He had ended in a conciliatory tone, smiling at her indignant face with undisguised admiration.
"Brennon, that's enough! I shan't want you, now or ever! Mr. Peavey shall hear of this!"
"Oh, will he?" he said, with an ugly look. "Then he'll hear of a good deal more! What are you but a—"
She gave a cry of shame at the word he flung out in anger, and rushed into the house, utterly crushed and revolted, wounded as she had never been before in all her life. The whole day had been one of blank defeat. Now with her body smarting as if from a blow, broken in spirit, clinging to the window-frame, she had a sudden ominous chill. It seemed as if in a twinkle everything had changed for her—that all that had been so rosy and brilliant before, was now become grim and black; that everything had been broken up; that, one by one, all would fall away.
And, as if her cup of bitterness were not full, in her mail she found the one letter she had dreaded for months:
"All over and I've won out, Flossie! Whew! Three months ago things looked so squally, I couldn't even write. If I'd gone under, I'd just have quietly dropped out, and, Kid, you'd never known what had hit me! But, bless the luck, I'm It! Clear the tracks for me! I'm coming East with the bells on! Listen! Six thousand eight hundred fifty-two dollars in the bank, salted away. Prospects, sixteen karat fine. Got a cracker-jack proposition; six cinematograph shows, one-fifth interest. In a year, Flossie, it's a gasoline buggy for you! I'm beating it to you, hot-foot. One stop in Des Moines to pick up some easy money, and me for the gay White Way! Watch for me about March fourteenth. Say, we're going to be rich, and don't you forget it! It's all for you, bless your pretty eyes! Do I love you? Well, say! I'm sitting up, talking to your little photo, foolish as a kid! I'm daffy about you. If you're still strong for Josh, why, set the date. Go the limit on the clothes—the best isn't too good for you! Don't keep me waiting, and don't go for to tease me, honey, for my heart's been true to you!
"Josh.
"P. S. If you've got any foolish thinks in your sassy head that you care for any cane-bearing dude, dismiss them! You don't! Sweep the porch and cut the hammock-strings. Don't fool yourself one minute—we're the team!"
She gave a cry of horror. The worst had come! The past was rising up to claim her, stretching out its cruel tentacles to drag her back, as it had done to Winona. How could she escape him? What could she say to him, after all these months of weak postponement? If only she could stop him by a letter or a telegram! But there was no address. All she knew was that somewhere, out on the cold brown sky-line, he was hurrying toward her, resolute, confident, a terribly earnest lover. All that night, in the midst of hideous dreams, where Brennon pursued her with his vindictive grin, she had the feeling of something advancing over the horizon, black, swelling like a tornado, roaring toward her, obscuring everything with its expanding darkness.
CHAPTER XXVII
In a twinkling, from the heights of triumphant pleasure, Dodo found herself plunged into profoundest dejection. It seemed as if everything must turn against her, that there could be no end to the defeats that were to pile up. At the end of the week a curt farewell letter came from Mr. Peavey, in which she believed she divined the hand of Brennon. For the first time, too, she felt the clammy touch of poverty. In the last months, unperceived, the props had dropped away, one by one. She had been foolish, extravagant. She had wanted to be as well dressed in the eyes of Massingale as the women of his world. She had sold, through Zip, the furs Stacey had given her, for the exigencies of the wardrobe. Trip by trip, she had gone into the shadow of the pawn-broker, sacrificing the silver toilet set, Sassoon's bracelet, the vanity-box, earrings, brooches, every convertible thing, until only two remained—Judge Massingale's bracelet, and the ring that Lindaberry had placed on her finger as a troth.