That was the way Terry Stafford reasoned. What couldn’t be dealt with by reason became torture.

She smoked cigarette after cigarette and paced about her little apartment. Colin hadn’t called in several days, and that had been worrying her. But now the telephone rang. Terry sprang to it.

It was Colin, at last.

He didn’t say a word about the few days that had gone by in silence. But she detected an undercurrent in his tone that conveyed to her the fact that he was forgiving her for the callous way in which she had ignored his feelings the other night.

She hated him for his patronizing manner, and at the same time she wanted him to act quickly on her behalf, to start her along that gleaming road from which there would be no turning back, not ever, to the crushing heartbreak of the past.

“Are you free tonight?” he asked hopefully.

“I might be.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s supposed to mean that I’ve got some tentative plans, but I could break them if something really important came up in a hurry.”

“Do I rate as something really important, darling?” Colin asked.

She found the darling highly offensive. But it was necessary, she thought, just as the touch of Colin’s lips on her lips was necessary, just as the grasping of his hands for the warm peaks of her bosom was necessary. Just as perhaps she might have to go to bed with him and endure his hands on her naked body and feel the pressure of his gross form above her, his weight on her, the sudden grunting as his animal lust satisfied itself—

It might all be necessary to get her to her goal. After that she could spit at the Jack Colins of the world. But first she had to reach the top.

“Yes,” she said after some hesitation. “I’ll get rid of my other arrangements. Come over tonight, yes, by all means.”

“What’s a good time?”

“Whenever’s convenient, Jack.”

“Let’s make it seven, then. And I’ll have dinner served. You won’t have to do a thing.”

The hours ticked away. Terry fidgeted about the small apartment, waiting for his arrival. The newspaper, which contained the impassioned column Lowry had written the day before, lay unopened on the table.

She did not dare to look through it now, yet she had been unable to keep herself from buying it. The compulsion to know what was happening to Bob had overwhelmed her at the newsstand, and she had quickly dropped her dime and snatched up the paper. Sooner or later she knew she would read what was in it.