Produced by Al Haines. *THE LOVE CHASE* BY *FELIX GRENDON* Author of "Will He Come Back?", "Nixola of Wall Street," etc. BOSTON SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1922 BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY (INCORPORATED) Printed in the United States of America THE MURRAY PRINTING COMPANY CAMBRIDGE, MASS. *CONTENTS* PART I. Rebellion! PART II. Love Among the Outlaws PART III. Janet on her Own PART IV. Nemesis! PART V. Hearts and Treasures *THE LOVE CHASE* "But who, alas! can love and still be wise?" LORD BYRON "The right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher rule and not to wander in mere lawlessness." GEORGE ELIOT *PART I* *REBELLION* *CHAPTER ONE* *I* A young man of twenty-seven, a dashing Count d’Orsay type, was sitting astride a chair in flat number fifteen, one of the three-room flats in the Lorillard model tenement houses. He was alone in the room but evidently not in the flat, for he was directing animated remarks at one of two closed doors that flanked a projecting china cupboard. "It’s to be a masked ball, Cornelia," he was saying, "and I’m going as the head of John the Baptist." Two feminine voices, one from behind the door, laughed merrily. Much pleased, the young man continued: "Or I might go as a Spanish cavalier. The costume in Whistler’s painting of ’Henry Irving as Philip II’ would suit me to a T." "Claude, I know what you’re thinking of," returned a well-pitched voice behind the right door. "You’re not thinking of the part of Philip II, but of the part of Don Juan, in which you expect to be irresistible." "Gee," added kittenish tones behind the door. "It’d be a good sight better if he went as a penitent friar." "Leading you attired as Salome, I dare say." "Oh, no, I mean to go as St. Cecilia." Claude burst into mocking laughter. "You’d need seven and seventy veils for that part, Mazie," he said. When he subsided, the same languid, purring tones replied from the left. "Say, Claude, you _have_ got a head. But so has a pin." "Naughty kitten, showing its claws in company!" "Lothario!" cried Cornelia, from the right. "No quarreling before supper." "Oh, I need a little excitement to give me an appetite," said Claude. He got up, walked around the room several times and then stopped in front of the left door. "I wish you’d hurry up, Mazie."