the betrothed couple had no opportunity to seal the engagement with the usual ceremonies. when they met again, fully clothed, she was so late to her luncheon that she

had to fly.

already, after their high tragedy and their rosy romance, the little things of existence were asserting their importance. that afternoon sheila had an engagement that

she could not get out of, and a dinner afterward. she had booked these dates without dreaming of what was to happen.

it was not till late in the evening that sheila could steal away to winfield, who stole across the lawn to her piazza by appointment.

the scene was perfectly set. an appropriate moon was in her place. the breeze was exquisitely aromatic. winfield was in summer costume of dinner-suit and straw hat.

sheila was in a light evening gown with no hat.

they cast hasty glances about, against witnesses, and then he flung his arms around her, and she flung hers around him. he crushed her as fiercely as he dared, and she

him as fiercely as she could. their lips met in the great kiss of betrothal.

she was happy beyond endurance. she was in love and her beloved loved her.

all the sheilas there were in her soul agreed for once that she was happy to the final degree, contented beyond belief, imparadised on earth. the sheilas voted

unanimously that love was life; love was the greatest thing in the world; that woman’s place was with her lover, that a woman’s forum was the home; and that any

career outside the walls was a plaything to be put away and forgotten like a hobby-horse outgrown.

as for her stage career—pouf! into the attic with it where her little tin house and the tiny tin kitchen and her knitted bear and the glueless dolls reposed. she was

going to have a real house and real children and real life.

while she was consigning her ambitions to the old trunk up-stairs, winfield was refurbishing his ambitions. he was going to do work enough for two, be ambitious for

both and make sheila the proudest wife of the busiest husband in the husband business.

but these great resolutions were mainly roaring in the back parlors of their brains. on the piazzas of their lips were words of lovers’ nonsense. there is no use

quoting them. they would sound silly even to those who have used them themselves.

they sounded worse than that to roger and polly, who heard them all.

roger and polly had come home from dancing half an hour before, and had dropped into chairs in the living-room. the moon on the sea was dazzling. they watched it

through the screens that strained the larger mosquitoes, then they put out the lights because the view was better and because enough mosquitoes were already in the

house.

the conversation of the surf had made all the necessary language and roger and polly sat in the tacit comfort of long-married couples. they had heard sheila brought

home by a young man whom she dismissed with brevity. before they found energy to call to her, another young man had hurried across the grass. to their intense

amazement he leaped at sheila and she did not scream. both merged into one silhouette.

polly and roger were aghast, but they dared not speak. they did not even know who the man was. sheila called him by no name to identify him, though she called him by

any number of names of intense saccharinity.

at length roger’s voice came through the gloom, as gentle as a shaft of moonlight made audible: “oh, sheila.”

the silhouette was snipped in two as if by scissors.

“ye-yes, dodther.” she had tried to say “daddy” and “father” at the same time.

roger’s voice went on in its drawing-roomest drawl: “i know that it is very bad play-writing to have anybody overhear anybody, but your mother and i got home first,

and your dialogue is—well, really, a little of it goes a great way, and we’d like to know the name of your leading man.”

winfield and sheila both wished that they had drowned that morning. but there was no escape from making their entrance into the living-room, where roger turned on the

lights. all eyes blinked, rather with confusion than the electric display.

the elder kembles had met winfield before, but had not suspected him as a son-in-law-to-be. sheila explained the situation and laid heavy stress on how winfield had

rescued her from drowning. she rather gave the impression that she had fallen off a liner two days out and that he had jumped overboard and carried her to safety

single-handed.

winfield tried to disclaim the glory, but he managed to gulp up a proposal in phrases he had read somewhere.

“i came to ask you for your daughter’s hand.”

“it looked to me as if you had both of them around your neck,” roger sighed. then he cleared his throat and said: “what do you say, polly? do we give our consent?—

not that it makes any difference.”

polly sighed. “sheila’s happiness is the only thing to consider.”

“ah, sheila’s happiness!” roger groaned. “that’s a large order. i suppose she has told you, mr. wyndham, that she is an actress—or is trying to be?”

“oh yes, sir,” winfield answered, feeling like a butler asking for a position. “i fell in love with her on the stage.”

“ah, so you are an actor, too.”

“oh no, sir! i’m a manufacturer, or i expect to be.”

“and is your factory one that can be carried around with you, or does sheila intend—”

“oh, { i’m } going to leave the stage.”

{she’s}

“hum!” said roger. “when?”

“right away, i hope,” said winfield.

“i’m off the stage now,” said sheila. “i’ll just not go back.”

“i see,” said roger, while polly stared from her idolized child to the terrifying stranger, and wrung her hands before the appalling explosion of this dynamite in

the quiet evening.

“well, mummsy,” sheila cried, taking her mother in her arms, “why don’t you say something?”

“i—i don’t know what to say,” polly whimpered.

roger’s uneasy eyes were attracted by the living-room table, where there was a comfortable clutter of novels and magazines. a copy of the munsey was lying there; it

was open, face down. roger picked it up and offered the open book to sheila.

she and winfield looked down at a full-page portrait of sheila.

“had you seen this, mr.—mr.—wingate, is it? it’s a forecast of the coming season and it says—it says—” he produced his eye-glasses and read:

“?‘the most interesting announcement among the reben plans is the statement that sheila kemble is to be promoted to stellar honors in a new play written especially

for her. while we deplore the custom of rushing half-baked young beauties into the electric letters, an exception must be made in the case of this rising young artist.

she has not only revealed extraordinary accomplishments and won for herself a great following of admirers throughout the country, but she has also enjoyed a double

heritage in the gifts of her distinguished forebears, who are no less personages than’—et cetera, et cetera.”

sheila and winfield stared at the page from which sheila’s public image beamed quizzically at herself and at the youth who aspired to rob her “great following” of

their darling.

“what about that?” said roger.

winfield looked so pitiful to sheila that she cried, “well, my ‘great following’ will have to follow somebody else, for i belong to bret now.”

“i see,” said roger. “and when does the rising young star—er—set? when does the marriage take place?”

“whenever bret wants me,” said sheila, and she added “ooh!” for he squeezed her fingers with merciless gratitude.

“oh, sheila! sheila!” said polly, clutching at her other hand as if she would hold her little girl back from crossing the stile of womanhood.

roger hummed several times in the greatest possible befuddlement. at length he said:

“and what do your parents say, mr. winston?—or are they—er—living?”

“yes, sir, both of them, thank you. they don’t know anything about it yet, sir.”

“and do you think they will be pleased?”

“when they know sheila they can’t help loving her.”

“it has happened, i believe,” said roger, “that parents have not altogether echoed their children’s enthusiasms. and there are still a few people who would not

consider a popular actress an ideal daughter-in-law.”

“oh, they won’t make any trouble!” said winfield. “they ought to be proud of—of an alliance with such—er—distinguished forebears as you.” he tried to include

polly and roger in one look, and he thought the tribute rather graceful.

roger smiled at the bungled compliment and answered, “well, the montagues and the capulets were both prominent families, but that didn’t help romeo and juliet much.

”

winfield writhed at roger’s light sarcasm. “it doesn’t matter what they say. i am of age.”

“so i judge, but have you an income of your own?”

“no, but— well, i can take care of sheila, i guess!” he was angry now.

roger rather liked him for his bluster, but he said, “in any case there is no especial hurry, i presume.”

to the young lovers there seemed to be the most enormous necessity of haste to forsake the world and build their own nest in their own tree.

roger was silent and polly was silent. winfield felt called upon to speak. at last he managed to extort a few words from his embarrassment:

“anyway, i can count on your consent, can i?”

“our consent!” laughed roger. “what have we to say? we’re only the parents of a young american princess. if sheila says yes, your next trouble is your own parents,

for you are only an american man.”

“anyway, you won’t oppose us?” winfield urged.

“my boy, i would no more oppose sheila than i would oppose the twentieth century limited in full flight.”

sheila pouted. “that’s nice! now he’ll think i’m something terrible.”

roger put his arm about his daughter, who was nearly taller than he was. “my child,” he said, “i think you are the finest woman in the world except your own mother.

and if it would make you happy and keep you happy i’d cut off my right arm.” then he kissed her, and his eyes were more like a sorrowful boy’s than a father’s.

there was a lull in the conversation and he escaped with the words: “mother, it’s time for the old folks to go to bed. the young people have a lot to talk over and

we’re in the way. good night, mr. win—my boy, and good luck to you—though god alone knows good luck when he sees it.”

when the veterans had climbed the stairs to the shelf on which younger romance had put them, bret and sheila resumed that interrupted embrace, but deliberately and

solemnly. it was a serious matter, this getting married and all.

the next morning brought a flood of sunlight on an infinitely cheerful ocean and the two lovers’ thoughts flew to each other from their remote windows like carrier-

pigeons.

sheila was perturbed, and as she watched winfield approach she thought that his very motor seemed to be a trifle sullen. then she ran down to the piazza to meet him.

she carried a letter in her left hand. she waved him welcome with the other.

as he ran up the walk he took from his pocket a telegram. they vanished into the house to exchange appropriate salutes, but pennock was there as housemaid, and she was

giving orders to roger’s valet, who doubled as the butler in summer-time.

so they returned to the porch embraceless. this began the morning wrong. then winfield handed sheila his telegram, a long night letter from his father, saying that his

health was bad and he might have to take a rest. he added, vigorously:

“you’ve fooled away time enough. get back on the job; learn your business and attend to it.”

winfield shook his head dolefully. “isn’t that rotten?”

“mate it with this,” said sheila, and handed him her letter.

dear sheila kemble,—better run in town and see me to-morrow. i’ve got a great play for you from france. rehearsals begin immediately. trusting your rest has filled

you with ambition for a strenuous season, i am,

yours faithfully,

hy. reben.

this threw winfield into a panic. “but you promised me—”

“yes, dear,” she cooed, “and i’ve already written the answer. how’s this?” she gave him the answer she had worked over for an hour, trying to make it as

business-like as possible:

letter received regret state owing change plans shall not return stage this season best wishes.

sheila kemble.

even this did not allay winfield’s alarm. “why do you say ‘this season’?” he demanded. “are you only marrying me for one season?”

“for all eternity,” she cried, “but i wanted to let poor old reben down easy.”

sheila found that reben was not so easily let down as stirred up. an answer to the telegram arrived a few hours later, just in time to spoil the day:

you gave me word of honor as gentleman you would keep your contract better look it over again you will report for rehearsal monday ten a.m. odeon theater.

reben.

winfield stormed at reben’s language as much as at the situation:

“how dares he use such a tone to you? are you his servant or are you my wife?”

“i’m neither, honey,” sheila said, very meekly. “i’m just the darned old public’s little white slave.”

“but you don’t belong to the public. you belong to me.”

“but i gave him my word first, honey,” sheila pleaded. “if it were just an ordinary contract, i could break it, but we shook hands on it and i gave him my word as a

gentleman. if i broke that i couldn’t be trusted to keep my word to you, could i, dear?”

it was a puzzling situation for winfield. how could he demand that the woman in whose hands he was to put his honor should begin their compact by a breach of honor?

how could he counsel her to be false to one solemn obligation and expect her to be true to another assumed later?

reben followed up his telegram by a letter of protest against sheila’s bad faith. he referred to the expense he had been at; he had bought a great foreign play,

paying down heavy advance royalties; he had given large orders to scene-painters, lithographers, and printers, and had flooded the country with her photographs and his

announcements. the cast was selected, and her defection would mean cruelty to them as well as disloyalty to him.

she felt helpless. winfield was helpless. she could only mourn and he rage. they were like two lovers who find themselves on separate ships.

winfield went back to his father’s factory in a fume of wrath and grief. sheila went to reben’s factory with the meekness of a mill-hand carrying a dinner-pail.

sheila made a poor effort to smile at the stage-door keeper, who lifted his hat to her and welcomed her as if she were the goddess of spring. the theater had been

lonely all summer, but with the autumn was burgeoning into vernal activity.

the company in its warm-weather clothes made little spots of color in the dimly lighted cave of the stage. the first of the members to greet sheila was floyd eldon.

eldon seized both of sheila’s hands and wrung them, and his heart cried aloud in his soft words: “god bless you, sheila. we’re to be together again and i’m to play

your lover again. you’ve got to listen to me telling you eight times a week how much i—”

“why, mr. batterson, how do you do?”

the director—batterson again—came forward with other troupers, old friends or strangers. then reben called to sheila from the night beyond the footlights. she

stumbled and groped her way out front to him, and he scolded her roundly for giving him such a scare.

the director’s voice calling the company together rescued her from answering reben’s questions as to the mysterious “change of plans” that had inspired her

telegram.

“i guess you must have been crazy with the heat,” he said.

“call it that,” said sheila. and she rejoined the company, trying not to be either uppish or ’umble in her new quality as the star.

the author of the play was a parisian plutocrat whose wares had traversed all the oceans, though he had never ventured across the english channel. so he was not

present to read the play aloud. ben prior, the adapter, was a meek hack afraid of his own voice, and batterson was not inclined to show the company how badly their

director read. his assistant distributed the parts, and the company, clustered in chairs, read in turn as their cues came.

each had hefted his own part, and judged it by the number of its pages. one might have guessed nearly how many pages each had by the vivacity or the dreariness of his

attack.

“eight sides!” growled old jaffer as he counted his brochure.

it is a saddening thing to an ambitious actor to realize that his business for a whole season is to be confined to brief appearances and unimportant speeches.

people congratulated old jaffer because he was out of the play after the first act. but, cynic as he was, he was not glad to feel that he would be in his street mufti

when the second curtain rose. it is pleasant to play truant, but it is no fun to be turned out of school when everybody else is in.

of all the people there the most listless was the one who had the biggest, bravest r?le, the one round which all the others revolved, the one to whom all the others “

fed” the words that brought forth the witty or the thrilling lines.

sheila had to be reminded of her cue again and again. batterson’s voice recalled her as from a distance.

it is as strange as anything so usual and immemorial can be, how madly lovers can love; how much agony they can extract from a brief separation; what bitter terror

they can distil from ordinary events. as the tormented girl read her lines and later walked through the positions or stood about in the maddening stupidities of a

first rehearsal, she had actually to battle with herself to keep from screaming aloud:

“i don’t want to act! i don’t want the public to love me! i want only my bret!”

the temptation to hurl the part in reben’s face, to mock the petty withes of contract and promise, and to fly to her lover, insane as it was, was a temptation she

barely managed to fight off.