Page:Frank Packard - The Miracle Man.djvu/205

 him a little. She was playing the game all right—playing it to the limit—and making a hit at every performance. Her name was on every tongue, and men and women alike spoke of her sweetness, her goodness, her loveliness. Well, that was all right, Helena was a star no matter where you put her—but something was the matter. Helena wasn't the Helena of a month ago back in little old New York. He hadn't managed to get a dozen words with her since that night on the station platform, without taking chances and gaining admission to the cottage through the Flopper's window after dark—and then she had held him at arm's length.

"The matter with me?" she had said. "There isn't anything the matter with me—is there? I'm—I'm playing the game."

It certainly couldn't be grief over Mrs. Thornton's death—she had begun to act that way before Mrs. Thornton died—that night when she came home with Thornton, and he and the Flopper were behind the trellis. Thornton! Had Thornton anything to do with it, after all? No—Madison had laughed at it then, and he had much more reason to laugh at it now. Thornton was still in Chicago, and hadn't been back to Needley.

For three weeks this sort of thing occupied a considerably larger share of Madison's thoughts than he was wont to allow even the most vexing problems to disturb his usually imperturbable and complacent self—and then one afternoon, he