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By Root 910 0

with fingers like steel from playing the piano, and legs like rubber from riding, swimming, and all the recreations that Mildred had made possible for her. Yet this athlete crumpled like a jelly fish before a panting, dumpy little thing in a black dress, a hat over one ear, and a string of beads that broke and went bouncing all over the room. Somewhere, as if from a distance, Mildred could hear Monty, yelling at her, and feel him, dragging at her to pull her away. She could feel Veda scratching at her eyes, at her face, and taste blood trickling into her mouth. Nothing stopped her. She clutched for the throat of the naked girl beneath her, and squeezed hard. She wrenched the other hand free of Monty, and clutched with that too, and squeezed with both hands. She could see Veda's face getting red, getting purple. She could see Veda's tongue popping out, her slaty blue eyes losing expression. She squeezed harder.

She was on the floor, beside the bed, her head ringing from heavy blows. Across the room, in the kimono now, huddled in a chair, and holding on to her throat, was Veda. She was gasping, and Monty was talking to her, telling her to relax, to lie down, to take it easy. But Veda got to her feet and staggered out of the room. Mildred, sensing some purpose in his exit, and taking its evil nature for granted, scrambled up and lurched after her. Monty, pleading for an end to "this damned nonsense," followed Mildred. Letty and Frieda, in night dresses, evidently aroused by the commotion, stared in fright at the three of them, as Veda led the way down the big staircase. They made in truth a ghastly procession, and the gray light that filtered in seemed the only conceivable illumination for the hatred that twisted their faces.

Veda turned into the living room, reeled over to the piano, and struck a chord. Then her breath came fast, as though she was going to vomit, but Mildred, a 'horrible intuition suddenly stabbing at her, knew she was trying to sing. No sound came. She struck the chord again, and still there was no sound. On the third try, a dreadful croak, that was like a man's voice and yet not like a man's voice, came out of her mouth. With a scream she fell on the floor, and lay there, writhing in what appeared to be convulsions. Mildred sat down on the bench, sick with the realization of what she had done. Monty began to weep hysterically, and to shout at Mildred: "Came the dawn! . . . Came the dawn—God, what a dawn!"

CHAPTER XVII

IT WAS CHRISTMAS again on Pierce Drive, a balmy golden California Christmas. Mildred, after the most crushing period of life, was beginning to live again, to hope that the future might hold more than pain, or even worse, shame. It wasn't the mad, spinning collapse of her world that had paralyzed her will, left her with the feeling that she must wear a veil, so she needn't look people in the eye. The loss of Mildred Pierce, Inc., had been hard. It had been doubly hard because she would always know that if Wally Burgan had been a little less brutal, if Mrs. Gessler had been a little more loyal, and not gone off on her four-day drunk, telephoning the news of Ike's blonde at hourly intervals, with reversed charges, from Santa Barbara to San Francisco—she might have weathered the storm. These calls had been one of the features of her stay in Reno, that six-week fever dream in which she constantly listened to Mr. Roosevelt, and couldn't get it through her head 'that she couldn't vote for him this year, as she would be a resident of Nevada, not of California. And it had been hard, the wilting discovery that she could no longer do business under her own name. That, it turned out, was still owned by the corporation, and she thought 'bitterly of the many debts she owed to Wally.

But what had left her with a scar on her soul that she thought nothing could ever heal, was a little session, lasting barely an hour, with a stenographer and a pair of attorneys. It seemed that Veda, the day after she left the hospital, reported as usual at the broadcasting studio, for rehearsal with