Temptation himself is not much of a spieler. Raucous-voiced, red-faced, greasy, he stands outside his gaudy tent, dilating on the wonders within. One or two, perhaps, straggle in. But the crowd, made wary by bitter experience of the sham and cheap fraud behind the tawdry canvas flap, stops a moment, laughs, and passes on. Then Temptation, in a panic, seeing his audience drifting away, summons from inside the tent his bespangled and bewitching partner, Mlle. Psychological Moment, the Hypnotic Charmer. She leaps to the platform, bows, pirouettes. The crowd surges toward the ticket-window, nickel in hand.

Six months of bad luck had dogged the footsteps of Mrs. Emma McChesney, traveling saleswoman for the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, New York. It had started with a six-weeks\' illness endured in the discomfort of a stuffy little hotel bedroom at Glen Rock, Minnesota. By August she was back in New York, attending to out-of-town buyers.

Those friendly Middle-Western persona showed dismay at her pale, hollow-eyed appearance. They spoke to her of teaspoonfuls of olive-oil taken thrice a day, of mountain air, of cold baths, and, above all, of the advisability of leaving the road and taking an inside position. At that Emma McChesney always showed signs of unmistakable irritation.

In September her son, Jock McChesney, just turned eighteen, went blithely off to college, disguised as a millionaire\'s son in a blue Norfolk, silk hose, flat-heeled shoes, correctly mounted walrus bag, and next-week\'s style in fall hats. As the train glided out of the great shed Emma McChesney had waved her handkerchief, smiling like fury and seeing nothing but an indistinct blur as the observation platform slipped around the curve. She had not felt that same clutching, desolate sense of loss since the time, thirteen years before, when she had cut off his curls and watched him march sturdily off to kindergarten.

In October it was plain that spring skirts, instead of being full as predicted, were as scant and plaitless as ever. That spelled gloom for the petticoat business. It was necessary to sell three of the present absurd style to make the profit that had come from the sale of one skirt five years before.

The last week in November, tragedy stalked upon the scene in the death at Marienbad of old T. A. Buck, Mrs. McChesney\'s stanch friend and beloved employer. Emma McChesney had wept for him as one weeps at the loss of a father.

They had understood each other, those two, from the time that Emma McChesney, divorced, penniless, refusing support from the man she had married eight years before, had found work in the office of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company.

Old Buck had watched her rise from stenographer to head stenographer, from head stenographer to inside saleswoman, from that to a minor road territory, and finally to the position of traveling representative through the coveted Middle-Western territory.

Old T. A. Buck, gruff, grim, direct, far-seeing, kindly, shrewd—he had known Emma McChesney for what she was worth. Once, when she had been disclosing to him a clever business scheme which might be turned into good advertising material, old Buck had slapped his knee with one broad, thick palm and had said:

“Emma McChesney, you ought to have been a man. With that head on a man\'s shoulders, you could put us out of business.”

“I could do it anyway,” Mrs. McChesney had retorted.

Old Buck had regarded her a moment over his tortoise-shell rimmed glasses. Then, “I believe you could,” he had said, quietly and thoughtfully.

That brings her up to December. To some few millions of people D-e-c-e-m-b-e-r spells Christmas. But to Emma McChesney it spelled the dreaded spring trip. It spelled trains stalled in snowdrifts, baggage delayed, cold hotel bedrooms, harassed, irritable buyers.

It was just six o\'clock on the evening of December ninth when Mrs. Emma McChesney swung off the train at Columbus, Ohio, five hours late. As she walked down the broad platform her eyes unconsciously searched the loaded trucks for her own trunks. She\'d have recognized them in the hold of a Nile steamer—those grim, travel-scarred sample-trunks. They had a human look to her. She had a way of examining them after each trip, as a fond mother examines her child for stray scratches and bruises when she puts it to bed for the night. She knew each nook and corner of the great trunks as another woman knows her linen-closet or her preserve-shelves.

Columbus, Ohio, was a Featherloom town. Emma McChesney had a fondness for it, with its half rustic, half metropolitan air. Sometimes she likened it to a country girl in a velvet gown, and sometimes to a city girl in white muslin and blue sash. Singer & French always had a Featherloom window twice a year.

The hotel lobby wore a strangely deserted look. December is a slack month for actors and traveling men. Mrs. McChesney registered automatically, received her mail, exchanged greetings with the affable clerk.

“Send my trunks up to my sample-room as soon as they get in. Three of \'em—two sample-trunks and my personal trunk. And I want to see a porter about putting up some extra tables. You see, I\'m two days late now. I expect two buyers to-morrow morning.

“Send \'em right up, Mrs. McChesney,” the clerk assured her. “Jo\'ll attend to those tables. Too bad about old Buck. How\'s the skirt business?”

“Skirts? There is no such thing,” corrected Emma McChesney gently.

“Sausage-casing business, you mean.”

“Guess you\'re right, at that. By the way, how\'s that handsome youngster of yours? He\'s not traveling with you this trip?”

There came a wonderful glow into Emma McChesney\'s tired face.

“Jock\'s at college. Coming home for the holidays. We\'re going to have a dizzy week in New York. I\'m wild to see if those three months of college have done anything to him, bless his heart! Oh, kind sir, forgive a mother\'s fond ravings! Where\'d that youngster go with my bag?”

Up at last in the stuffy, unfriendly, steam-smelling hotel bedroom Emma McChesney prepared to make herself comfortable. A cocky bell-boy switched on the lights, adjusted a shade, straightened a curtain. Mrs. McChesney reached for her pocket-book.

“Just open that window, will you?”

“Pretty cold,” remonstrated the bell-boy. “Beginning to snow, too.”

“Can\'t help it. I\'ll shut it in a minute. The last man that had this room left a dead cigar around somewhere. Send up a waiter, please. I\'m going to treat myself to dinner in my room.”

The boy gone, she unfastened her collar, loosened a shoe that had pressed a bit too tightly over the instep, took a kimono and toilette articles out of her bag.

“I\'ll run through my mail,” she told herself. “Then I\'ll get into something loose, see to my trunks, have dinner, and turn in early. Wish Jock were here. We\'d have a steak, and some French fried, and a salad, and I\'d let the kid make the dressing, even if he does always get in too much vinegar—”

She was glancing through her mail. Two from the firm—one from Mary Cutting—one from the Sure-White Laundry at Dayton (hope they found that corset-cover)—one from—why, from Jock! From Jock! And he\'d written only two days before. Well!

Sitting there on the edge of the bed she regarded the dear scrawl lovingly, savoring it, as is the way of a woman. Then she took a hairpin from the knot of bright hair (also as is the way of woman) and slit the envelope with a quick, sure rip. M-m-m—it wasn\'t much as to length. Just a scrawled page. Emma McChesney\'s eye plunged into it hungrily, a smile of anticipation dimpling her lips, lighting up her face.

“Dearest Blonde,” it began.

(“The nerve of the young imp!”)

He hoped the letter would reach her in time. Knew how this weather mussed up her schedule. He wanted her honest opinion about something—straight, now! One of the frat fellows was giving a Christmas house-party. Awful swells, by the way. He was lucky even to be asked. He\'d never remembered a real Christmas—in a home, you know, with a tree, and skating, and regular high jinks, and a dinner that left you feeling like a stuffed gooseberry. Old Wells says his grandmother wears lace caps with lavender ribbons. Can you beat it! Of course he felt like a hog, even thinking of wanting to stay away from her at Christmas. Still, Christmas in a New York hotel—! But the fellows had nagged him to write. Said they\'d do it if he didn\'t. Of course he hated to think of her spending Christmas alone—felt like a bloody villain—

Little by little the smile that had wreathed her lips faded and was gone. The lips still were parted, but by one of those miracles with which the face expresses what is within the heart their expression had changed from pleasure to bitter pain.

She sat there, at the edge of the bed, staring dully until the black scrawls danced on the white page. With the letter before her she raised her hand slowly and wiped away a hot, blinding mist of tears with her open palm. Then she read it again, dully, as though every selfish word of it had not already stamped itself on her brain and heart.

{Illustration: “She read it again, dully, as though every selfish word had not already stamped itself on her brain and heart"}

After the second reading she still sat there, her eyes staring down at her lap. Once she brushed an imaginary fleck of lint from the lap of her blue serge skirt—brushed, and brushed and brushed, with a mechanical, pathetic little gesture that showed how completely absent her mind was from the room in which she sat. Then her hand fell idle, and she became very still, a crumpled, tragic, hopeless look rounding the shoulders that were wont to hold themselves so erect and confident.

A tentative knock at the door. The figure on the bed did not stir. Another knock, louder this time. Emma McChesney sat up with a start. She shivered as she became conscious of the icy December air pouring into the little room. She rose, walked to the window, closed it with a bang, and opened the door in time to intercept the third knock.

A waiter proffered her a long card. “Dinner, Madame?”

“Oh!” She shook her head. “Sorry I\'ve changed my mind. I—I shan\'t want any dinner.”

She shut the door again and stood with her back against it, eying the bed. In her mind\'s eye she had already thrown herself upon it, buried her face in the nest of pillows, and given vent to the flood of tears that was beating at her throat. She took a quick step toward the bed, stopped, turned abruptly, and walked toward the mirror.

“Emma McChesney,” she said aloud to the woman in the glass, “buck up, old girl! Bad luck comes in bunches of threes. It\'s like breaking the first cup in a new Haviland set. You can always count on smashing two more. This is your third. So pick up the pieces and throw \'em in the ash-can.”

Then she fastened her collar, buttoned her shoe, pulled down her shirtwaist all around, smeared her face with cold cream, wiped it with a towel, smoothed her hair, donned her hat. The next instant the little room was dark, and Emma McChesney was marching down the long, red-carpeted hallway to the elevator, her head high, her face set.

Down-stairs in the lobby—“How about my trunks?” she inquired of a porter.

That blue-shirted individual rubbed a hard brown hand over his cheek worriedly.

“They ain\'t come.”

“Ain\'t come!”—surprise disregarded grammar.

“Nope. No signs of \'em. I\'ll tell you what: I think prob\'ly they was overlooked in the rush, the train being late from Dayton when you started. Likely they\'ll be in on the ten-thirteen. I\'ll send \'em up the minute they get in.”

“I wish you would. I\'ve got to get my stuff out early. I can\'t keep customers waiting for me. Late, as it is.”

She approached the clerk once more. “Anything at the theaters?”

“Well, nothing much, Mrs. McChesney. Christmas coming on kind of puts a crimp in the show business. Nice little bill on at the Majestic, if you like vaudeville.”

“Crazy about it. Always get so excited watching to see if the next act is going to be as rotten as the last one. It always is.”

From eight-fifteen until ten-thirty Mrs. McChesney sat absolutely expressionless while a shrill blonde lady and a nasal dark gentleman went through what the program ironically called a “comedy sketch,” followed by a chummy person who came out in evening dress to sing a sentimental ditty, shed the evening dress to reappear in an ankle-length fluffy pink affair; shucked the fluffy pink affair for a child\'s pinafore, sash, and bare knees; discarded the kiddie frock, disclosing a bathing-suit; left the bathing-suit behind the wings in favor of satin knee-breeches and tight jacket—and very discreetly stopped there, probably for no reason except to give way to the next act, consisting of two miraculously thin young men in lavender dress suits and white silk hats, who sang and clogged in unison, like two things hung on a single wire.

The night air was grateful to her hot forehead as she walked from the theater to the hotel.

“Trunks in?” to the porter.

“No sign of \'em, lady. They didn\'t come in on the ten. Think they\'d better wire back to Dayton.”

But the next morning Mrs. McChesney was in the depot baggage-room when Dayton wired back:

“Trunks not here. Try Columbus, Nebraska.”

“Crash!” said Emma McChesney to the surprised baggage-master. “There goes my Haviland vegetable-dish.”

“Were you selling china?” he inquired.

“No, I wasn\'t,” replied Emma McChesney viciously. “And if you don\'t let me stand here and give my frank, unbiased opinion of this road, its president, board of directors, stockholders, baggage-men, Pullman porters, and other things thereto appertaining, I\'ll probably have hysterics.”

“Give it,” said the baggage-master. “You\'ll feel better. And we\'re used to it.”

She gave it. When she had finished:

“Did you say you was selling goods on the road? Say, that\'s a hell of a job for a woman! Excuse me, lady. I didn\'t mean—”

“I think perhaps you\'re right,” said Emma McChesney slowly. “It is just that.”

“Well, anyway, we\'ll do our best to trace it. Guess you\'re in for a wait.”

Emma McChesney waited. She made the rounds of her customers, and waited. She wired her firm, and waited. She wrote Jock to run along and enjoy himself, and waited. She cut and fitted a shirt-waist, took her hat apart and retrimmed it, made the rounds of her impatient customers again, threatened to sue the road, visited the baggage-room daily—and waited.

Four weary, nerve-racking days passed. It was late afternoon of the fourth day when Mrs. McChesney entered the elevator to go to her room. She had come from another fruitless visit to the baggage-room. She sank into a leather-cushioned seat in a corner of the lift. Two men entered briskly, followed by a bellboy. Mrs. McChesney did not look up.

“Well, I\'ll be dinged!” boomed a throaty voice. “Mrs. McChesney, by the Great Horn Spoon! H\'are you? Talking about you this minute to my friend here.”

Emma McChesney, with the knowledge of her lost sample-trunks striking her afresh, looked up and smiled bravely into the plump pink face of Fat Ed Meyers, traveling representative for her firm\'s bitterest rival, the Strauss Sans-silk Skirt Company.

“Talking about me, Mr. Meyers? Sufficient grounds for libel, right there.”

The little sallow, dark man just at Meyers\' elbow was gazing at her unguardedly. She felt that he had appraised her from hat to heels. Ed Meyers placed a plump hand on the little man\'s shoulder.

“Abe, you tell the lady what I was saying. This is Mr. Abel Fromkin, maker of the Fromkin Form-Fit Skirt. Abe, this is the wonderful Mrs. McChesney.”

“Sorry I can\'t wait to hear what you\'ve said of me. This is my floor.” Mrs. McChesney was already leaving the elevato............