She went once or twice to luncheon with her, amused at the facile clever way Estelle Monks enlisted the services of two such celebrities as Ben Brown and Will Cutter, and that in friendship solely. It must be a gift--a gift that was not in Doré's power. Even on the few occasions she met them, Will Cutter looked at her with awakened fixity, very different from the way he beamed jovially on Estelle Monks. A smile, and Doré felt he would enlist under her banner. But she steadfastly resisted this disloyalty; for among Salamanders etiquette is strict, and possession is all points of the law. For three weeks, then, she sought to immerse herself in this old life--sharing the surface confidences of the Salamanders, playing her part in little financial intrigues, running into pawn-shops with Winona, or making profitable arrangements at Pouffe's for the crediting on flowers withheld for Ida Summers, who was new; working up the birthday game for Clarice and Anita, when consulted by admirers as to what would please these difficult ladies; raising her own capital by the reselling of the bi-weekly basket of champagne from Peavey, the flowers that Stacey, Gilday and Sassoon assiduously offered, receiving her share of convertible presents from chance admirers, hooked for a week or two--at the bottom without zest, sick at heart, tired of it all. Then, all at once, one morning after she had gone to the door of the court-house where Massingale was holding court, in a sudden revulsion she fled to Blainey's office, wildly resolved on escape. Two days later she found herself in Buffalo, inscribed on the list of a stock company, resolved to stay for months until her mental balance had been regained and the deep wound in her heart had become but a faint scar. She stayed just two weeks. The quiet, the relaxed air, life in so many ruts of the little big town, awoke in her a fear of the past, of being sucked back into the oblivion of early days, as if what she feared night and day had already begun--retrogression. Was that the true reason of her return, or was there some impelling magnet too compelling to be resisted, or even to be acknowledged? She came directly into Blainey's office, profiting by her entrée which carried her triumphantly past the crowded anteroom, where old and young, the hopeful and the resigned, the restlessly impatient and the soddenly passive, waited wearily, watching her with hostile eyes. "Well, Blainey, I'm back!" she said abruptly, and nodding at the dapper secretary, she added: "Send him out! I want to talk to you." "Well, kid?" he said, studying her shrewdly when they were alone. "Well, I'm going to be square with you!" she said, crossing her arms defiantly. "I'm miserable, Blainey!" "Trouble here?" he said, laying a fat forefinger on his heart. "Yes."