Harry Lane said briskly: "Sincerely yours. That's all for the moment, Marilyn." Marilyn rose with the sleek grace of a wild animal. Harry Lane's glance went past her, unseeing. He appeared completely unaware of her as a woman. Marilyn said in businesslike tone: "When do you want these letters ready, Harry?"

"Oh--- in an hour. I have an appointment later."

She did not leave. She tapped her stenographer's norebook lightly against one hand. After a moment, he realized that she hadn't left. He looked up.

"I just wondered," she said silkily, "if you knew I was here. There was a time when I was more than office furniture, you know!"

Cora Lane's eyes fixed themselves upon the empty box the way they might have looked at a venonoums creature. She began to tremble. It's happened again, she thought desperately. Oh, it's happened again! But it can't be! It can't be! I remember so distinctly!

She dropped the box and began to snatch open the other drawers of the bureau. She searched frantically, throwing their contents helter-skelter on the floor. She began to sob a little. She searched her closet. She even looked under the bed. And, all that time, over and over again, the phrase It's happened again! repeated itself mockingly. She felt that she heard the words in Harry's voice, icy cold, and the silken spite in which Marilyn would say them.

Presently, she stopped stock-still, with her hands before her face, gasping and sobbing. She'd failed at everything else. Now it looked as though she'd even failed to stay sane.

Five minutes earlier, she'd felt wonderfully good. When she opened the bureau drawer she was smiling, and she noticed how strange and satisfying it was to smile. This is the way to be happy, she thought. It is the way to make someone else happy. And who can be made happier than a child? The box lay in the drawer just where she'd put it; pure rapture packed in tissue paper for little Bebe.

This is the sort of thing I can do, Cora thought yearningly. I certainly can't fail at this! But even then, when she was most confident of giving pure happiness to little Bebe, something close to terror nibbled at the edge of her thoughts. She'd failed at everything--- even at being able to enduer failure. If she let herself remember how she disgraced herself and Harry... People spoke of alcoholism as a disease, but to her, the disgrace remained. And no one seemed to realize that disgrace could hurt as much as pain. It could be as terrible as physical torment. And she's suffered unceasing failure all her, as victims of an incurable disease suffer their agonies.

She couldn't fail in this, though. It was so simple a matter! Little Bebe was leaving Monticello with her mother. Harry had arranged it, and it was a pang for Cora. Little Bebe was the only person in the world to whom Cora did not seem worse than useless. But no little girl would not feel absolute bliss when presented with such a lovely, silken-haired doll as this, with dainty clothes that buttoned and unbuttoned, and which said, "Ma-ma" in the most firmly established tradition of dolls.

So Cora smiled happily, reaching down to lift up the box. After her baby died and she learned that she could never have another, she herself had collected dolls, pretending brightly to all the world that it was a hobby like collecting china or antiques. She'd made jest of naming her dolls after people she knew--- Harry, Marilyn, Jack, Sara, and so on. But, one day, Harry'd caught her actually playing with them like a child--- and she was a grown woman--- and he was coldly disgusted. She'd disgraced herself after she put them away for good, too. But, when one knew oneself to be a bitter disappointment to everybody, sometimes it seemed very logical to take refuge from the anguish of failure--- even if it made one an alcoholic.

These things, though, she could ignore for now. She put the box on her lap. She hadn't the least real fear--- not real fear!--- as she lifted the cover.

But the box was empty.

She looked at it, turning deathly white. She remembered putting the doll away, in this box, in that bureau drawer. It's happened again! she thought, dry-throated. But it can't be! I remember so distinctly. And then she frantically began to search the other bureau drawers, to empty her closet, to search in ridiculous hiding places to find the doll that no one else in the world would have wanted to hide. Nobody but herself, if it had happened again. . .

Presently she wept hysterically, her hands pressed against her temples. She flung herself on the bed and buried her head under the pillows, fighting to keep from screaming.

It was not the doll, as such. She'd bought it for Bebe, to make her quite the most special present that a little girl could receive. It did not matter that even this doll was missing. What did matter---what made her want terribly to die---was that her mind was playing tricks on her. She remembered tucking the doll lovingly in this very box, and putting it in this very bureau drawer. Nobody else would have touched it. But, just as had happened in other matters, she was finding that she'd done something insane---she must have done it!---of whic she now had no memory at all. She must have taken the doll out of the box. She wanted to scream again, as she guessed the maniacal things she might have done to it. And, if something like this had happened again, she was a failure even at staying sane.

She wept exhaustedly. And, while she wept, she longed terribly for relief from this despair. She knew that she could have relief. She had only to go to the cupboard where the bottles were. She could go there. And, in a little while, she would feel confident and strong and sure and unafraid. It would mean fresh disgrace, of course. Harry would look coldy disgusted when he found her vague-eyed and thick-tongued. But she couldn't suffer like this!

After a long and bitter struggle---which she knew in advance that she would lose---she got up and began to feel her way to that infinitely treacherous solace. She wished desperately that, sometimes, she might find herself relieved of anguish without the memory of failure---without memory of giving in. Then she realized abruptly that this was one thing that she'd never yet done without her own knowledge. She might crazily tear off the head of a the doll named after Jack---and not remember it. She must have, because nobody else would have done so. She'd been terribly upset about Jack, then, and Harry'd asked if she'd been trying to work some voodoo magic to get him killed in some automobile accident. And then he'd gone to the closet where she'd put the doll collection carefully away, and he'd come out with the doll that resembled him, and found that there were pins stuck in it all over. He had seemed angry. "More voodoo?" he asked. But he was most shocked when he searched again and came out with the doll called Marilyn---with Marilyn's coloring, and clothed like her---and pointed to a bit of blood-red ribbon stabbed into the doll's sawdust breast.

"You not only stick pins in a doll you've named for me," said Harry, in a tone of revulsion, "but you stab a doll named for my secretary, and put a red ribbon for blood to gloat over! Isn't there a limit to what you'll do?" he asked.

She'd been struck dumb, then. She didn't remember doing it. But nobody else could have done it, and she bitterly hated Marilyn. She knew that Marilyn had been more than merely Harry's secretary. She was... she was...

But she'd never taken a first fatal drink without remembering it. Never without an anguished struggle---and failure---to endure the pain of failure and unwantedness. She'd learned that she must have done other mad things, though she did not remember. But never once had she started to drink without full knowledge.

She stopped short, groping in her thoughts. Insane things like this one---hiding the doll for Bebe from herself---and tearing off the head of a doll, and sticking pins, and stabbing dolls without knowingly wanting to and still less, intending it. But I've never taken a first drink that I din't know! she thought. And for me to take a first drink is most insane of all! Maybe. . .

She did not go to the cupboard. Triumphantly, she washed her face. She dressed for the street, her hands trembling a little. She picked up her handbag---and remembered exactly when and how she had put it down in that exact place---and went out, quite steadily. She got a cab to take her to Bebe's home. She'd explain gently to Bebe that there'd been an accident to the doll, and she was sending it back and getting another. She'd have the other doll sent from the store. And then she'd ask Bebe's mother Hester if she thought there might be some significance in the fact that she always remembered a first drink, but never remembered other even less rational things which it was evident she did when she hadn't been drinking at all.

Cora pictured herself speaking to Bebe. She'd say gently: "Aunt Cora's sorry, dear. I'd have loved so much to give it to you myself and to see hwo you liked it. But it will come!"

She leaned back in the cab, her eyes closed. She pictured Bebe smiling up at her. But she began to have a peculiar, unreasonable hope. Maybe there's some explanation , she thought. I daren't guess at it myself. But I've only been a failure lately. Recently, though, I've been acting as if I were mesmerized. As if I did childish, foolish things in my sleep---which of course I wouldn't remember. Exactly as if I were mesmerized. . .

The cab lurched and jolted. It came to a stop. Cora opened her eyes as the cab-driver opened the door. This was Hester's house, where little Bebe lived---though now she was going away. Cora stepped out of the cab and opened her handbag to pay the cabman.

She went ashen-white. She remembered distinctly, putting her purse down the day before. She remembered what was in it. She'd picked it up from where she'd laid it down. Nobody else had touched it.

The cab driver said uneasily, "What's the matter, lady?"

Cora did not answer him. She couldn't. She swayed on her feet and fumbled out change to pay for the ride. She looked about her, blindly. She did not go into Bebe's house. She walked unsteadily, looking for the only easement there could be for such despair as filled her. She looked for a bar.

But her head was quite clear. Before she found a bar, she passed a trash receptacle on the street. There were discarded newspapers half- filling it. Her hand shaking, she put into it, and covered over, the leg of a doll she'd meant to give Bebe today. It had been ripped from the doll's body with a sort of maniacal fury. It had been in her handbag.

Cora hid it and went stumbling in for the only relief that existed for her.

Harry Lane leaned back in his chair and regarded Marily with level eyes. She smiled sarcastically as he watched her , while she put the recently dictated letters on his desk.

"You wouldn't," she asked, "be looking at me like that because there's been a revival of your enormous affection for me? If you are, it's no go."

"No," said Harry Lane evenly. "You're quite--- sarcastic, lately. I am wondering if it's because of the enormous affection you feel lately for someone named---ah--- Duke Manson."

Marilyn tensed. Then she said harshly, "So what? You wouldn't care, would you?"

"No," said Lane coldly, "except in one way. You've been very useful to me, Marilyn. You've been valuable. I intend to reward you. But---ah--you know a great deal about my affairs. I hope you will not. . .confide too freely in this Manson."

"Is that a threat?" she demanded. "I'd hate to have you threaten me, Harry! I might have to take measures ! Right now I'm staying on here just to get that reward you mentioned. You've promised plenty. Don't fool yourself that you won't have to keep the promises you've made me!"

"Do I ever fool myself?" asked Lane.

Marilyn laughed suddenly, without any mirth. "I don't know anyone who fools himself more!" she told him. "Look at the record! You've made a lot of money at other people's expense. Right now you plan to make a lot more---but your scheme requires that you get rid of your wife. You've got a right little, tight little plan for it. Nobody but you would think of such a thing. You made her a drunk, expecting to get an easy divorce that way so you can marry Louise Grimsley. But she fights it too hard. So you've started something new. Now you're persuading her she's insane."

Harry Lane cocked his ears to listen---not to her, but to the sounds outside his office. He leaned back at ease. "Interesting," he said without expression. "You were saying. . ."

"Hiding things until she misses them, " Marilyn rushed on, "and then putting them back where she couldn't have missed them. The business of the dolls. Pretending indignation because she tore off the head of the doll named for Jack--- when she didn't. You did. Raging that she stuck pins in a doll named for you. You stuck them. Affecting vast disgust because she stabbed a doll representing me--- did you enjoy stabbing that doll, Harry? But you've got her believing she did those things! You've bought a duplicate of the doll she got for little Bebe. I don't know how you'll use that, but I bet it will be nasty!"

Harry Lane continued to look at her steadily.

"Maybe you'll get away with it," Marilyn said silkily. "You got away with ruining your brother and Martin Spode, for two. Maybe you'll get away with this. But you're fooling yourself."

"Very eloquent," said Harry Lane, smiling. "How?"

"Thinking you can get away with it forever," said Marilyn harshly. "I'm gambling you will, until after I'm paid off--- and that had better be soon ---but I want out from being involved in your affairs! You finish one scheme and start another. Every one is rotten and every one destroys somebody. You're fooling yourself when you think you can go on forever! You're mesmerized by the idea of scheming your way to more and more and more money, and everything you want. You'll never stop scheming. You'll keep it up until you're caught! You're mesmerized by your own smartness. And I think you're a fool!"

Cora found her way dizzily into her room. She felt strong and capable and confident. She knew that she was beloved and needed, and she muttered grandly to herself, making uncertain gestures. She could take care of anything that needed taking care of! That bartender who wanted her to go home, he was ridic--- ridic--- hic ---he was silly! And Harry was silly, looking disgusted when he let her in the front door. Ridic---

She made a sweeping gesture, dismissing Harry and all other matters which ordinarily upset her. She felt wonderfully good.

Then she saw the box on the floor. She'd dropped it there because the doll for Bebe wasn't in it. The doll was broken. There was a leg torn off it.

But then she saw the doll. It was in the box, just where it should have been. It was not missing a leg. It was quite perfect, with silken curls, and it had dainty clothes that buttoned and unbuttoned and it would say "Ma-ma" in a squeaky voice.

Cora went cold sober on the instant. It was a horrible soberness. She remembered that the doll had vanished. That she'd gone nearly crazy because it wasn't in its box. She thought she'd destroyed it. . .

But it had been in the box while she thought the box empty. It had been a delusion that it was gone. She was mesmerized. She swayed on her feet, fighting the shadows of madness. She wanted to scream. . .