it must be a strangely thrilling thing to be a woman and meet a man who has been so impressed by oneself in childhood that he has never forgotten—a man who has indeed

devoted his gifts and ambitions to the perfection of a drama to exploit one’s charms and one’s gifts, and comes back years after with the extraordinary tribute.

the idol needs the idolater or it is no idol, and it doubtless watches the worshiper with as much respect and trepidation as the worshiper it. that is why gods, like

other artists, have always been jealous. their trade lies in their power to attract crowds and hold them. rivals for glory are rivals for business.

vickery was sheila’s first playwright. she could not fail to regard him as a rescuer from mediocrity, and see a glamour about him.

she had planned to go to a late dance that night with some people of social altitude. but she would have snubbed the abbess of all aristocracy for a playwright who

came offering her transportation to the clouds.

she had taken her best bib and tucker to her dressing-room and she put it on for vickery. but she could not dredge up the faintest memory of him, and he found her

almost utterly strange as he stared at her between the shaded candles on the restaurant table. she was different even from the girl he had seen on the stage recoiling

from bret winfield’s unlucky chivalry. the few months of intermission had altered her with theatrical speed. she had had her sentiments awakened by eldon and her

authority enlarged by two important r?les. her own character was a whole repertoire.

when vickery had last seen her she was playing the second young woman under her aunt’s protection; now she was a metropolitan favorite at whose side the big manager

of the country sat as a sort of prime minister serving her royalty.

first came the necessary business of ordering a supper. sheila’s appetite amazed vickery, who did not realize that this was her dinner, or how hard she had worked for

it.

when the waiter had hurried off with a speed which he would not duplicate in returning, sheila must hear about her first acquaintance with vickery. he spoke with

enthusiasm of the little witch she had been, and described with homage her fiery interpretation of ophelia and her maniac shrieks. he could still hear them, he said,

on quiet nights. he pictured her so vividly as she had sat on his mother’s knee and defended her family name and profession that sheila’s eyes filled with tears and

she turned to reben for confirmation of her emotions. there are few children for whom we feel kindlier than for our early selves.

her eyes glistened as vickery recounted his own boyish ambitions to write her a play; the depths of woe he had felt when he found her gone. then he described his

retrieval of her during the riot at leroy. he told how his friend bret winfield had been knocked galley-west by some actor in her troupe. he had forgotten the man’s

name, but his words brought eldon back in the room and seated him like a forlorn and forgotten banquo at the table. sheila blushed to remember that she had owed the

poor fellow a letter for a long time.

then vickery explained that winfield had gone to her defense and not to her offense, and she felt a pang of remorse at her injustice to him, also. a pretty girl has to

be unjust to so many men.

she had a queer thrill, too, from vickery’s statement that winfield had vowed to meet her some day and square himself with her; also to meet “that actor” some day

and square himself with him.

this strange man winfield began to loom across her horizon like an approaching goliath. she tried to remember how he had looked, but recalled only that he was very big

and that she was very much afraid of him.

this confusion of retrospect and prospect was dissipated, however, when vickery began to talk of the play he had written for her. then sheila could see nothing but her

opportunity, and that strange self an actor visualizes in a new r?le. the rest of us think of hamlet as a certain personage. the actor thinks of “hamlet as myself”

or “myself as hamlet.”

vickery’s play, as reben’s play-reader had told him, contained an idea. but an idea is as dangerous to a playwright as a loaded gun is to a child. the problem is,

what will he do with it?

when vickery told sheila the central character and theme of his play she was enraptured with the possibilities. when he began to describe in detail what he had done

with them she was tormented with disappointments and resentments. she gave way to little gasps of, “oh, would she do that?” “oh, do you think you ought to have her

say that?”

vickery was young and opinionated and had never seen one of his plays after the critics and the public had made tatters of it. he could only realize that he had spent

months of intense thought upon every word. he was shocked at sheila’s glib objections.

how could one who simply heard his story for the first time know what ought to be done with it? he forgot that a play’s prosperity, like a joke’s, lies in the ear of

those who hear it for the first time.

he responded to sheila’s skepticisms with all the fanatic eloquence of faith. he convinced her against her will for the moment. she liked him for his ardor. she liked

the reasons he gave. she could not help feeling: “what a decent fellow he is! what a kind, wholesome view of life he takes!”

woman-like, as she listened to his ideas she fell to studying his character and the features that published it. she was contrasting him with eldon—eldon so powerful,

so handsome, so rich-voiced, so magnetic, and so obstinate; vickery so homely, so lean, so shambling of gait and awkward of gesture, his voice so inadequate to the big

emotions he had concocted. and yet eldon only wanted to join her in the interpretation of other people’s creations. this spindle-shanks was himself a creator; he had

idealized and dramatized a play from and for sheila’s very own personality.

she began to think that there was something a trifle more exhilarating about an alliance with a creative genius than with just another actor. in her youth and

ignorance she used the words “creative” and “genius” with reverence. she had never known a “creative genius” before—except sir ralph incledon, and she loathed

him. vickery was different.

suddenly in the midst of vickery’s description of the complexest tangle of his best situation sheila dumfounded him by saying, “you have gray eyes, haven’t you?”

he collapsed like a punctured balloon and a look of intense discouragement dulled his expression. misunderstanding the cause of his collapse entirely, she hastened to

add:

“oh, but i like gray eyes! really! please go on!”

vickery understood her misunderstanding, smiled laboriously, then with an effort gathered together the wreckage of his plot for a fresh ascension. just as he was

fairly well away from the ground again sheila turned to reben and spoke very earnestly:

“he ought to write a good play. he has the hands of a creative genius—those spatulate fingers, you know. see!”

since she had known vickery from childhood, she felt at liberty to stop his hand in the midst of an ardent gesture and submit it to reben’s inspection. vickery was

hugely embarrassed. reben was gruff:

“if he’s such a genius you’d better not hold his hand. let him gene.”

she stared at reben in amazement; there was a clang of anger in his sarcasm. abruptly she realized that she had quite ignored him. she had lent vickery her eyes and

ears for half an hour. reben’s anger was due to hurt pride, the miff of a great manager neglected by a minor actress and an unproduced author. but as she glanced up

into the oriental blackness of his glare she saw something lurking there that frightened her. her instant intuition was, “jealousy!” slower-footed reason said,

“absurd!”

reben had been closely attached for years to the exaltation of the famous actress, mrs. diana rhys, who had floated to the stage on the crest of a famous scandal from

a city where she had been known as diana the huntress. she had behaved rather better as an actress than as a housewife, but none too well in either calling. for some

years she had been bound to reben by ties that were supposed to be permanent.

sheila reproached herself for imagining that reben could be jealous of herself. yet she cherished a superstitious belief that when she disregarded her intuition she

went wrong. the superstition had fastened itself on her, as superstitions do, from her habit of remembering the occasional events that seemed to confirm it and

forgetting the numberless events that disproved it.

she restored her attention to vickery’s plot, but the background of her thoughts was full of ominous lightnings and rumblings like a summer sky when a storm is far

off but inevitable.

now the plight of vickery’s heroine seemed much less thrilling than her own. here she sat almost betrothed to the distant eldon, almost bewitched by the new-comer,

vickery, and threatened with the wrath of an unexpected claimant who was her manager and held both her present and her future in his hand.

she studied reben out of the corner of her eye. this new, this utterly unsuspected phase of his, made necessary a fresh appraisal of him. he was now something more and

something less than her manager. he was something of a conquest of hers; but did he hope to be a conqueror, too?

it was strange to think of him as a suitor—an amorous manager! a business man with a bouquet! in this guise he looked younger than she had seen him, yet more crafty,

more cruel than ever. the orientalism that had made him so shrewd a bargainer in the bazar was now in a harem humor. his black hair was, after all, in curls; his big

eyes were shadowy, wet; his fat hands wore rings—a sanguine ruby twinned with a gross diamond and a shifty opal, like the back of an iridescent and venomous beetle.

sheila thought of david and solomon with their many loves, and she felt that perhaps mrs. rhys was not sufficient for this man. if he should claim her, too, what

should she say to him? must she sacrifice her career at its very outset just because this man turned monster?

she became so involved in her own meditations that vickery found her almost deaf to his narrative. he lost the thread of his spinning and tangled himself in it like

another lady of shalott.

finally sheila confessed her bewilderment. she spoke with an assumption of vast experience: “i never could tell anything from a scenario. the play is written out, isn

’t it?”

“oh yes,” said vickery. “may i send it to your hotel?”

“i’d rather you’d read it to me,” sheila pleaded. “you could explain it, you know. i’m so stupid.”

“that would be splendid!” said vickery. “when? where?”

before sheila could answer, reben broke in, “at my office, at three to-morrow, if that suits you, miss kemble.”

she demurred feebly that they would be interrupted all the time. reben promised absolute peace and said, with a grim finality: “that’s settled, then, mr. vickery.

to-morrow, my office, three o’clock.”

there was such a sharp dismissal in his tone that vickery found himself standing with his hand out in farewell before he quite realized what had lifted him from his

chair.

“you’re not going?” said sheila. “you haven’t finished your coffee.”

“i’ve had more than is good for me,” said vickery. “good night, and thank you a thousand times. good night, mr. reben.”

as he shambled through the tables to the door sheila said, “nice boy.”

“so you seem to think,” reben growled.

she stared at him again, troubled at his manner, confirmed in her suspicion, afraid of it and of him. but she said nothing.

“want a liqueur?” he snapped.

she shook her head.

he said to her, “i’ll take you home,” and to the waiter, “check!”

“just put me in a cab,” said sheila.

he fumed with impatience over the waiter’s delay with the check and the change, the time sheila spent getting her wrap from the cloak-woman, and her gloves and her

hand-bag. he tapped his foot with impatience while the starter whistled up a taxicab. then he spoke to the driver and got in with her.

he said nothing but, “may i smoke?” but she noted his fearsome mien as the light of his match painted it with startling vividness against the dark. the ruby of his

ring was like an evil eye. his thick brows drew down over the black fire of his own eyes, and his lips were red over the big teeth that clenched the cigar. then he

puffed out the match and his face vanished. he said nothing till they reached the apartment-hotel where she lived. he helped her out and paid the driver. she put forth

her hand to bid him good night, but he said:

“i want a word with you, please.”