"Harry, don’t be a nut. Here’s the ABC of it. All my love affairs were on the q.t., though I say it that shouldn’t. Everything respectable and under cover. Nobody rattled my adventures in the ears of the public, did they? Yet, from the way everybody points the finger of scorn at me, you’d think I produced the whole Venusburg show and ran it single-handed. Now look at Janet. She hops off with young Claude Fontaine right under the eyes of the moving-picture brigade. The front pages of all the leading papers give her a full week’s publicity. She boards with Claude for a month or two, carefully omitting even the formality of a fake wedding ring. She lives in sin! But everybody shies at using ’them crooel woids.’ And what are the wages of sin? A couple of millionaires pining away on her doorstep and Sousa’s band a-playing at her feet. And she’s no great beauty at that." "Quit it, Mazie. What’s the good of fooling yourself with the idea that Janet hasn’t had her troubles. My guess is that Claude threw her overboard." "Well, you can guess again, my simple Samson." "Anyhow, they wouldn’t have separated in a few weeks unless there had been a fierce blow-out, would they? That’s the kind of thing that can hurt a whole lot, a whole lot more than shows on the surface. A sensitive girl like Janet! By thunder, we don’t know what she went through, do we? She’s not the sort that wears her feelings on her sleeve." "In other words: ’Gentle Janet meek and mild,’" said Mazie witheringly. "What that girl can’t get away with! I’d like to go through a few of her sufferings, I would. I’d like to see yours truly riding horseback every day in the Bois de Boulogne with a plutocrat by my side and a couple of grooms toddling along in back. There’s a terrible penance for you! And to think I can’t even get a second-hand man to take me to a third-rate cabaret in Montmartre. Me, Mazie Ross, the wickedest girl in the wickedest city in the world. Gee, life is tough!" "You’ve seen enough cabarets to be sick of them—and you are sick of them," said Kelly, with unwonted harshness. "Yes, I suppose my cabaret days are over. But listen to me. There’ll be no more skylarking for gentle Janet as soon as Cornelia engineers her marriage with the Alsatian." "Janet’s marriage is none of your business, and none of Cornelia’s either." "You don’t say so? Well, you just tell the Empress that yourself." Mazie, with her hand over her mouth, flung these words at him just as Cornelia entered the gymnasium. *II* With the expression of a tragedy queen Cornelia came in and handed Kelly a telegram. "From Robert!" she said, in a voice choked with emotion. He took it and read: Am leaving Geneva International Labor Conference tonight. Hope to see you and Janet in Paris tomorrow. Robert Lloyd. "That’s one on us!" remarked Kelly, awkwardly, and a little afraid of the storm signals in Cornelia’s eyes.