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Comparatively light-hearted, installed on an eastbound Santa Fe train, Ambrose still wondered how he had been able to effect his escape. It had not been easy. He wasn't sure but that it had been the very difficulties which had given him the will to surmount them.

The events of the previous evening, comic in retrospect, had been extremely tragic at the time. Ambrose was utterly lacking in vanity, but the fantastic occurrences of the past few days had succeeded in persuading him that anything was possible in Hollywood, more particularly where Imperia Starling was concerned. Her law was her own and no one else's. After the melodrama in the great hall of the villa, he had retired trembling to his own suite where he had again eaten his dinner in solitude. Perforce this time, because a footman had notified him that Miss Starling was too ill to eat at all and had requested him to forgive her absence from the table. While he was consuming his lonely dinner, served to him with great elaboration—the flowers, the silver, the attention all were as complete as if he had descended to