sheila wept more as pennock helped her to undress and drew the sleeve tenderly over the invincible elbow. she wept into the bath and she wept into her pillow. she ran

a gamut of emotions from self-pity to self-contempt for so unlady-like a method of extricating herself from a predicament that no lady would have got into. she

reproached herself for being some kind of miserable reptile to have inspired either the affection or the insolence of so loathsome another reptile as reben.

then she bewailed the ruin of her career. that was gone forever. she bewailed the destruction of vickery’s hopes—such a nice boy! if she had not permitted reben to

be so rude to vickery he never would have been so rude to her. she would give up the stage and go live at her father’s house, and die an old maid or marry a preacher

or a milkman or something.

she wept herself out so completely that she slept till one o’clock the next afternoon. when she was up she stood at her window and gazed ruefully across the city. on

a distant roof she could just see the tall water-tanks marked “odeon theater,” and a wall of the theater carrying an enormous blazon of the play with tom brereton’s

name in huge letters and hers in large. she would never appear there again. she supposed reben would send her understudy on to-night. of course the reading of vickery

’s play at three o’clock was all off.

it would be of no use to go to the office. reben wouldn’t be there. he would doubtless be in a hospital with his face in splints.

she wondered if she had fractured his skull—and how many years they gave you for doing that to a man. she could claim that she did it in self-defense, of course, but

she had no witnesses to prove it.

she spent hours in putting herself into all imaginable disasters. the breakfast pennock commanded her to eat she only dabbed at.

at half past three the telephone rang. the office-boy at reben’s hailed her across the wire:

“that choo, m’skemble? this is choey. say, m’skemble, mis’ treben wantsa speak choo. hola wire a min’t, please.”

sheila reached out and hooked a chair with her foot and brought it up to catch her when the blow fell. reben’s voice was full of restrained cheerfulness:

“that you, sheila? are you ill?”

“why, no! why?”

“you had an appointment here at three. we’re still waiting.”

“but you don’t want to see—me, do you?”

“and why not?”

“but last night you said—”

“last night i was talking to you about personal affairs. this is business. that was at your home. this is my office. hop in a cab and come on over. i’ll explain.”

she was in such a daze as she made ready to go that when she had her hat on she could not find it with her hat-pin. pennock performed the office for her. when she

reached reben’s office she meekly edged through the crowd of applicants waiting like the penniless souls on the wrong side of the river styx. she thought that eldon

must have been one of these once. some of these were future eldons, future booths.

joey, the office-boy, hailed her with pride, swung the gate open for her, and led her to reben’s door. he did that only for stars or managers or playwrights of recent

success.

reben was alone. he was dabbing his mumpsy cheek with a handkerchief he wet at a bottle. he smiled at her with a mixture of apology and rebuke.

“there you are! the suffragette that took my face for a shop window. i told everybody i stumbled and hit my head on the edge of a table. if you will be kind enough

not to deny the story—”

“of course not! i’m so sorry! i lost my head!”

“thank you. so did i. last night i made a fool of myself. to-day i’m a business man again. i made you a proposition or two. you declined both with emphasis. i ought

not to have insisted. you didn’t have to assassinate me. i’ll forgive you if you’ll forgive me.”

“of course,” said sheila, sheepishly.

reben spoke with great dignity, yet with meekness. “we understand each other better now, eh? i meant what i said about being crazy about you. if you’d let me, i

could love you very much. if you won’t, i’ll get over it, i suppose. but the proposition stands. if you would marry me—”

“i’m not going to marry anybody, i tell you.”

“you promise me that?”

sheila felt it safer not to promise forever, but safe enough to say, “not for a long time, anyway.”

reben stared at her grimly. “sheila, i’m a business man; you’re a business woman. i’ll play fair with you if you’ll play fair with me. i’ll make a star of you if

you’ll do your share. you wouldn’t flirt with me or let me make a fool of you. then be a man and we’ll get along perfectly. if you’ll stick to me, not quit me, not

hamper me, not play tricks on me, and abide by your contract, i’ll do the same for you. i’ll put you up in the big lights. will you stand by me, sheila, as man to

man—on your honor as a gentleman?”

she repeated his words with a kind of amused solemnity: “as man to man, on my honor as a gentleman, i’ll stand by you and fulfil my contract.”

“then that’s all right. shake hands on it.”

they shook hands. his grasp was hot and fierce and slow to let go. his eyes burned over her with a menace that belied his icy words.

when the bond was sealed with the clasp of hands reben breathed heavily and pressed a button on his desk. “now for the young shakespeare. we’ve kept him waiting long

enough. he’s cooled his heels till he must have cold feet by now. joey, show mr. vickery in; and then i don’t want to be disturbed by anybody for anything. i’ll

wring your neck if you ring my telephone—unless the building catches on fire.”

“yes, sir; no, sir,” said joey; and, holding the door ajar, he beckoned and whistled to vickery, and, having admitted him, dispersed the rabble outside with brevity:

“nothin’ doin’ to-day, folks. mis’ treben’s went home.”

sheila, vickery, and reben regarded one another with the utmost anxiety. they were embarking on a cruise to the gold coast. success would mean a fortune for all; the

failure of any would mean disaster to all.

usually it was next to impossible to persuade reben to give three consecutive hours of his busy life to an audition; but, once engaged, he listened with amazing

analysis. he tried to sit with an imaginary audience. he listened always for the human note. he criticized, as a woman criticizes with reference not to art or logic or

truth, but to etiquette, morality, and attractiveness.

the virtuous and scholarly vickery, as he read his masterwork, was astounded to find his ideals of conduct riddled by a manager, and especially by a reben. he blushed

to be told that his hero was a cad and his heroine a cat. and he could hardly deny the justice of the criticism from reben’s point of view, which was that of an

average audience.

sheila, feeling that vickery needed support, gave him only her praise, whatever she felt; little giggles of laughter, little gasps of “delicious!” and cries of,

“oh, charming!” when with the accidental rarity of a scholar he stumbled into the greatness of a homely sincerity, he was amazed to see that tears were pearling at

her eyelids suddenly.

his heart was melted into affection by the collaboration of her sympathy. without it he would have folded up his manuscript and slunk away, for reben’s comments were

more and more confusingly cynical.

when he finished the ordeal vickery was exhausted, parched of throat and of heart. sheila flung him adjectives like flowers and his heart went out toward her, but

reben was silent for a long and cruelly anxious while. then he spoke harshly:

“a manager’s main business is to avoid producing plays. it’s my business to imagine what faults the public would find and then beat ’em to ’em. there will be

plenty of faults left. and don’t forget, mr. vickery, that every compliment i pay a playwright costs me a thousand dollars or more. frankly, mr. vickery, i don’t

think your play is right. the idea is there, but you haven’t got it.”

vickery’s heart sickened. reben revived it a little.

“maybe you can fix it up. if you can’t i’ll have to get somebody to help you. it’s too late to produce it this season, anyway. hot weather is coming on. you have

all summer to work at it.”

vickery wondered if he should live so long.

reben went on: “i—i’ve been thinking, sheila—miss kemble, that it might be a good idea to try this play out in a stock company. then mr. vickery could see its

faults.”

sheila protested, “oh, but i couldn’t let anybody else play it first.”

“you could join the company as a guest for a week and play the part yourself.”

“fine!” sheila exclaimed. “i’ve been planning to put in a good hard summer in stock. it’s such an education—limbers your mind up so, to play all sorts of parts.

see if you can find me a good, coolish sort of town with a decent stock company that will let me in.”

“ay, ay, sir!” said reben, with a salute. “and now, mr. vickery, you’ve got your work cut out, too. see if you can get your play into shape for a stock production.

”

reben was attempting to scare vickery just enough to make him toil, but he would have given up completely if sheila had not begged him to go on, asked him to come to

see her now and then and “talk things over.”

he promised with gratitude and went, carrying that burden of delay which weighs down the playwright until he reaches the swift judgment of the critics. when he had

gone reben spoke more confidently of the play. he was already considering the cast. he mentioned various names and discarded this actor or that actress because he or

she was a blond or too dark, too tall, or too short, lean, fat, commonplace, eccentric. nobody quite fitted his pictures of vickery’s people. at length he said:

“i’ll tell you a man i’ve had in mind for the lead. he’d be ideal, i think. he’s young, handsome, educated; he’s got breeding; he can wear a dress-suit; and he

hasn’t been on the stage long enough to be spoiled by the gush of fool women. he’s tall and athletic and a gentleman.”

“and who’s all that?” said sheila. “the angel gabriel?”

“young fellow named—er—elmore—no, eldon; that’s it. you must know him. he was with you in the ‘friend in need’ company.”

“oh yes,” sheila murmured, “i know him.”

“how do you think he would do?”

“i think he would be—he would be splendid.”

“all right,” said reben. “the stock experience would be good for him, too. he might make a good leading man for you. you could practise team-work together. if he

pans out, i could place him with the company we select for you.”

“fine!” said sheila.

reben could never have suspected from her tone how deeply she was interested in eldon. unwittingly he had torn them asunder just as their romance was ripening into

ardor; unwittingly he was bringing them together.

as soon as she left reben’s office sheila hurried to her room to write eldon of their reunion. she wrote glowingly and quoted their old phrases. when she had sent the

letter off she had a tremor of anxiety. “what if he finds me changed and doesn’t like me any more? how will he have changed after a season of success and—dulcie

ormerod?”