"I'm sorry," she said slowly. And with the childish words came childish tears. "I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Gardiner," stammered Magsie. "I know--I've known all along--how Richie feels to me. I suppose I could have stopped him, got him to go away, perhaps, in time. But--but I've been unhappy myself, Mrs. Gardiner. A person--I love has been cruel to me. I don't know what I'm going to do. I worry and worry!" Magsie was frankly crying now. "I wish there was something I could do for Richie, but I can't tell him I care!" she sobbed.
Both women sat in miserable silence for a moment, then Richard Gardiner's mother said: "It wouldn't do you any harm to just--if you would--to just see him, would it? Don't say anything about this other man. Could you do that? Couldn't you let him think that maybe if he went away and came back all well you'd--you might--there might be some chance for him? Doctor says he's got to go away AT ONCE if he's going to get well."
The anguish in her voice and manner reached Magsie at last. There was nothing cruel about the little actress, however sordid her ambitions and however selfish her plans.
"Could you get him away, now?" she said almost timidly. "Is he strong enough to go?"
"That's what Doctor says; he ought to go away TO-DAY, but--but he won't lissen to me," his mother answered with trembling lips. "He's all I have. I just live for Rich. I loved his father, and when Dick was killed I had only him."
"I'll go see him," said Magsie in sudden generous impulse. "I'll tell him to take care of himself. It's simply wicked of him to throw his life away like this."
"Miss Clay," said Mrs. Gardiner with a break in her strong, deep voice, "if you do that--may the Lord send you the happiness you give my boy!" She began to cry again.
"Why, Mrs. Gardiner," said Magsie in a hurt, childish voice, "I LIKE Richie!"
"Well, he likes you all right," said his mother on a long, quivering breath. With big, coarse, tender fingers she helped Magsie with the last hooks and bands of her toilette. "If you ain't as pretty and dainty as a little wax doll!" she observed admiringly. Magsie merely sighed in answer. Wax dolls had their troubles!
But she liked the doglike devotion of Richie's big mother, and the beautiful car--Richie's car. Perhaps the hurt to her heart and her pride had altered Magsie's sense of values. At all events, she did not even shrink from Richie to-day.