Then, to their consternation, she burst into a passion of weeping; threw herself on Higgins’ breast and begged her to send Dan away—to send everybody away—and to let her die in peace. In utter despair the boy obeyed the dresser’s motion to go, and his transport was changed into anxiety and dread. He hung about down-stairs in the Savoy for the rest of the afternoon, finally sending up to Higgins for news in sheer desperation, and the page fetched Blair a note in Letty Lane’s own hand. His eyes blurred so as he opened the sheet, he could hardly read the scrawl which said: “It was perfectly sweet of you to wait down there. I’m all right—just tired out! Better get on a boat and go to Greenland’s Icy Mountains and cool off. But if you don’t, come in to-morrow and have lunch with me. Letty.” CHAPTER XXIII—IN THE SUNSET GLOW He lived through a week of bliss and of torture. One minute she promised to marry him, give up the stage, go around the world on a yacht, whose luxuries, Dan planned, should rival any boat ever built, or they would motor across Asia and see, one by one, the various coral strands and the golden sands of the East. He could not find terms to express how he would spend upon her this fortune of his, which, for the first time, began to have value in his eyes. Money had been lavished on her, still she seemed dazzled. Then she would push it all away from her in disgust—tell him she was sick of everything—that she didn’t want any new jewels or any new clothes, and that she never wanted to see the stage again or any place again; that there was nowhere she wanted to go, nothing she wanted to see—that he must get some fresh girl to whom he could show life, not one whom he must try to make forget it. Then, again, she would say that she loved the stage and her art—wouldn’t give it up for any one in the world—that it was fatal to marry an actress—that it was mad for him to think of marrying her, anyway—that she didn’t want to marry any one and be tied down—that she wanted to be her own mistress and free.