sheila suffered the very same feeling to a more sickening degree, a little later, when “the woman pays” company, now in its fourth year, reached blithevale in

cleaning up the lesser one-night stands. the play that sheila had rejected had become the corner-stone of reben’s fortunes. it was as inartistic and plebeian and

reminiscent as apple pie. but the public loves apple pie and consumes tons of it, to the great neglect of marrons glacés.

that play was a commodity for which there is always a market. a great artist could adorn it, but it was almost actor-proof against destruction.

even dulcie ormerod could not spoil it for its public. when she played it batterson gnashed his teeth and reben held his aching head, but there were enough injudicious

persons left to make up eight good audiences a week.

dulcie “killed her laughs” by fidgeting or by reading humorously or by laughing herself. she lost the audience’s tears by the copiousness of her own. but she loved

the play and still “knew she was great because she wept herself.” when she laughed she showed teeth that speedily earned a place in the advertisement of dentifrice,

and when she wept, a certain sort of audience was overawed by the sight of a genuine tear. real water has always been impressive on the stage.

by sheer force of longevity the play slid her up among the prominent women of the day. she stuck to the r?le for four years, and was beginning to hope to rival the

records of joseph jefferson, denman thompson, maggie mitchell, and lotta.

the night the company played in blithevale bret and eugene, sheila, dorothy and her jim, made up a box-party.

jim proclaimed that dulcie was a “peach,” but he alluded less to the art she did not possess than to the charms she had. she was pretty, there was no question of

that—as shapely and characterless as a bouguereau painting, as coarsely sweet as granulated sugar. dorothy credited her with all the winsome qualities of the

character she assumed, and took a keen dislike to the actress who played the adventuress, an estimable woman and a genuine artist whose oxfords dulcie was not fit to

untie.

eugene and sheila suffered from dulcie’s utter falsehood of impersonation. even bret felt some mysterious gulf between dulcie’s interpretation and sheila’s as he

remembered it.

sheila was afraid to speak her opinion of dulcie lest it seem mere jealousy. eugene voiced it for her.

“to think that such a heifer is a star! getting rich and getting admiration,” he growled, “while a genius like sheila rusts in idleness. it’s a crime.”

“it’s all my fault,” said bret. “i cut her out of it.”

“don’t you believe it, honey,” sheila cooed. “i’d rather be starring in your home than earning a million dollars before the public.”

but somehow there was a clank of false rhetoric in the speech. it was lover’s extravagance, and even bret felt that it could not quite be true, or that, if it were

true, somehow it ought not to be.

he felt himself a dog in the manger, yet he was glad that sheila was not up there with some actor’s arms about her.

after the third act dulcie sent the company-manager—still mr. mcnish—to invite mrs. winfield to come back at the end of the play.

sheila had hoped to escape this test of her nerves, but there was no escape. she felt that if dulcie were haughty over her success she would hate her, and if she were

not haughty and tried to be gracious she would hate her more.

dulcie assumed the latter r?le and played it badly. she condescended as from a great height, patronized like a society patroness. worse yet, she pawed sheila and

called her “sheila” and “dearie” and congratulated her on having such a nice quiet life in such a dear little village, while “poor me” had to play forty weeks a

year. sheila wanted to scratch her big doll-eyes out.

on the way home bret confessed that it rather hurt him to see a “dub like dulcie rattling round in sheila’s shoes.” the metaphor was meant better than it came out,

but sheila was not thinking of that when she groaned: “don’t speak of it.”

bret invited vickery to stop in for a bit of supper and vickery accepted, to bret’s regret. sheila excused herself from lingering and left bret to smoke out vickery,

who was in a midnight mood of garrulity. the playwright watched sheila trudge wearily up the staircase, worn out with lack of work. he turned on bret and growled:

“bret, there goes the pitifulest case of frustrated genius i ever saw. it’s a sin to chain a great artist like that to a baby-carriage.”

bret turned scarlet at the insolence of this, but vickery was too feeble to be knocked down. he was leaner than ever, and his eyes were like wet buckeyes. his speech

was punctuated with coughs. as he put it, he “coughed commas.” also he coughed cigarette-smoke usually. his friends blamed his cough to his cigarettes, but they knew

better, and so did he.

he was in a hurry to do some big work before he was coughed out. it infuriated him to feel genius within himself and have so little strength or time for its

expression. it enraged him to see another genius with health and every advantage kept from publication by a husband’s selfishness.

he was in one of his irascible spells to-night and he had no mercy on bret. he spoke with the fretful tyranny of an invalid.

“it’s none of my business, i suppose, bret, but i tell you it makes me sick—sick! to see sheila cooped up in this little town. new york would go wild over her—yes,

and london, too. there’s an awful dearth on the stage of young women with beauty and training. she could have everything her own way. she’s a peculiarly brilliant

artist who never had her chance. if she had reached her height and quit—fine! but she was snuffed out just as she was beginning to glow. it was like lighting a lamp

and blowing it out the minute the flame begins to climb on the wick.

“dulcie ormerod and hundreds of her sort are buzzing away like cheap gas-jets while a sheila kemble is here. she could be making thousands of people happy, softening

their hearts, teaching them sympathy and charm and breadth of outlook; and she’s teaching children not to rub their porridge-plates in their hair!

“thousands used to listen to every syllable of hers and forget their troubles. now she listens to your factory troubles. she listens to the squabbles of a couple of

nice little kids who would rather be outdoors playing with other kids all day, as they ought to be.

“it’s like taking a lighthouse and turning the lens away from the sea into the cabbage-patch of the keeper.”

“go right on,” bret said, with labored restraint. “don’t mind me. i’m old-fashioned. i believe that a good home with a loving husband and some nice kids is good

enough for a good woman. i believe that such a life is a success. where should a wife be but at home?”

“that depends on the wife, bret. most wives belong at home, yes. most men belong at home, too. they are born farmers and shoemakers and school-teachers and chemists

and inventors, and all glory to them for staying there. but where did christopher columbus belong? where would you be if he had stayed at home?”

“but sheila isn’t a man!”

“well, then, did florence nightingale belong at home? or joan of arc?”

“oh, well, nurses and patriots and people like that!”

“what about jenny lind and patti?”

“they were singers.”

“and sheila is a singer, only in unaccompanied recitative. actors are nurses and doctors, too; they take people who are sick of their hard day’s work and they cure

’em up, give ’em a change of climate.”

“home was good enough for our mothers,” bret grumbled, sinking back obstinately in his chair.

“oh no, it wasn’t.”

“they were contented.”

“contented! hah! that’s a word we use for other people’s patience. old-fashioned women were not contented. we say they were because other people’s sorrows don’t

bother us, especially when they are dead. but they mattered then to them. if you ever read the newspapers of those days, or the letters, or the novels, or the plays,

you’ll find that people were not contented in the past at any time.

“people used to say that laborers were contented to be treated like cattle. but they weren’t, and since they learned how to lift their heads they’ve demanded more

and more.”

bret had been having a prolonged wrestle with a labor-union. he snarled: “don’t you quote the laboring-men to me. there’s no satisfying them!”

“and it’s for the good of the world that they should demand more. it’s for the good of the world that everybody should be doing his best, and getting all there is

in it and out of it and wanting more.”

“is nobody to stay at home?”

“of course! there’s my sister dorothy—nicest girl in the world, but not temperamental enough to make a flea wink. she’s got sense enough to know it. you couldn’t

drive her on the stage. why the devil didn’t you marry her? then you both could have stayed at home. you belong at home because you’re a manufacturer. i should stay

at home because i’m a writer. but a postman oughtn’t to stay at home, or a ship-captain, or a fireman.”

bret attempted a mild sarcasm: “so all the women ought to leave home and go on the stage, eh?”

vickery threw up his hands. “god forbid! i think that nine-tenths of the actresses ought to leave the stage and go home. too many of them are there because there was

nowhere else to go or they drifted in by accident. nice, stupid, fatheads who would be the makings of a farm or an orphan-asylum are trying to interpret complicated

r?les. dulcie ormerod ought to be waiting on a lunch-counter, sassing brakemen and brightening the lot of the traveling-men. but women like mrs. siddons and ellen

terry, bernhardt and duse and charlotte cushman and marlowe and any number of others, including mrs. bret winfield, ought to be traveling the country like missionaries

of art and culture and morality.”

“morality!” bret roared. “the stage is no place for a good woman, and you know it.”

“oh, bosh! in the first place, what is a good woman?”

“a woman who is virtuous and honorable and industrious and—well, you know what ‘good’ means as well as i do.”

“i know a lot better than you do, you old mud-turtle. there are plenty of good women on the stage. and there are plenty of bad ones off. there are more commandments

than one, and more than one way for a woman to be bad. there are plenty of wives here in blithevale whose physical fidelity you could never question, though they’re

simply wallowing in other sins. you know lots of wives that you can’t say a word against except that they are loafers, money-wasters, naggers of children, torturers

of husbands, scourges of neighbors, enemies of everything worth while—otherwise they are all right.

“they neglect their little ones’ minds; never teach them a lofty ideal; just teach them hatred and lying and selfishness and snobbery and spite and conceit. they

make religion a cloak for backbiting and false witness. and they’re called good women. i tell you it’s an outrage on the word ‘good.’ ‘good’ is a great word. it

ought to be used for something besides ‘the opposite of sensual’!”

“all right,” bret agreed, “use it any way you want to. you’ll admit, i suppose, that a good woman ought to perpetuate her goodness. a good woman ought to have

children.”

“yes, if she can.”

“and take care of them and sacrifice herself for them.”

“why sacrifice herself?”

“so that the race may progress.”

“how is it going to progress if you sacrifice the best fruits of it? suppose the mother is a genius of the highest type, a beautiful-bodied, brilliant-minded,

wholesome genius. why should she be sacrificed to her children? they can’t be any greater than she is. since genius isn’t inherited or taught, they’ll undoubtedly

be inferior. and at that they may die before they grow up. why kill a sure thing for a doubtful one?”

“you don’t believe in the old-fashioned woman.”

“she’s still as much in fashion as she ever was. the old-fashionedest woman on record was eve. she meddled and got her husband fired out of paradise. and she never

had any stage ambitions or asked for a vote or wore paris clothes, but she wasn’t much of a success as a wife; and as a mother all we know of her home influence was

that one of her sons killed the other and got driven into the wilderness. you can’t do much worse than that. even if eve had been an actress and gone on the road, her

record couldn’t have been much worse, could it?”

bret was boxing heavily and sleepily with a contemptuous patience. “you think women ought to be allowed to go gadding about wherever they please?”

“of course i do! what’s the good of virtue that is due to being in jail? we know that men are more honest, more decent, more idealistic, more romantic, than women.

why? because we have liberty. because we have ourselves to blame for our rottenness. because we’ve got nobody to hide behind. the reason so many women are such liars

and gossips and so merciless to one another is because they are so penned in, because all the different kinds of women are expected to live just the same way after

they are married. but some of them are bad mothers because they have no outlet for their genius. some of them would be better wives if they had more liberty.”

bret was entirely unconvinced. “you’re not trying to tell me that the stage is better than the average village?”

“no, but i think it’s as good. there will never be any lack of sin. but the sin that goes on in harems and jails and hide-bound communities is worse than the sin of

free people busily at work in the splendid fields of art and science and literature and drama and commerce.

“i think sheila belongs to the public. i don’t see why she couldn’t be a better wife and a better mother for being an eminent artist. and i like you, bret, so much.

you’re as decent a fellow at heart as anybody i know. i hate to have it you, of all men, that’s crushing sheila’s soul out of her. i hate to think that i introduced

you to her. and i let you cut me out.

“she wouldn’t have loved me if she’d married me, but, by the lord harry! her name would be a household word in all the homes in the country instead of just one.”

vickery dropped to a divan and lay outstretched, exhausted with his oration. bret sat with his lips pursed and his fingers gabled in long meditation. at length he

spoke:

“i’m not such a brute as you think, ’gene. i don’t want to sacrifice anybody to myself, least of all the woman i idolize. if sheila wants to leave me and go back,

i’ll not hinder her. i couldn’t if i wanted to. there’s no law that enables a man to get out an injunction against his wife going on the stage. if she wants to go,

why doesn’t she?”

vickery sat up on the couch and snapped: “because she loves you, damn it! i’m madder at her than i am at you.” then he fell back again, puffing his cigarette

spitefully.

bret smoked slowly at a long cigar. he was thinking long thoughts.

a little later vickery spoke again: “besides, sheila won’t say she wants to go back, for fear it would hurt your feelings.”

bret took this very seriously. “you think so?”

“i know so.”

bret smoked his cigar to ash, then he rose with effort and solemnity, went to the door, and called, “oh, sheila!”?

from somewhere in the clouds came her voice—the beautiful sheila voice, “yes, dear.”

“come to the stairs a minute, will you?”

“yes, dear.”

vickery had risen wonderingly. he could not see sheila’s nightcapped head as she looked over the balustrade. he did not know that sheila had been listening to his

eulogy of her and agreeing passionately with his regrets at her idleness.

“?’gene here,” said bret, “has been roasting me for keeping you off the stage. i want him to hear me tell you that i’m not keeping you off the stage. do you want

to go on the stage, sheila?”

sheila’s voice was housewifely and matter-of-fact. “of course not. i want to go to bed. and it’s time ’gene was in his. send him home.”

she heard bret cry, “you see!” and heard his triumphant laughter as he clapped vickery on the shoulder. then she went to her room and locked herself in. the click of

the bolt had the sound of a jailer’s key. she was a prisoner in a cell, in a solitary confinement, since her husband’s soul was leagues away from any sympathy with

hers. she paced the floor like a caged panther, and when the sobs came she fell on her knees and silenced them in her pillow lest bret hear her. she had made her

renunciation and plighted her troth. she would keep faith with her lover though she felt that it was killing her. her soul was dying of starvation.