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Updated: June 25, 2025
Not once did his thoughts rush back to Billie Brookton, and the night when he had meant to put on her finger the blue diamond in the platinum ring. Billie was in another world, a world a million miles away, as following the doctor Max walked softly into his mother's room. There he had once more that insistent feeling of unreality.
He felt that Billie Brookton had made him hard, with a hardness that was not good; and that not only she, but all those he had cared for most in his old life, had deceived and tricked or at best forgotten him. Lying in his narrow bunk, Max lifted his head and let his eyes wander over the faces of his comrades, turned to gray stone by the moonlight.
Except for her tall slenderness she was not in the least like Billie Brookton; and she would have no great pretension to beauty had it not been for a pair of long, gray, thick-lashed eyes which looked out softly and sweetly on the world.
She told nothing damaging to the late Miss Brookton in mentioning Max Doran, and of him she spoke with friendly enthusiasm. He had been so good, so kind to her, and so different from many young men who were good to actresses. It broke her heart to think of his fate, for there was no doubt that Max St. George, the Legionnaire, and Max Doran were one.
It had belonged to a celebrated actress who had married an Englishman of title, and on her death it had been advertised for sale. Billie Brookton, who "adored" jewels, and whose birthstone conveniently was the diamond, had been "dying for it." "She was not superstitious," she said, "about dead people's things."
The Gaëta dress looked as if it were made of a million dewdrops turned to diamonds and sprinkled over a lacy spider-web; the web swathing the tall and wandlike figure of Miss Billie Brookton in a way to show that she had all the delicate perfections of a Tanagra statuette.
This was Billie Brookton, married to her Chicago millionaire, and trying, tooth and nail, with the aid of his money, to break into the inner fastnesses of New York and Newport's Four Hundred. It was all because of a certain resistance to her efforts that suddenly, out of revenge and not through love, she took up Max's cause.
A large round pearl adorned the finger on which Max had once hoped she might wear the blue diamond, a pearl so conspicuous that the original of the picture appeared to display it purposely. "Millionaire Houston" would be flattered; and that was what Billie Brookton wanted. As for what Max Doran might think if he saw the portrait, why should she care? For her, he was numbered with the dead.
He had not realized or remembered how beautiful she was. Why, it was the most exquisite face in the world! An angel's face, yet the face of a human girl. He adored it as a man may adore an angel, and he loved it as a man loves a woman. A great and irresistible tide of love rushed over him. What a fool, what a young, simple fool he had been to think that he had ever loved Billie Brookton!
An actress of twenty-nine who can't look nineteen had better go into a convent! Though, when you notice, her mouth and eyes are hard, aren't they? What would Max Doran's wonderful mother say if her son married Billie Brookton?" "Miss Brookton's father was a clergyman in Virginia. She told me so herself," said the married partner. "She would Oh, I don't mean to be catty.
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