"Oh, Sylvia, don't laugh!" Olive begged. "It was perfectly dreadful. Of course it was a great shock to me, but I did not show it. I told her she could count on me as a pal to help her in every way. And what do you think she said? Sylvia, you'll never guess. It was too cruel. She said to me in a voice of ice, dear--really, a voice of ice--she said the best way I could help her was by not seeing her any more. She did not intend to go near the stage door of a theater again. She did not want to know any of her stage friends any more. She didn't even say she was sorry; she was quite calm. She was like ice, Sylvia dear. Clarehaven came in and she asked if he'd telegraphed to his mother, and when he said he had she got up as if she'd been calling on me quite formally and shook hands, and said: 'Good-by, Olive. We're going down to Clare Court to-morrow, and I don't expect we shall see each other again for a long time.' Clarehaven said what rot and that I must come down to Devonshire and stay with them, and Dolly froze him, my dear; she froze him with a look. I never slept all night, and the book I was reading began to repeat itself, and I thought I was going mad; but this morning I found the printers had made some mistake and put sixteen pages twice over. But I really thought I was going mad, so I wired for you. Oh, Sylvia, Sylvia, say something to console me! She was like ice, dear, really like a block of ice." "If she'd only waited till you had found the curly-headed actor it wouldn't have mattered so much," Sylvia said. Poor Olive really was on the verge of a nervous collapse, and Sylvia stayed with her three days, though it was agony to leave Lily in London with Michael Fane. Nor could she talk of her own case to Olive. It would seem like a competitive sorrow, a vulgar bit of egotistic assumption to suit the occasion. When Sylvia got back to Mulberry Cottage she found an invitation from Jack Airdale to dine at Richmond and go to a dance with him afterward. Conscious from something in Michael's watchful demeanor of a development in the situation, she was pleased to be able to disquiet him by insisting that Lily should go with her.