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So Martie engaged a housekeeper to take her place in the house, and a little coloured girl to take care of Teddy, and devoted herself to Wallace. The flat in East Twenty-sixth Street was not what Martie's lonely dreams had fashioned, but she accepted it with characteristic courage and made it a home.

The great thing was that he was HERE, ready for them. Dawson, however, did not fail him. Wallace came back buoyantly with the contract. He had been less than a week in New York, and look at it! Seventy-five dollars a week in a new play. Rehearsals were to start at once. The joy that she had always felt awaited her in New York was Martie's now!

The hard work twelve performances a week left small time for idling or drinking, and Martie's eager praise added the last touch to his content. She was happy, too, as she walked back into the darkened, orderly house. It was just noon.

Martie's room was full of greenish light; there was an opaque streak across the old mirror where she found her white, tired face. She flung herself across the bed. Her heart was still beating high, and her lips felt dry and hot. She could neither rest nor think, but she lay still for a long while. Chief among her confused emotions was relief. He had come, he had frightened and disturbed her.

Martie's answering look was full of gratitude: she thought it strangely touching to see the blooming little mother deliberately try to bring her gay Christmas mood into tune with sorrow and loss. Sally's beautiful Elizabeth was one of the Christmas angels in the play to-night, and Sally's pride was almost too great to bear.

Pa gives you a good home, but he can't do much more, and after he and I go, why, it will be quite natural for you girls to go on keeping house for Len I suppose." Martie's sensitive soul writhed under these mournful predictions. Dependence was bitter to her, Len's kindly patronage stung her only a little less than his occasional moods of cheerful masculine contempt.

"Well, promise me," he said urgently, sitting up to tighten his arms about her throat, "promise me that you will never leave me! I will never leave you, if you will promise me that! He was crying now, and Martie's own tears started thick and fast. "I might have to leave you just for a while " she began. "Not if you promised!" he said jealously.

She had been looking steadily at him, and she still stared steadily. But she felt her throat thicken, and the blood begin to pump convulsively at her heart. "But Wallace," she stammered eagerly, "she wasn't she wasn't " "Sure she was!" he said coarsely; "she was as rotten as the rest of them!" "But but " Martie's lips felt dry, her voice failed her.

"When I went down for a match she was just getting a special delivery letter, and she looked as if she was going to drop. You mark my words it had something to do with that mysterious husband of hers!" For the boarding-house had never seen Wallace, who held the whole place in bitter scorn. He resented the fact of Martie's position there; the fact of her having made herself useful to old Mrs.

A little hemstitched blanket had been made ready for the baby; it seemed to Martie's frightened heart nothing short of a miracle when Sally's crying daughter was actually wrapped in it. Martie had travelled a long road since the placid spring afternoon when they had made that blanket. But the strain and fright were over now; Sally lay at peace, her eyes shut in a white face.