"I don't know who he was—a dentist anyway. And he had known Golda before, somewhere, and he was crazy about her. His wife was getting a divorce, it seems; anyway, he butted right in, and she let him. I don't think she had awfully good sense, she would act sort of crazy sometimes, as if she didn't know what she was doing. Well, I told her I wouldn't stand for that, and we had some fights. But just then my dad wrote and told me that he would finance me for a year at Stanford, and I began to think I'd like to cut the whole bunch. So I said to Golda: 'I'm done. I'm going to get out! You keep your mouth shut, and I'll keep mine!' She says, 'Leon'—that was Prendergast—'is going to marry me, and you'll talk before I do!' So——"
"But, Wallace——"
"But what, dearie?"
"But it wasn't left that way?"
"Now, listen, dearie. Of course it wasn't! She and Prendergast were going to leave town, a few days later, but I was kind of worried about it, and I finally told my uncle the whole story. Of course he blew up! He sent for her, and she came right in, scared to death. He told her that he'd give away the whole story to Prendergast, or else he'd give her a check for five hundred dollars on her wedding day. She fell for it, and we said good-bye. She swore it was only a sort of joke anyway, and that the day we—we did it, she'd been filling me up with whisky lemonades and all that, and that the whole thing was off. And let me tell you that I was glad to beat it! I never saw her again until this morning! I went on the stage, and changed my name because the leading lady in that show happened to be Thelma Tenney. About a month later my uncle wrote me that she had sent him a newspaper notice of her marriage, and he had sent her the check. I'll never forget reading that letter. I'd been worrying myself black in the face, but that day I went on a bust, I can tell you!"
"That marriage would cancel the other?" Martie asked, with a dry throat.
"Sure it would!" he said easily.
"But now—now——" she pursued fearfully.
"Now she's turned up," he said, a shadow falling on his heavy face again. "She was at the theatre last night. God knows what she's been doing all these years; she looks awful. She saw my picture in some paper, and she came straight to the city. She found out where I lived, and this morning, while you were at church, Mabel came in and said a lady wanted to see me. I took her to breakfast. I didn't know what to do with her—and we talked."
"And what does she say, Wallie—what does she want?"