

"Where?"

"To Katherine Davis'. I didn't know whether you'd want to
go "

"I'd like to go."

"I didn't know whether you'd want to go. Arthur Busch said he'd
stop for me."

They dined in silence. Without any secret thoughts to dip into like
a child into a jam jar, George felt restless, and at the same time was
aware that the atmosphere was full of jealousy, suspicion and anger.
Until recently they had preserved between them something precious
that made their house one of the pleasantest in Hollywood to enter.
Now suddenly it might be any house; he felt common and he felt
unstable. He had come near to making something bright and precious
into something cheap and unkind. With a sudden surge of emotion,
he crossed the room and was about to put his arm around her when
the doorbell rang. A moment later Dolores announced Mr. Arthur
Busch.

Busch was an ugly, popular little man, a continuity writer and
lately a director. A few years ago they had been hero and heroine to
him, and even now, when he was a person of some consequence in
the picture world, he accepted with equanimity Kay's use of him for
such purposes as tonight's. He had been in love with her for years,
but, because his love seemed hopeless, it had never caused him much
distress.

They went on to the party. It was a housewarming, with Hawaiian
musicians in attendance, and the guests were largely of the old
crowd. People who had been in the early Griffith pictures, even
though they were scarcely thirty, were considered to be of the old
crowd ; they were different from those coming along now, and they
were conscious of it. They had a dignity and straightforwardness
about them from the fact that they had worked in pictures before
pictures were bathed in a golden haze of success. They were still
rather humble before their amazing triumph, and thus, unlike the
new generation, who took it all for granted, they were constantly in
touch with reality. Half a dozen or so of the women were especially
aware of being unique. No one had come along to fill their places ;
here and there a pretty face had caught the public imagination for
a year, but those of the old crowd were already legends, ageless and
disembodied. With all this, they were still young enough to believe
that they would go on forever.

George and Kay were greeted affectionately; people moved over
and made place for them. The Hawaiians performed and the Duncan
sisters sang at the piano. From the moment George saw who was
here he guessed that Helen Avery would be here, too, and the fact
annoyed him. It was not appropriate that she should be part of this
gathering through which he and Kay had moved familiarly and tran-
quilly for years.

He saw her first when someone opened the swinging door to the
kitchen, and when, a little later, she came out and their eyes met, he
knew absolutely that he didn't love her. He went up to speak to her,
and at her first words he saw something had happened to her, too,
that had dissipated the mood of the afternoon. She had got a big part.

"And I'm in a daze ! " she cried happily. "I didn't think there was
a chance and I've thought of nothing else since I read the book a
year ago."

"It's wonderful. I'm awfully glad."

He had the feeling, though, that he should look at her with a cer-
tain regret ; one couldn't jump from such a scene as this afternoon
to a plane of casual friendly interest. Suddenly she began to laugh.

"Oh, we're such actors, George you and I."

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean."

"I don't."

"Oh, yes, you do. You did this afternoon. It was a pity we didn't
have a camera."

Short of declaring then and there that he loved her, there was ab-
solutely nothing more to say. He grinned acquiescently. A group
formed around them and absorbed them, and George, feeling that the
evening had settled something, began to think about going home. An
excited and sentimental elderly lady someone's mother came up
and began telling him how much she believed in him, and he was
polite and charming to her, as only he could be, for half an hour.
Then he went to Kay, who had been sitting with Arthur Busch all
evening, and suggested that they go.

She looked up unwillingly. She had had several highballs and the
fact was mildly apparent. She did not want to go, but she got up
after a mild argument and George went upstairs for his coat. When
he came down Katherine Davis told him that Kay had already gone
out to the car.

The crowd had increased ; to avoid a general good night he went
out through the sun-parlor door to the lawn ; less than twenty feet
away from him he saw the figures of Kay and Arthur Busch against
a bright street lamp ; they were standing close together and staring
into each other's eyes. He saw that they were holding hands.

After the first start of surprise George instinctively turned about,
retraced his steps, hurried through the room he had just left, and
came noisily out the front door. But Kay and Arthur Busch were still
standing close together, and it was lingeringly and with abstracted
eyes that they turned around finally and saw him. Then both of
them seemed to make an effort ; they drew apart as if it was a physi-
cal ordeal. George said good-by to Arthur Busch with special cordial-
ity, and in a moment he and Kay were driving homeward through
the clear California night.

He said nothing, Kay said nothing. He was incredulous. He sus-
pected that Kay had kissed a man here and there, but he had never
seen it happen or given it any thought. This was different ; there hau
been an element of tenderness in it and there was something veiled
and remote in Kay's eyes that he had never seen there before.

Without having spoken, they entered the house ; Kay stopped by
the library door and looked in.

"There's someone there," she said, and she added without interest :
"I'm going upstairs. Good night."

As she ran up the stairs the person in the library stepped out into
the hall.

"Mr. Hannaford "

He was a pale and hard young man ; his face was vaguely familiar,
but George didn't remember where he had seen it before.

"Mr. Hannaford?" said the young man. "I recognize you from
your pictures." He looked at George, obviously a little awed.

"What can I do for you?"

"Well, will you come in here?"

"What is it? I don't know who you are."

"My name is Donovan. I'm Margaret Donovan's brother." His
face toughened a little.

"Is anything the matter?"

Donovan made a motion toward the door. "Come in here." His
voice was confident now, almost threatening.

George hesitated, then he walked into the library. Donovan fol-
lowed and stood across the table from him, his legs apart, his hands
in his pockets.

"Hannaford," he said, in the tone of a man trying to whip himself
up to anger, "Margaret wants fifty thousand dollars."

"What the devil are you talking about?" exclaimed George in-
credulously.

"Margaret wants fifty thousand dollars," repeated Donovan.

"You're Margaret Donovan's brother?"

"I am."

"I don't blieve it." But he saw the resemblance now. "Does Mar-
garet know you're here?"

"She sent me here. She'll hand over those two letters for fifty
thousand, and no questions asked."

"What letters?" George chuckled irresistibly. "This is some joke
of Schroeder's, isn't it?"

"This ain't a joke, Hannaford. I mean the letters you signed
your name to this afternoon."

III

An hour later George went upstairs in a daze. The clumsiness of
the affair was at once outrageous and astounding. That a friend of
seven years should suddenly request his signature on papers that
were not what they were purported to be made all his surroundings
seem diaphanous and insecure. Even now the design engrossed him
more than a defense against it, and he tried to re-create the steps by
which Margaret had arrived at this act of recklessness or despair.

She had served as script girl in various studios and for various
directors for ten years ; earning first twenty, now a hundred dollars
a week. She was lovely-looking and she was intelligent ; at any mo-
ment in those years she might have asked for a screen test, but some
quality of initiative or ambition had been lacking. Not a few times
had her opinion made or broken incipient careers. Still she waited
at directors' elbows, increasingly aware that the years were slipping
away.

That she had picked George as a victim amazed him most of all.
Once, during the year before his marriage, there had been a mo-
mentary warmth ; he had taken her to a Mayfair ball, and he remem-
bered that he had kissed her going home that night in the car. The
flirtation trailed along hesitatingly for a week. Before it could de-
velop into anything serious he had gone East and met Kay.

Young Donovan had shown him a carbon of the letters he had
signed. They were written on the typewriter that he kept in his
bungalow at the studio, and they were carefully and convincingly
worded. They purported to be love letters, asserting that he was
Margaret Donovan's lover, that he wanted to marry her, and that for
that reason he was about to arrange a divorce. It was incredible.
Someone must have seen him sign them that morning ; someone must
have heard her say: "Your initials are like Mr. Harris'."

George was tired. He was training for a screen football game to
be played next week, with the Southern California varsity as extras,
and he was used to regular hours. In the middle of a confused and
despairing sequence of thought about Margaret Donovan and Kay,
he suddenly yawned. Mechanically he went upstairs, undressed and
got into bed.

Just before dawn Kay came to him in the garden. There was a
river that flowed past it now, and boats faintly lit with green and
yellow lights moved slowly, remotely by. A gentle starlight fell like
rain upon the dark, sleeping face of the tforld, upon the black mys-
terious bosoms of the trees, the tranquil gleaming water and the
farther shore.

The grass was damp, and Kay came to him on hurried feet ; her



thin slippers were drenched with dew. She stood upon his shoes, nes-
tling close to him, and held up her face as one shows a book open
at a page.

"Think how you love me," she whispered. "I don't ask you to love
me always like this, but I ask you to remember."

"You'll always be like this to me."

"Oh, no ; but promise me you'll remember." Her tears were falling.
"I'll be different, but somewhere lost inside of me there'll always be
the person I am tonight."

The scene dissolved slowly and George struggled into conscious-
ness. He sat up in bed ; it was morning. In the yard outside he heard
the nurse instructing his son in the niceties of behavior for two-
month-old babies. From the yard next door a small boy shouted mys-
teriously : "Who let that barrier through on me?"

Still in his pajamas, George went to the phone and called his
lawyers. Then he rang for his man, and while he was being shaved
a certain order evolved from the chaos of the night before. First, he
must deal with Margaret Donovan ; second, he must keep the matter
from Kay, who in her present state might believe anything; and,
third, he must fix things up with Kay. The last seemed the most im-
portant of all.

As he finished dressing he heard the phone ring downstairs and,
with an instinct of danger, picked up the receiver.

"Hello. . . . Oh, yes." Looking up, he saw that both his doors were
closed. "Good morning, Helen. . . . It's all right, Dolores. I'm tak-
ing it up here." He waited till he heard the receiver click downstairs.

"How are you this morning, Helen?"

"George, I called up about last night. I can't tell you how sorry
I am."

"Sorry? Why are you sorry?"

"For treating you like that. I don't know what was in me, George.
I didn't sleep all night thinking how terrible I'd been."

A new disorder established itself in George's already littered
mind.

"Don't be silly," he said. To his despair he heard his own voice
run on: "For a minute I didn't understand, Helen. Then I thought
it was better so."

"Oh, George," came her voice after a moment, very low.

Another silence. He began to put in a cuff button.

"I had to call up," she said after a moment. "I couldn't leave
things like that."

The cuff button dropped to the floor ; he stooped to pick it up, and
then said "Helen ! " urgently into the mouthpiece to cover the fact
that he had momentarily been away.
"What, George?"

At this moment the hall door opened and Kay, radiating a faint
distaste, came into the room. She hesitated.

"Are you busy?"

"It's all right." He stared into the mouthpiece for a moment.
"Well, good-by," he muttered abruptly and hung up the receiver. He
turned to Kay: "Good morning."

"I didn't mean to disturb you," she said distantly.

"You didn't disturb me." He hesitated. "That was Helen Avery."

"It doesn't concern me who it was. I came to ask you if we're
going to the Coconut Grove tonight."

"Sit down, Kay?"

"I don't want to talk."

"Sit down a minute," he said impatiently. She sat down. "How
long are you going to keep this up?" he demanded.

"I'm not keeping up anything. We're simply through, George, and
you know it as well as I do."

"That's absurd," he said. "Why, a week ago "

"It doesn't matter. We've been getting nearer to this for months,
and now it's over."

"You mean you don't love me?" He was not particularly alarmed.
They had been through scenes like this before.

"I don't know. I suppose I'll always love you in a way." Sud-
denly she began to sob. "Oh, it's all so sad. He's cared for me so
long."

George stared at her. Face to face with what was apparently a real
emotion, he had no words of any kind. She was not angry, not
threatening or pretending, not thinking about him at all, but con-
cerned entirely with her emotions toward another man.

"What is it?" he cried. "Are you trying to tell me you're in love
with this man?"

"I don't know," she said helplessly.

He took a step toward her, then went to the bed and lay down on
it, staring in misery at the ceiling. After a while a maid knocked to
say that Mr. Busch and Mr. Castle, George's lawyer, were below.
The fact carried no meaning to him. Kay went into her room and he
got up and followed her.

"Let's send word we're out," he said. "We can go away somewhere
and talk this over."

"I don't want to go away."

She was already away, growing more mysterious and remote with
every minute. The things on her dressing table were the property of
a stranger.

He began to speak in a dry, hurried voice. "If you're still thinking

about Helen Avery, it's nonsense. I've never given a damn for any-
body but you."

They went downstairs and into the living room. It was nearly
noon another bright emotionless California day. George saw that
Arthur Busch 's ugly face in the sunshine was wan and white; he
took a step toward George and then stopped, as if he were waiting
for something a challenge, a reproach, a blow.

In a flash the scene that would presently take place ran itself off
in George's mind. He saw himself moving through the scene, saw his
part, an infinite choice of parts, but in every one of them Kay would
be against him and with Arthur Busch. And suddenly he rejected
them all.

"I hope you'll excuse me," he said quickly to Mr. Castle. "I called
you up because a script girl named Margaret Donovan wants fifty
thousand dollars for some letters she claims I wrote her. Of course

the whole thing is " He broke off. It didn't matter. "I'll come to

see you tomorrow." He walked up to Kay and Arthur, so that only
they could hear.

"I don't know about you two what you want to do. But leave me
out of it ; you haven't any right to inflict any of it on me, for after
all it's not my fault. I'm not going to be mixed up in your emotions."

He turned and went out. His car was before the door and he said
"Go to Santa Monica" because it was the first name that popped
into his head. The car drove off into the everlasting hazeless sun-
light.

He rode for three hours, past Santa Monica and then along toward
Long Beach by another road. As if it were something he saw out of
the corner of his eye and with but a fragment of his attention, he
imagined Kay and Arthur Busch progressing through the afternoon.
Kay would cry a great deal and the situation would seem harsh and
unexpected to them at first, but the tender closing of the day would
draw them together. They would turn inevitably toward each other
and he would slip more and more into the position of the enemy out-
side.

Kay had wanted him to get down in the dirt and dust of a scene
and scramble for her. Not he ; he hated scenes. Once he stooped to
compete with Arthur Busch in pulling at Kay's heart, he would never
be the same to himself. He would always be a little like Arthur
Busch; they would always have that in common, like a shameful
secret. There was little of the theater about George; the millions
before whose eyes the moods and changes of his face had flickered
during ten years had not been deceived about that. From the moment
when, as a boy of twenty, his handsome eyes had gazed off into
the imaginary distance of a Griffith Western, his audience had been
really watching the progress of a straightforward, slow-thinking,
romantic man through an accidentally glamorous life.

His fault was that he had felt safe too soon. He realized suddenly
that the two Fairbankses, in sitting side by side at table, were not
keeping up a pose. They were giving hostages to fate. This was per-
haps the most bizarre community in the rich, wild, bored empire,
and for a marriage to succeed here, you must expect nothing or you
must be always together. For a moment his glance had wavered from
Kay and he stumbled blindly into disaster.

As he was thinking this and wondering where he would go and
what he should do, he passed an apartment house that jolted his
memory. It was on the outskirts of town, a pink horror built to repre-
sent something, somewhere, so cheaply and sketchily that whatever
it copied the architect must have long since forgotten. And suddenly
George remembered that he had once called for Margaret Donovan
here the night of a Mayfair dance.

"Stop at this apartment ! " he called through the speaking tube.

He went in. The negro elevator boy stared open-mouthed at him
as they rose in the cage. Margaret Donovan herself opened the door.

When she saw him she shrank away with a little cry. As he entered
and closed the door she retreated before him into the front room.
George followed.

It was twilight outside and the apartment was dusky and sad. The
last light fell softly on the standardized furniture and the great
gallery of signed photographs of moving-picture people that covered
one wall. Her face was white, and as she stared at him she began
nervously wringing her hands.

"What's this nonsense, Margaret?" George said, trying to keep
any reproach out of his voice. "Do you need money that bad?"

She shook her head vaguely. Her eyes were still fixed on him with
a sort of terror ; George looked at the floor.

"I suppose this was your brother's idea. At least I can't believe
you'd be so stupid." He looked up, trying to preserve the brusque
masterly attitude of one talking to a naughty child, but at the sight
of her face every emotion except pity left him. "I'm a little tired. Do
you mind if I sit down?"

"No."

"I'm a little confused today," said George after a minute. "People
seem to have it in for me today."

"Why, I thought" her voice became ironic in midsentence "1
thought everybody loved you, George."

"They don't."

"Only me?"

"Yes," he said abstractedly.

"I wish it had been only me. But then, of course, you wouldn't
have been you."

Suddenly he realized that she meant what she was saying.

"That's just nonsense."

"At least you're here," Margaret went on. "I suppose I ought to be
glad of that. And I am. I most decidedly am. I've often thought of
you sitting in that chair, just at this time when it was almost dark.
I used to make up little one-act plays about what would happen
then. Would you like to hear one of them? I'll have to begin by com-
ing over and sitting on the floor at your feet."

Annoyed and yet spellbound, George kept trying desperately to
seize upon a word or mood that would turn the subject.

"I've seen you sitting there so often that you don't look a bit more
real than your ghost. Except that your hat has squashed your beau-
tiful hair down on one side and you've got dark circles or dirt under
your eyes. You look white, too, George. Probably you were on a
party last night."

"I was. And I found your brother waiting for me when I got home."

"He's a good waiter, George. He's just out of San Quentin prison,
where he's been waiting the last six years."

"Then it was his idea?"

"We cooked it up together. I was going to China on my share."

"Why was I the victim?"

"That seemed to make it realer. Once I thought you were going to
fall in love with me five years ago."

The bravado suddenly melted out of her voice and it was still light
enough to see that her mouth was quivering.

"I've loved you for years," she said "since the first day you came
West and walked into the old Realart Studio. You were so brave
about people, George. Whoever it was, you walked right up to them
and tore something aside as if it was in your way and began to know
them. I tried to make love to you, just like the rest, but it was
difficult. You drew people right up close to you and held them there,
not able to move either way."

"This is all entirely imaginary," said George, frowning uncomfort-
ably, "and I can't control "

"No, I know. You can't control charm. It's simply got to be used.
You've got to keep your hand in if you have it, and go through life
attaching people to you that you don't want. I don't blame you. If
you only hadn't kissed me the night of the Mayfair dance. I sup-
pose it was the champagne."

George felt as if a band which had been playing for a long time in
the distance had suddenly moved up and taken a station beneath his
window. He had always been conscious that things like this were
going on around him. Now that he thought of it, he had always been
conscious that Margaret loved him, but the faint music of these emo-
tions in his ear had seemed to bear no relation to actual life. They
were phantoms that he had conjured up out of nothing ; he had never
imagined their actual incarnations. At his wish they should die in-
consequently away.

"You can't imagine what it's been like," Margaret continued after
a minute. "Things you've just said and forgotten, I've put myself
asleep night after night remembering trying to squeeze something
more out of them. After that night you took me to the Mayfair
other men didn't exist for me any more. And there were others, you
know lots of them. But I'd see you walking along somewhere about
the lot, looking at the ground and smiling a little, as if something
very amusing had just happened to you, the way you do. And I'd pass
you and you'd look up and really smile: 'Hello, darling I' 'Hello,
darling' and my heart would turn over. That would happen four
times a day."

George stood up and she, too, jumped up quickly.

"Oh, I've bored you," she cried softly. "I might have known I'd
bore you. You want to go home. Let's see is there anything else?
Oh, yes ; you might as well have those letters."

Taking them out of a desk, she took them to a window and identi-
fied them by a rift of lamplight.

"They're really beautiful letters. They'd do you credit. I suppose
it was pretty stupid, as you say, but it ought to teach you a lesson
about about signing things, or something." She tore the letters
small and threw them in the wastebasket: "Now go on," she said.

"Why must I go now?"

For the third time in twenty-four hours sad and uncontrollable
tears confronted him.

"Please go ! " she cried angrily "or stay if you like. I'm yours for
the asking. You know it. You can have any woman you want in
the world by just raising your hand. Would I amuse you?"

"Margaret "

"Oh, go on then." She sat down and turned her face away. "After
all, you'll begin to look silly in a minute. You wouldn't like that,
would you? So get out."

George stood there helpless, trying to put himself in her place and
say something that wouldn't be priggish, but nothing came.

He tried to force down his personal distress, his discomfort, his
vague feeling of scorn, ignorant of the fact that she was watching
him and understanding it all and loving the struggle in his face. Sud-
denly his own nerves gave way under the strain of the past twenty-
four hours and he felt his eyes grow dim and his throat tighten. He
shook his head helplessly. Then he turned away still not knowing
that she was watching him and loving him until she thought her
heart would burst with it and went out to the door.

IV

The car stopped before his house, dark save for small lights in the
nursery and the lower hall. He heard the telephone ringing, but when
he answered it, inside, there was no one on the line. For a few minutes
he wandered about in the darkness, moving from chair to chair and
going to the window to stare out into the opposite emptiness of the
night.

It was strange to be alone, to feel alone. In his overwrought condi-
tion the fact was not unpleasant. As the trouble of last night had
made Helen Avery infinitely remote, so his talk with Margaret had
acted as a katharsis to his own personal misery. It would swing
back upon him presently, he knew, but for a moment his mind was
too tired to remember, to imagine or to care.

Half an hour passed. He saw Dolores issue from the kitchen, take
the paper from the front steps and carry it back to the kitchen for
a preliminary inspection. With a vague idea of packing his grip, he
went upstairs. He opened the door of Kay's room and found her ly-
ing down.

For a moment he didn't speak, but moved around the bathroom
between. Then he went into her room and switched on the lights.

"What's the matter?" he asked casually. "Aren't you feeling
well?"

"I've been trying to get some sleep," she said. "George, do you
think that girl's gone crazy?"

"What girl?"

"Margaret Donovan. I've never heard of anything so terrible in my
life."

For a moment he thought that there had been some new develop-
ment.

"Fifty thousand dollars !" she cried indignantly. "Why, I wouldn't
give it to her even if it was true. She ought to be sent to jail."

"Oh, it's not so terrible as that," he said. "She has a brother who's
a pretty bad egg and it was his idea."

"She's capable of anything," Kay said solemnly. "And you're just
a fool if you don't see it. I've never liked her. She has dirty hair."

"Well, what of it ?" he demanded impatiently, and added : "Where's
Arthur Busch?"

"He went home right after lunch. Or rather I sent him home."

"You decided you were not in love with him?"



She looked up almost in surprise. "In love with him? Oh, you
mean this morning. I was just mad at you ; you ought to have known
that. I was a little sorry for him last night, but I guess it was the
highballs."

"Well, what did you mean when you " He broke off. Wherever

he turned he found a muddle, and he resolutely determined not to
think.

"My heavens!" exclaimed Kay. "Fifty thousand dollars!"

"Oh, drop it. She tore up the letters she wrote them herself
and everything's all right."

"George."

"Yes."

"Of course Douglas will fire her right away."

"Of course he won't. He won't know anything about it."

"You mean to say you're not going to let her go? After this?"

He jumped up. "Do you suppose she thought that?" he cried.

"Thought what?"

"That I'd have them let her go?"

"You certainly ought to."

He looked hastily through the phone book for her name.

"Oxford " he called.

After an unusually long time the switchboard operator answered :
"Bourbon Apartments."

"Miss Margaret Donovan, please."

"Why " The operator's voice broke off. "If you'll just wait a

minute, please." He held the line ; the minute passed, then another.
Then the operator's voice: "I couldn't talk to you then. Miss Dono-
van has had an accident. She's shot herself. When you called they
were taking her through the lobby to St. Catherine's Hospital."

"Is she is it serious?" George demanded frantically.

"They thought so at first, but now they think she'll be all right.
They're going to probe for the bullet."

"Thank you."

He got up and turned to Kay.

"She's tried to kill herself," he said in a strained voice. "I'll have
to go around to the hospital. I was pretty clumsy this afternoon and
I think I'm partly responsible for this."

"George," said Kay suddenly.

"What?"

"Don't you think it's sort of unwise to get mixed up in this? Peo-
ple might say "

"I don't give a damn what they say," he answered roughly.

He went to his room and automatically began to prepare for going
out. Catching sight of his face in the mirror, he closed his eyes with
a sudden exclamation of distaste, and abandoned the intention of
brushing his hair.

"George," Kay called from the next room, "I love you."

"I love you too."

"Jules Rennard called up. Something about barracuda fishing.
Don't you think it would be fun to get up a party? Men and girls
both."

"Somehow the idea doesn't appeal to me. The whole idea of barra-
cuda fishing "

The phone rang below and he started. Dolores was answering it.

It was a lady who had already called twice today.

"Is Mr. Hannafordin?"

"No," said Dolores promptly. She stuck out her tongue and hung
up the phone just as George Hannaford came downstairs. She helped
him into his coat, standing as close as she could to him, opened the
door and followed a little way out on the porch.

"Meester Hannaford," she said suddenly, "that Miss Avery she
call up five-six times today. I tell her you out and say nothing to
missus."

"What?" He stared at her, wondering how much she knew about
his affairs.

"She call up just now and I say you out."

"All right," he said absently.

"Meester Hannaford."

"Yes, Dolores."

"I deedn't hurt myself thees morning when I fell off the porch."

"That's fine. Good night, Dolores."

"Good night, Meester Hannaford."

George smiled at her, faintly, fleetingly, tearing a veil from be-
tween them, unconsciously promising her a possible admission to
the thousand delights and wonders that only he knew and could com-
mand. Then he went to his waiting car and Dolores, sitting down on
the stoop, rubbed her hands together in a gesture that might have
expressed either ecstasy or strangulation, and watched the rising of
the thin, pale California moon.