bret telegraphed sheila that he was coming to new york to see her. she telegraphed back:

awfully love see you but hideously busy rehearsals souls devotion.

these poor telegraph operators! the honey they have to transmit must fairly stick to the wires and gum up the keys.

winfield determined to go, anyway—and to surprise her. he set out without warning and flew to the theater as soon as he reached new york. the tip-loving doorman

declined so fiercely to take his card in that he frightened the poor swain out of the proffer of a bribe.

while winfield loitered irresolutely near the stage entrance an actor strolled out to snatch a few puffs of a cigarette while he was not needed. winfield was about to

ask him to tell miss kemble that mr. winfield was waiting for her. he saw that the actor was eldon.

he dodged behind the screen of a fire-escape from the gallery and slunk away unobserved. there was no fire-escape in his soul from the conflagration of jealousy that

shot up at the sight of his rival, and the thought that eldon was spending his days in sheila’s company, while her affianced lover gnashed his teeth outside.

he hung about like mary’s lamb for meekness and like red riding-hood’s wolf for wrath. he would wait for sheila to come out for lunch. hours passed. he saw eldon

dash across the street to a little restaurant and return with a cup of coffee and a bundle of sandwiches. ye gods, he was feeding her!

with all a lover’s fiendish ingenuity in devising tortures for himself, winfield transported his soul from the vat of boiling oil to the rack and the cell of little

ease and back again. he imagined the most ridiculous scenes in the theater and suspected sheila of such treacheries that if he had really believed them he would surely

have been cured of his love.

he saw that a policeman was regarding him with suspicion, and since he was faint with torture on an empty stomach, he went to a restaurant to kill time. when he

returned he waited an hour before he ventured to steal upon the stage-door keeper again. then he learned that the rehearsal had been dismissed two hours before. aching

with rage, he taxicabbed to sheila’s hotel. she had not returned. out riding with eldon somewhere no doubt!

he went to the railroad station. he would escape from the hateful town where there was nothing but perfidy and vice. he called up the hotel to bid sheila a bitter

farewell. pennock answered and informed him that sheila had been at the dressmaker’s all afternoon and was just returned, so dead that pennock had made her take a

nap. she shouldn’t be disturbed till she woke, no, not for a dozen winfields, especially as she had an evening rehearsal.

winfield returned to her hotel and hung about like a process-server. he waited in the lobby, reading the evening papers, one after another, from “ears” to tail. he

telephoned up to pennock till she forbade the operator to ring the bell again.

the big fellow was almost hysterical when a hall-boy called him to the telephone-booth. he heard sheila’s voice. she was fairly squealing with delight at his

presence. instantly chaos became a fresh young world, all eden.

sheila had just learned of winfield’s arrival. she promised to be down as soon as she had scrubbed the sleep out of her eyes. she invited him to take her to dinner at

claremont before she went back to “the morgue,” as she called the theater—and meant it, for she was fagged out. everything was wrong with the play, the cast, and,

worst of all, with her costumes.

there was further tantalism for bret in the greeting in the hotel lobby. a formal hand-clasp and a more ardent eye-clasp were all they dared venture. the long bright

summer evening made it impossible to steal kisses in the taxicab, except a few snapshots caught as they ran under the elevated road. but they held hands and wrung

fingers and talked rapturous nonsense.

the view of the hudson was supremely beautiful from the restaurant piazza, until reben arrived with his old diana rhys and the two of them filled the landscape like

another storm king and dunderberg.

mrs. rhys had for some time resented reben’s interest in sheila and had made life infernal for him. she began on him at the table. he was furious with humiliation and

swarthier with jealousy of the unknown occupant of the chair opposite sheila.

sheila explained to winfield in hasty asides that she was in hot water. reben did not like to have her appear in public places at all, and then only with the strictest

chaperonage.

winfield sniffed at such puritanism from him.

“it isn’t that, honey,” sheila said, “it’s business. he says that actresses, of all people, should lead secluded lives because—who wants to pay two dollars to

see a woman who can be seen all over town for nothing? he’s planning a regular convent life for me, and he’s shutting down on all the personal publicity. i’m glad

of it—for i really belong to you.

“reben wants me to be especially strict because i’ve got to play innocent young girls, and he says that many a promising actress has killed herself commercially with

the nice people, by thinking that it was none of the public’s business what she did outside the theater. of course it isn’t really their business in a way, but the

public make it so.

“and you can’t wonder at it. i know i’m not prudish or narrow, but when i see a play where a character is supposed to be terribly ignorant and pathetic and

trusting, it sort of hurts the illusion when i know that the actress is really a hateful cat who has broken up a dozen homes.

“so you see reben’s right. he’d come over here now and send me home if old rhys would let him. he’s dying to know who you are. but of course i won’t tell him.”

this did not comfort winfield in the least. it angered him, too, to think of reben as right about anything; and he felt no thanks to him for his counsels of prudence.

when it is insisted too strenuously that honesty is good policy, even honesty becomes suspect.

the tête-à-tête and the dinner were ruined and it was not yet dark enough on the way back to permit any of the embraces and kisses that winfield was famished for. he

took no pleasure even in the spectacular sunset along the hudson—miles of assorted crimsons in the sky, with the cool green palisades as a barrier between the radiant

heavens and the long panel of the mirror-river that told the sky how beautiful it was.

winfield was completely dissatisfied with life. it was peculiarly distressing to be so deeply in love with so dear a girl so deeply in love in turn, and to have her

profession and its necessities brandished like a flaming sword between them.

this experience is likely to play an increasing part in the romances of the future as more and more women claim a larger and larger share of life outside the home.

existence has always been a process of readjustments, but certainly at no time in history has there been such a revolution as this in the relations of man and woman.

from now on numbers of husbands will learn what wives have endured for ages in waiting for the spouse to come home from the shop.

the usual pattern of emotion was almost ludicrously reversed when winfield took his sweetheart to her factory and left her at the door to resume her overtime night-

work, while he idled about in the odious leisure of a housekeeper.

winfield hated the situation with all the ferocity of a lover denied, and all the indignation of an old-fashioned youth who believed in taking the woman of his choice

under his wing to protect her from the world.

but he had chosen a girl who proposed to conquer the world and who would find the shadow under his wing too close. he felt himself as feeble and misallied as a ring-

dove mated with a falcon. she was an artist, a public idol, while he at best was as obscure as a vice-president; he was only the indolent heir of a self-made man.

he dawdled about, revolting against his dependency, till sheila finished her rehearsal. then she met him and they rode through the moonlit park. she loved him

immensely, but she was so exhausted that she fell asleep in his arm. he kissed the wan little moon of her face as it lay back on his shoulder. he loved her with all

his might. he loved her enough to take her home to her hotel and surrender her to herself while he moped away to his own hotel.

the next day it was the same story except that she promised to ask for a respite at the luncheon hour and meet him at a restaurant near the theater. the appointment

was for one o’clock. he waited until two-thirty before she appeared. and then she had only time to tell him that reben had given her a merciless scolding for her

escapade of the evening before.

winfield expressed his desire to punch reben’s head, and sheila rejoiced at having a champion, even though (or perhaps because) the champion claimed her more

exclusively than reben did.

bret had to endure another dismal wait until dinner, and then there was again an evening rehearsal. the time of production was approaching and batterson was growing

demoniac. after the rehearsal bret from across the street watched all the other members of the company leave the theater. even eldon came forth, but not sheila.

another hour bret spent of watchful waiting, and then she appeared with reben and prior. they had been having a consultation and a quarrel, and they continued it to

the hotel, sheila not daring to shake them off. winfield shadowed them along the street, and waited outside till they left the hotel; then he made haste to find

sheila.

she was distraught between the demands of her play and her lover. revisions had been made and she had a new scene to learn and a new interpretation of the character to

achieve before morning. the only crumb of good news was the fact that reben was to be out of town the next day and she could sneak winfield in to watch a rehearsal, if

he wanted to come.

he wanted to exceedingly. it was one way of borrowing trouble.

he stole in at the front of the house and sat in the empty dark, unobserved, but not unobserving. he had the wretched privilege of watching eldon make love to sheila

and take her in his arms. a dozen embraces were tried before batterson could find just the attitude to suit him. and that did not suit sheila.

partly because it is almost impossible for a man to show a woman how she would act, and partly because sheila could almost see bret’s gaze blazing from the dark like

a wolf’s eyes, she was incapable of achieving the effect batterson wanted.

the stage-manager was reaching his ugly phase, and after leaving sheila in eldon’s clasp for ten minutes while he tried her arms in various poses, all of them

awkward, he walked to the table where prior sat and muttered:

“her mother would have grasped it in a minute. isn’t it funny that the children of great actors are always damned fools?”

the whole company overheard and winfield rose to his feet in a fury. but he heard sheila say to eldon, for batterson’s benefit:

“why, i didn’t know that mr. batterson’s parents were great actors, did you?”

batterson caught this as sheila intended, and he flew into one of the passions that were to be expected about this time. he slammed the manuscript on the table and

made the usual bluff of walking out. sheila did not follow. she sank into a chair and made signals to the invisible bret not to interfere, as she knew he was about to

do.

he understood her meaning and restrained his impulse to climb over the footlights once more.

batterson fought it out with himself, then came back, and with a sigh of heavenly resignation resumed the rehearsal. the company was refreshed by the divertisement and

sheila and batterson were as amiable as two warriors after a truce. the embrace was speedily agreed upon.

sheila met bret at luncheon, and now she had him on her hands. he was ursine with clumsy wrath.

“to think that my wife-to-be must stand up there and let a mucker like that stage-manager swear at her! good lord! i’ll break his head!”

sheila wondered how long she would be able to endure these alternating currents, but she put off despair and cooed:

“now, honey, you can’t go around breaking all the heads in town. you mustn’t think anything of it. poor old batty is excited, and so are we all. it’s just a

business dispute. it’s always this way when the production is near.”

“and are you going to let that fellow eldon fondle you like that?”

“why, honey dear, it’s in the manuscript!”

“then you can cut it out. i won’t have it, i tell you! what kind of a dog do you think i am that i’m to let other men hug my wife?”

“but it’s only in public, dearest, that he hugs me.”

at the recurrence of this extraordinary logic winfield simply opened his mouth like a fish on land. he was suffocating with too much air.

sheila and he kept silence a moment. they were remembering the somewhat similar dispute in another moonlit scene, at clinton. only then he was an audacious flirter;

now he was a conservative fiancé. her logic was the same, but he had veered to the opposite side. she murmured, dolefully:

“you don’t understand the stage very well, do you, dear?”

“no, i don’t!” he growled. “and i don’t want to. it’s no place for a woman. you’ve got to give it up.”

“i’ve promised to, honey, as soon as i can.”

“well, in the mean while, you’ve got to cut out that hugging business with eldon—or anybody else. i won’t have it, that’s all!”

to her intense amazement sheila was flattered by this overweening tyranny. she rejoiced at her lover’s wealth of jealousy, the one supreme proof of true love in a

woman’s mind, a proof that is weightier than any tribute of praise or jewelry or toil or sacrifice.

she said she would see if the embrace could be omitted. the next day reben sat in the orchestra and she went down to sit at his side. she did not mention winfield’s

part in the matter, of course, but craftily insinuated:

“do you know something? i’ve been thinking that maybe it’s a mistake to have that embrace in the second act. it seems to me to—er—to anticipate the climax.”

reben, all unsuspecting, leaped into the snare:

“that’s so! i always say that once the hero and heroine clinch, the play’s over. we’ll just cut it there, and save it to the end of the last act.”

sheila, flushed with her victory, pressed further:

“and that’s another point. wouldn’t it be more—er—artistic if you didn’t show the embrace even then—just have the lovers start toward each other and ring down

so that the curtain drops before they embrace? it would be novel, and it would leave something to the audience’s imagination.”

reben was skeptical of this: “we might try it in one of the tank towns, but i’m afraid the people will be sore if they don’t see the lovers brought together for at

least one good clutch. nothing like trying things out, though.”

sheila was tempted to ask him not to tell batterson that it was her idea. the fear was unnecessary. any advice that reben accepted became at once his own idea. he

advanced to the orchestra rail and told batterson to “cut out both clutches.”

batterson consented with ill grace and eldon looked so crestfallen, so humiliated, that sheila hastened to reassure him that it was nothing personal. but he was not

convinced.

he was enduring bitter days. his love for sheila would not expire. she treated him with the greatest formality. she paid him the deference belonging to a leading man.

she was more gracious and more zealous for his success than most stars are. but he read in her eyes no glimmer of the old look.

he hoped that this was simply because she was too anxious and too busy to consider him, and that once the play was prosperously launched she would have time to love

him.

this comfort sustained him through the loss of the two embraces. he could not have imagined that sheila had cut them out to please winfield, of whose presence in her

environs he never dreamed.

at dinner that evening sheila told bret how she had brought about the excision of the two embraces. he was as proud as lucifer and she rejoiced in having contrived his

happiness. this was her chief ambition now. she was thinking more of him and his peace than of her own success or of that disturbance of the public peace which makes

actors, story-tellers, acrobats, and singers and other entertainers interesting.