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 "Seven years, I should say," replied John, thinking back.

"Seven years?" she mused. "Seven! And you feel that it has paid?"

"Immensely," replied John aggressively.

"By the way, how old are you, Ursus?"

This was what the old actor had asked. People were always asking John how old he was.

"Twenty-five," John answered a trifle apologetically. "I got started late. And you?"

The question was put without hesitation, as if it were the next thing to say.

"A man does not ask a woman her age in polite conversation," suggested Marien tentatively.

"He does not," replied John quickly, "if he thinks the answer is likely to be embarrassing."

Marien's face flushed with pleasure.

"Oh, hear him!" she laughed. "This heavy man is not so heavy, after all; but," she added, with another insinuating inflection, "he is always calculating." Then she went on, "You are right. The confession to you at least is not embarrassing. I am twenty-four years old, and I, too, have been living a calculating life for seven years."

"For seven years. How odd!" remarked John, rather excited at discovering even a slight parallel between himself and this brilliant creature.

"Yes," Marien replied. "I ran away from home at sixteen. I have been on the stage eight years. The first year was a careless one. The other seven have been—calculating years."

John could think of no words in which to describe the sinister significance which Marien now managed to get into her drawling utterance of that word "calculating." She made it express somehow the plotting villainies of an