Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-02-10
THE BREAKING POINT
BY MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

growing trife fixed as three days went by
without the shabby car rafting to the door;
with "The Valley playing its second ana
final week before going to New York; and
with Leslie Ward unconsciously taking up
the shuttle Glare had dropped, and carry
ing the pattern one degree further toward
completion.
Uncertainty
Just how Leslie Ward had drifted into his
innocuous affair with the star OF "Ihe VAL
1ey'' he was not certain himself lhhocuous
it certainly was.
The truth was that he was not too happy
at home Nina's smart little house on the
Ridgely road had at first kept her busy. She
had spent unlimited time with decorators
had studied and rejected innumerable wa
ter-color sketches of interiors, had haunted
auction rooms and bid recklessly on things
she felt at the moment she could not do
without.
But what she made, so successfully, was
a house rather than a home. There were
times indeed when Leslie began to feel
that it was not even house, but small
hotel. They almost never dlned alone, and
when they did Nina would explain that ev-
erybody was tied up.
And he did not like her friends. 1t came
to the place where, when he knew one OF
the gay evenings was on, he would stay in.
town, playing billiards at his club.
Then came Gregory, and the introduction
to Beverly Carlysle, and life that was new
to him. Perhaps the very novelty was what
first attracted him, the oddity Of feeling
that he was on terms of friendship, for it
amounted to that with surprising quickness,
with famous woman whose face smiled out
at him from his morning paper or, huge and
shockingly colored from the billboards.
He formed the habit of calling on her in
the afternoons at her hotel, and he saw that
she liked it.
She sat still. She didn't idget, as Nina
did She listened too. She twas not as beau
| tiful as she seemed on the stage, but she
was very good to look at and he knew from
| the first that she placed no undue emphasis
! on his visits. In her world men came and
went brought or sent small tribute, and she
was pleased and grateful No more. The
next week. or the week after, and other men
in other places would be doing the same
| thing.
/ Now and then he saw her brother He
neither liked nor disliked Gregory. he knew
| that he had been opposed to their playing
the second week there, and that small
! futter of agitation, for some reason, always
| followed his entrance More than once he
had felt distinctly in the way, and had hnai-
ly been driven away by that CONVICTION.
Then. one day, he happened on something
| that puzzled him. He said to Gregory:
"By the way, I saw you in Haverly yes
| terday afternoon
"Must have been somebody else. HaverlyE
| Where's HaYerly?
Leslie Ward had been almost astounaed.
There had been no mistake about the recog-
nition But he passed it off with that curious
sense of sex loyalty that will actuate man
even toward his enemies
Funny" he said. Chap looked like you.
| Maybe little heavier
Nevertheless, he had conviction that ne
had said something better left unsaid, and
that Beverly Carlysle's glance at her brother
was almost hostile. He had that instan-
taneous picture of the two of them, the man
defiant and somehow frightened. and the
| woman's eyes anxious and yet slightly con-
temptuous Then, in flash, it was gone.
ITO Be COntinued.)
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