Then Mark was silent. They cantered along in the creamy sunlight. A great lady of artistic tastes reducing her weight bowed jerkily to Mark from her burdened gelding and called, “Can you bring Miss Walling to luncheon Sunday?” Gurdy saw Mark’s mouth twist. It needed courage to call so easily back, “She’s gone to Japan.” But a hundred yards afterward Mark reined in and stared at the sun, his face tormented. “Sonny, I may have to open the Walling with ‘Todgers Intrudes’.” “No!” “Fact. I can’t take a chance with Cora gettin’ nasty. I can’t risk it. And I can’t get a house for love or money. I tried to buy the show out of the Princess last night. There ain’t a house empty.... I may have to use the Walling--open it with this--this--” He slashed his crop though the air, was ashamed of himself and sat chewing a lip. Gurdy could keep his emotions so well covered just as he now hid and nobly lied about his heartbreak over Margot. Mark’s sense of hurt swelled and broke out, “Oh, women are hell! If they want a thing they’ll do anything to get it! They--they scare me, Gurd! When they want a thing!... And look how she treated you!” “Oh, Mark, honestly, I wasn’t in love with her!” Mark knew better but Gurdy’s brave mendacity cheered him. He grinned and rode on. He must think of ways to make Gurdy forget the girl. When they reached the house he telephoned the gayest folk he could find and summoned them to a luncheon. He worked in a fever, keeping Gurdy busy with new plays, ritual lunches at the Algonquin and motor trips to country inns where they hadn’t been with Margot who somehow wavered in Mark’s mind. He began to lose an immediate, answering picture of her. It was hard to recall her phrases of later time. Things she had said and poses of her childhood rose more clearly. She merged in his perplexed hunt for a theatre. When he found, on the first of December, that he couldn’t rent or beg a playhouse for “Todgers Intrudes” he hated Margot for an hour and tramped his library in a sweat of loathing. He must defame the Walling with this nonsense, finish his bargain by dishonouring himself and his dream, for the Walling was not altogether real. He roamed the shell where workmen were covering the naked chairs with dull blue, in a haze. The smell of banana oil and turpentine made him dizzy. The silver and black boxes seemed vaporous like the mist of the ceiling when the lamps were tried on its surface. He had moments of sheer glory through which came burning the thought of Cora Boyle and Margot, in this queer alliance. His offices were transferred to broad rooms by the white landing of the wide stairs in the Walling. There was an alcove for Gurdy’s desk and here Mark told him suddenly, “Goin’ to bring ‘Todgers’ in here next week, son.” Gurdy paled, leaned on the new desk and flexed his hands on his fair head. He said, “Oh, no!” “Got to, son. I’ve tried all I know.”