CHAPTER XXV

The bitterness of her fall revealed to her how great her pride had been, and at first a furious resentment filled her heart against the man who in love's name had so humbled her. Looking back through the golden light of that time of perfect joy, she tried to see what path had led her to the precipice, to understand why she had not resisted and held back. Then slowly, very slowly, it dawned on her that opportunity had been the lure that gently led her into a laxity that almost imperceptibly through remissness became latitude. Her daily carefully guarded companionship with Stewart Thrall at Mrs. Van Camp's home had placed her upon a friendly footing of perfect confidence, and he was so great he must, she thought, be good; and so she had scarcely noticed when at Stivers's house he first read her her Tennyson, sitting at her feet, leaning against her knee, and had paid no heed to the increasing frequency of those afternoon demands for Stivers's presence at the theatre wardrobe-room; and when she played for him upon the little upright piano, standing across the corner of the room, it had not startled her, when he was turning her music, to feel him drop a kiss into her wavy, up-gathered hair. Experience and opportunity as against inexperience and foolish trust!

Again the words of Juliet came to her lips: "Known too late! known too late!" And Juliet thought herself unhappy—unhappy, when she was not shamed, when she was loved!

"Oh!" she wrung her hands hard, "he seemed—he truly seemed to love me! His beautiful eyes glowed so! His lips had a smile that seemed for me alone! But then, dear God! I forget now, as I forgot then, he is an actor!" She laughed contemptuously. "A great actor! and I have helped to pass away those weary hours, when he was bereft of the gayety of the joyous Mrs. Thrall!"

For women know one another well, and, as Sybil had passed on Stivers's arm that night, Mrs. Thrall had sent a merry laugh forth, apropos of nothing spoken, but simply to pierce the lonely girl's heart with jealous pain—and she had succeeded perfectly.

The long, sleepless night of agony and shame had left its mark on the girl, young and strong as she was. Her room, made bower-like with ferns and palms and many scarlet poinsettias (Thrall taboo'd all perfumed, growing plants there) seemed to accentuate the languor and the weariness of its girlish occupant. Wrapped in a Japanese kimona, white and gold outside and peachy pink within, with wavy, densely dark hair tucked up carelessly with a big shell comb, the bluish shadows beneath her heavy eyes, the level brows drawn close, and the sullen, red mouth all unsmiling, she looked a very tragic young figure and pitiful withal, to the haggard gaze of Stewart Thrall, the man who loved her and had wronged her.

He stood before her, very erect, very pale. His dark-blue eyes, guiltless of amorous droop, wide and bright, had in them a strained intensity of regard that was painful. Raw soldiers, under waiting orders, though yet in sight of action, wear just that expression of strained vision—of desperate self-control. At first sight of him Sybil had felt her tired heart give a glad upward spring in her breast, and her impulse was to fly into his arms for shelter, and there to weep, and weep, and weep—while he, in fond, foolish fashion, kissed and beat her slim hand softly against his cheek—just as might the mother of a little wailing child. But suddenly she seemed to see beside him the pale, ashen-blonde woman, who, from the shadowy box, had so tormented her, and who later stood beneath the blazing lights, and, holding fast the arm of this man—her husband—had sent forth that mocking, triumphant laugh, that, like a hate-sped arrow, had fairly reached its victim's heart, where it would rankle for many a day to come! And she checked the impulse, and asked, instead, "What brings you here?"

"Sybil! Sybil!" the man pleaded.

She looked at him with gloomy eyes, and said, slowly: "My father is an old man, esteemed weak even by his family; yet, being one of those old-fashioned absurdities—a gentleman—he values the honor of his daughters so highly that if he knew the truth he would surely kill you, Mr. Thrall!"

"And he would be within his rights," gravely assented Stewart.

"But," continued the girl, in coldly contemptuous tones, "after all, we are not properly located, geographically, for such a deed. I lack, too, the instinctive love of carnage that makes the shedding of an enemy's blood necessary to the girl of the tropics, when the wrecking of her honor has been the amusement of some married man!"

Thrall stood as if he had received the cut of a whip, but said nothing—not one word.

"Why are you here?" she broke out then more hotly. "Your coming is an insult to me! Perhaps, pitying my loneliness and now having made me a fit companion for the Manice, you may be about to remove the embargo formerly placed upon my association with her!"

He turned pained eyes upon her and said, faintly: "Child, you strike hard and deep, but don't turn the knife!"

"Oh!" she cried, "so highly placed, so powerful, so flattered and so sought, why could you not pass me by? Why need you stoop to break so poor and lowly a thing? You were cowardly! you were cruel! No wonder you are silent—had you no truth, no honor, no love?"

He answered, still very low: "Of truth and honor, very little, but love?" he looked at her with devouring eyes, "dear God, love?"

And she repeated bitterly, jeeringly: "Love? You, a married man?"

He smiled a little and answered, gently: "Love comes as it wills, and—and—" There he stopped, for he saw by the horror in her eyes that for the first time she saw in their relations simply sin, bereft of all sophistry, and he was dumb—he, the clever, the brilliant, usually so full of subtlety and finesse, who in a like situation in the past would have laughingly denounced the folly of blushing for an undiscovered sin, or have gayly taught his fair companion in guilt that eleventh commandment, so dear to the worldly man and the light woman: "Be ye not found out, for of such is the kingdom of the Successful." He stood with all the artifices stricken from him, incapable of specious argument, of trick or wile of any kind. Erstwhile, where money had had power to tempt, he had seen that money had power to comfort, too—but not here! not here! Where grief and passionate reproach looked from eyes that yesterday had shone all radiant with love—her glory then—her shame to-day! And all there was of manhood in him was roused to vehement longing to honor publicly the creature whom he had secretly dishonored.

"Oh!" she moaned, helplessly, "what shall I do with my life! I am ashamed to look back—I am afraid to look forward! They said there was no sex in art! And when you showed such patience with me and my ignorance, I almost worshipped you, and hoped art might make me as generous in time! But it was your approval I toiled for! It was your acting that I strove to emulate! Perhaps you thought I was not grateful; but, oh, I was! I was! And I used to think if I ever wore the dramatic crown I yearned for, I'd proudly tell to all the world whose hand had placed it in my reach! Perhaps if you had known how humbly grateful I was, you would not have made me pay this awful price!"

The man's jaws clenched so tightly that their outlines showed white on his cheeks.

"As a conquest, Mr. Thrall, I am scarcely worthy of your skill, and yet my being a 'society débutante' may add a slight fillip of novelty to the old, old story of ruined girlhood—such trifles help, no doubt, to keep up an actor's popularity!"

"You are very cruel!" he groaned.

"I?" she cried, accusingly, "I am cruel?"

"Yes; it is cruel to take pleasure in another's pain, but—" He closed his eyes an instant, and then went on very patiently. "I may not ask you for mercy. Being guilty, it is right I should suffer!"

"Suffer?" she repeated, unbelievingly. "You? Why should you suffer, pray? You have hung a millstone about my neck for life! But you go lightly enough along the conqueror's path! You suffer—from what? You have done nothing to unfit you for your world! You will be feasted and banqueted as usual; you are quite secure with your fashionable clientèle of women, who will applaud you rapturously, while looking upon me as forever defiled!" Then, rather wildly, she added: "You said the crown you promised me was pasteboard, but you did not tell me it was wreathed inside with thorns! Oh, why have you betrayed my adoring faith in you! What have I ever done to harm you? Why—why in God's great name—why have you so deceived me?"

Slowly he answered: "I thought you——"

"Do not dare!" gasped Sybil, "do not dare add a last infamous insult to cruel injury by telling me you thought I knew you were married!"

"At first," he persisted, "I supposed you knew; then when I found you did not, I—I—was in the grasp of a merciless passion. Dear, I could not speak! I could not, I tell you! Sybil! beloved! I would step between you and death without the flicker of an eyelash! I would give my life's blood for you as freely as a cup of water! Yet, I—who would gladly defend you from a world, was not strong enough to defend you from myself—from the love that possessed me utterly—at whose fire I relit ambition—romance—the desire for high achievement! You believe me guilty of a mere base passion; you are wrong! Doubtless there are men in the world who, loving even as I loved you, could have held their feelings well in leash, sealed their lips for honor's sake, but that power would come from long training and much practice in self-denial—not from one sporadic effort of self-control! And I, oh, child, flattered by the world—vain, egotistical, and spoiled—when had I acquired strength through patient endurance or through temptations resisted? I was incapable of self-abnegation; I, who had denied myself nothing all my life long, could not begin by denying my desperate love the possession that it longed for! For men are like that, dear, in spite of your contemptuous unbelief. Be they good or be they bad, be they ever so reverently true, their senses will demand possession of the beloved. And I was so desolate—so lonely! There was not even friendship within the whited sepulchre of my domestic life."

The girl shrank. "Don't!" she cried, "don't add to cruelty and cowardice—treachery to her! She is very cruel, but then a good wife who suspects a wrong to her love has a right to be cruel!"

"Oh, you innocent, just soul!" the man cried. "Yes, she is cruel in very deed, since being a wife in name alone these years past she yet clings tenaciously to that empty title. She has not enough womanly pride to free the man who earnestly pleads to be released, whose chill indifference protects her from temptation. She is technically a loyal wife, but practically a foe—a sort of satiric keeper of the records of my life. 'A wrong to her love,' you said. You generous child, she does not know what love means, but she does know her legal rights; and to my agony will maintain them to the last, since the shibboleth of her life is: 'What will the world say?' Yes, she is very cruel!"

Sybil shivered as she recalled the contemptuous slow smile, the unrelenting, inquisitorial, pale eyes, but answered: "I suppose I should be cruel, too, if I were a wronged wife." She stopped; the blood rushed in a scarlet tide over all her shamed, pained face. "A wife?"—she gave a gasp and put her hand to her throat as if to remove some stricture there. "I may never be a wife! Marriage is honorable! Dorothy may wed, but I—" And then an agonized cry rang through the house: "Dorothy! oh, Dorothy! Little sister! I have lost you! I shall not dare to look into your honest eyes, lest you should see the sin in mine! I may not kiss your lips or touch your cheek, nor ever again pillow your dear head upon my arm the long night through because of the pollution on my life that makes me base, unworthy, and unfit associate for innocence like yours!"

"Be silent!" savagely interrupted Thrall, with death-white face.

"I have fallen to a level with the creatures you pity in the street, little sister! I am defiled forever!" And she fell prone upon the couch in an agony of tears.

Thrall sprang at her like a tiger; he dragged her to a sitting position among the tumbled cushions, and, grasping her shoulders, he rocked her back and forth in savage rage, crying: "How dare you? how dare you, I say? You have been pleased to call me coward many times to-day, but you have the bitter right to say what you will to me, and I must bear it patiently because I merit more even than you say; but I am not coward enough to stand by and hear you blaspheme against yourself! I, by every wile at my command, by the compelling charm and strength of a great love, and by your ignorance of human nature, have led you into a breach of the law! Well, the fault is mine—God knows that! You vile? you defiled? how dare you? You are as pure in heart as any earthly creature can be! Your sense of honor, your respect for duty, your high ideals have made deception and falsehood hateful to me! Your quick sympathy for those who suffer has made me more considerate of the feelings of those about me! What have you done—what have you to blush for? You have been guilty of a generosity that brings me to my knees in adoration! All glorious as the morning, without suspicion, without fear, having given your great heart, with royal prodigality you gave yourself! You obeyed the instinct nature placed in you, in loving so! How dare you, then, compare yourself to those unfortunates who sell their forced and painted smiles? How dare you—you, pure-hearted, proud, gifted, clean-minded? Have I been rough to you? Forgive me, sweet, but you nearly drove me mad, and—and I suffer, Sybil!"

He sank at her feet, and laid his brow against her knees.

She trembled, but did not speak.

"Beloved," he went on, "I only live through you! My soul is yours! I worship—I adore you! Let me serve you! I dare not say forgive, but try to forget this private pain in public triumph. You have great gifts; don't neglect them. You are a fashion now—if I live you shall have fame. You shall not be hippodromed, as I was, into the success that stifles faith in the purity of art, the prosperity that swallows up energy and sincerity."

She sat as in a trance, her heart thrilling to the music of a voice that even the public found irresistible. Half her torture had been in the belief that she had become contemptible in his eyes—that she had been a mere "pour passer le temps"; therefore, this homage had something of comfort in its respectful wording as he went on: "I have experience, knowledge, skill; let me use them for your advancement. You shall be left free to study, to realize your beautiful ideals, unhampered by commercial questions of any kind. I will do my best, my very best, to warn you away from pitfalls of mannerisms; to polish and refine without producing artificiality. The service of my whole life shall be yours—the sole object of my life, the secure placing of the dramatic crown upon your head; and in return I ask [he held out empty, trembling hands] such scraps of affection as may fall from your table of family love—such crumbs of your time as you can spare to me!"

And that humble pleading came from Stewart Thrall, to whom love had been before such a tumultuous, triumphant distraction and amusement!

The girl flushed and paled, but kept her sombre eyes averted from the face, where rage had changed to tender pity and passionate pleading.

"Sybil?" he almost whispered.

Still she was silent. It was very hard what she had in mind to say. This winning, gracious man had been the hero of all her girlish dreams, as well as the honored "master," who was arbiter of her fate, and only now she realized how he had absorbed her life—how hard it was to give him up, all in a moment. Poor child! this second peril was almost greater than the first; but, worn and weary, she was incapable of reasoning, of seeking out motives then.

"Sybil?" came again the dear, tempting voice, "if I begged for bread, you would not treat me so! Beloved, answer me!" Kneeling there he reached out his arms and clasped her waist. "Answer me, at least!"

She sprang to her feet, and as she put her hands behind her, striving to break his strong clasp, she answered confusedly, brokenly: "I—I—can't—I must go—go quite away! You must know that! I—I—can't play—ever—any more!"

Very compassionately he reminded her: "You must have learned before this, Princess, the inexorable claim of the stage. Nothing but death releases an actor from duty."

"Well," she answered, bitterly, "that Sybil Lawton is dead!"

His face contracted painfully, but he answered steadily: "The world does not know that. It would be fatal to us all to close. I am sorry, but the play must go on, beloved."

Like lightning she recalled the warm hand pressures, the whispered sweet "asides," the passionate love-scene, and that long embrace in the chamber balcony, and cried out sharply: "With you? with you? I must act again with you?"

His arms fell from her waist; his face was hard and white as marble as he rose to his feet. His voice was icy, but during his next courteous, chill words he kept his eyes downcast that the tears might not bear witness to his pain.

"I forgot," he said, "that you were not experienced enough to sink the man in the artist, and—and you must pardon my dulness, but—I did not fully appreciate the—[he moistened his unwilling, stammering lips] the loathing you feel for me personally. I have proved very slow-witted, but I am not a pachyderm, and my intelligence can be reached, you see, by sharp, stinging pain. Your method is severe, Miss Lawton, but eminently successful. I am not likely to forget the lesson now that I have learned it."

Sybil's dark eyes dilated with pain. Her need of sympathy was so great that those icy tones turned her faint with misery.

"It was hard enough before," she murmured, and a piteous quiver came about her lips.

He had been mortified, humbled, and wounded when she shrank so from acting with him again. He thought it signified bitter hate, unconquerable aversion; and, instead, it had been an expression of terror, a confession of a weakness which she only began to realize when she found how hard if was not to yield at once to his pleading. There was something so pathetic, so unconsciously pleading in those words, "It was hard enough before," that he asked pardon, and went gravely on: "It is my duty to obey your wishes so far as my power goes. I cannot take off the play; you will understand yourself when you have time for thought, but being a gentleman, at least superficially [he corrected himself with a flush rising to his face], I will not publicly force my companionship upon you as Romeo, to your private annoyance [his voice shook a little in spite of himself, and he paused a moment]. I will put things in motion at once—looking to your relief."

Sybil sank into the corner of the couch, and, folding her arms upon a pillow, buried her face in the loose sleeve of her kimona.

"My throat," he went on, "can be in bad shape, and a drop of atropia now and then will keep me hoarse enough for our purpose—just at first. Young Fitzallen [Sybil's hand clenched suddenly], who is quite up in the lines, will take my place 'at short notice to oblige,' and—and, well, after a while we will find some excuse for continuing him in the part. 'Sufficient unto the day,' I have to scurry a bit about the printing and the finding of the young man. He will have to wear some of my costumes; you won't mind that, I hope—Monday night is so very close. He will come over here about ten or half-past in the morning to rehearse with you, and you must be very exacting about the 'business.' See that nothing is forgotten; the public is quick to miss anything it has become accustomed to. The balcony scene [the girl's figure seemed to writhe among the cushions] is—very—important—and—" He stopped, and then quite suddenly he turned toward the door, saying: "I'll do my best to save you from the degradation you dread. I'll send your new Romeo to you early."

Like pictures on a scroll, she saw all the tender love-scenes, growing one out from another, ever sweeter, stronger, more intense, and at the balcony of Juliet's chamber, at the farewell embrace—that the applause made long—she thought "another's arms about me, another's eyes searching mine," and so, shuddering, repulsion seized upon her and wrung from her lips the cry: "No! no! don't! Oh, don't! I could not bear it—I should die!"

She was standing, one bent knee among the cushions, leaning forward on one supporting arm. He turned. "Sybil—do you mean—you will have mercy on me—that you will try for art's sake to forget the man in the actor? Oh, beloved, if you could believe! To my arid life you brought freshness and strength and reverence—yes, in spite of my sin against you, oh, wife of my soul! Pity me! my sin is very hard to bear!"

Suddenly she stretched out her arms to him. With wide, almost unbelieving eyes he sank on his knees before her, asking, faintly: "You pity me? But, oh, you cannot forgive?"

She took his head between her hands and kissed his brow, saying: "To love is to forgive!"

He gave a cry and started to his feet. A deadly paleness came upon her face.

"I am not strong enough," she said, "for martyrdom—alas! I am no child of light! But where I love—be it strength or be it weakness—I love forever!"

His arms closed about her, her weary head sank upon his breast. He stooped and kissed her tenderly, solemnly. She lifted her heavy eyes and added "My fidelity shall be my purification!"

CHAPTER XXVI

At the rear of the red brick house was a small cooper or carpenter shop that faced on the other street. It had long been unoccupied, so that when Stivers took a notion to hire it for a store-room and sort of laundry, she got it cheap; and after the neighbors had once or twice seen her going in and out, and hanging a few pieces of linen to dry, there was no further heed paid to the matter. But if one was very intimate with Mrs. Stivers, and received from her a shop key, why, one could both enter and leave the house from the back street without bothering with the front door bell.

Sybil had "overflowed," as Dorothy said, and had swept away Stivers's too dreadful parlor, and in its stead there was now a library and sitting-room combined—a nook glorious in winter because of an open fire and in summer made dim and cool by many clambering vines, and sweet by boxes of mignonette crowding the small balcony, a room full of the scattered riches of rare books, of carved ivories, of miniatures, of bubbles of Venetian glass, beautiful as jewels and almost as precious, a room for study, for dreams, for love, and sometimes a room for bitter brooding and regret.

Visitors to this house were a rare occurrence, but Sybil had just been speeding the parting guest in the person of her mother, who was "to pick up" John at Forty-second Street, and thus receive protection on the homeward ride to Riverdale; for "positively in these days," she declared, "unless you're perfectly white and doubled together with age, men ogle you as if you were twenty. There was a dreadful little pot-bellied, Hebraic person—that sounds queer, doesn't it, but it's an absolutely correct expression and perfectly descriptive of the man's shape—and I declare to you he kept his eyes on my face until I felt quite agitated, and everyone in the car must have noticed his conduct. Yet John Lawton was so unfeeling as to tell me that if I stopped looking at the man, I wouldn't know that he was staring. Not know it, indeed! Why, I could feel anyone ogling me through the back of my neck! Still, after such an experience, I hope I shall not miss John!"

Mrs. Lawton had devoted one of her three days to her old friend, Mrs. Van Camp, and to shopping, and two days to Sybil. She had arrived in state, and after a supercilious glance at her, had addressed the owner and mistress of the house as "Stivers"—though Sybil was most punctilious in calling her Mrs. Stivers. She had so traduced the coffee (which was perfect) by asking "if the blackness was not the result of licorice," that, though Jane Penny had maintained a strictly respectful attitude, murder had shown so plainly in her eye that Letitia had not dared to take the second cup she longed for, for fear of poison. And when she was alone with her daughter she remarked: "She's a cat, that Stivers! Clean and neat, like any other cat, and purry! Oh, yes, she can purr about you, but she's crafty, cunning, shrewd! You keep your desk locked, my dear! She's too soft-footed for my taste; she's got an eye for a key-hole, too!"

While Jane said to herself: "There's a vain old cockatoo—overbearing, hectoring, using her high and mighty birth as an excuse for wiping her shoes on us as is beneath her. I guess I could add a chapter to her family history that would take the wind out of her sails pretty quick! But my bank book's more important to me than her nasty slurs! 'Stivers,' indeed! It's a wonder it wasn't 'Penny.' The young ladies don't find it beneath them to call me Mrs. Of course in this one it might be policy, but the other one does it, too. It's plain enough to me the daughters get their decent manners from the father. A nice old man that, a gentleman clear through and always welcome here, even by Mr. Thrall; though for appearance sake he does then have to come hat and stick in hand and make a proper fifteen-minute or half-hour call and go. Poor, pale old gentleman; he's an idolator, if ever there was one, just bowing down to and worshipping those girls of his'n. If he knew the secret of that little locked closet upstairs, if he knew of the dinner-jacket, the lounging robe hanging there, he'd die without a word right as he stood. Poor old gentleman! But, Lord! how our boss does hate that old cockatoo! and how she does ko-tow to him and bridle and smirk! Not but what she looks well enough at the supper-table, for with all her rouge she can carry her clothes well. I think Mr. Thrall dislikes her for one thing, because of the likeness he sees in her to Miss Sybil. I overheard her saying in fun to him: 'I shall be just like mamma when I am as old,' and he said: 'Then for God's sake die in your youth!' and, though she tried hard to look angry, she had to laugh, and he looked ashamed of himself, and asked pardon.

"It does beat all, how long this affair lasts. Talk about worshipping the ground she walks on; I believe he's jealous of the air she breathes. Well, my nest is getting a good warm lining, for they are both generous, and she's easy to serve besides, which is more than I can say of the Missus, who is always prowling about the wardrobe room, ready to make a fuss about a quarter of a yard of gold or silver lace, or an inch or two of linen-backed velvet, and weighing the camphor-gum to see if it agrees with the amount mentioned in the bill. These splendid Shaksperian productions deprive her of the delight of dickering with authors for new plays, and so she drives Barney wild by her visits to the box-office, and keeps tab on me in the wardrobe, hoping to prevent the escape of a nickel through someone's hands. That woman's heart—if she has one—bears the dollar-mark, I'll wager!"

In the library, Sybil, being alone, dropped down on an old French tabouret, and with chin in hand fell into a reverie. Her other hand drew from her bosom the little diamond heart, whose centre was a registered ruby, flawless and exquisite. It had been Stewart's first gift to her after she had forgiven him, and he had said, very earnestly: "The real value of this jewel is in a word engraved back of that ruby. No, beloved! you cannot open and read without a jeweler's help, but if the locket will not open for you, why, when you have to remove it in your dressing-room, it will not open for another and betray our secret. No, I will not tell the precious word—only wear it always. If the ornament is not suitable to your gown or the occasion, then wear it inside and out of sight—but wear it, beloved, for my sake!"

And now she wondered still what was the word that to him made the value of this rare gift? Was it love? Was it forgiveness? Was it beloved? She sighed a little. The house was rather lonely since her father and mother had departed. They had come down to see her new great triumph as Beatrice in "Much Ado about Nothing."

Her improvement was wonderful, and Thrall had thrilled with pride when he had heard it commented upon. For Beatrice is a test part that combines comedy the lightest, airiest, and most polished, with both pathos and passion. All actors know that more technical knowledge is required for fine high-comedy acting than for sentiment or even tragedy. And it would have been a bold man who in the first weeks of Juliet had ventured to suggest a future Beatrice in the inexperienced, though immensely tragic, young actress.

Yet here she was, Thrall's ideal Beatrice, well-born, well-bred, beautiful, graceful, but possessed of a young devil of mockery that you saw dancing in her eyes and heard in her bubbling laughter. The stings of her wit seemed healed by the honey of her manner. Full of affectations, airs, and graces toward the courtiers, her "If I were a man!" speech was so full of tender love and sorrow for her injured cousin Hero that its final hot burst of rage and scorn left her with tears wet upon her cheeks.

And consummate artist that he was, Thrall threw such sudden passionate intensity into Benedick's answer, "By this hand I love thee!" that it was no wonder the act brought the people upstanding; and one old playgoer remarked that "it was like watching an exhibition of skilful fencing, where flying sparks made you uncertain whether the bout was friendly or a duel to the death."

Thrall had kept his promise; he had warned her away from so many pitfalls that some of the critics declared she had triumphed through what she had not done almost as much as through what she had. She had avoided the absolute shrewishness with which Beatrice is often invested; also the vindictive ferocity of the "If I were a man!" that catches the gallery, while it "makes the judicious grieve," and wonder, too, why Benedick should have been called upon for assistance by such a man-eating creature. Neither did she fire her best witticisms point-blank at the audience and pause—to make her "point." And better still, she avoided that strained, unnatural merriment that makes the public pity the evident fatigue of an otherwise satisfactory Beatrice. And this last bore strongest witness to the depth of study she had given to the play—yes, the play; for the actress who studies only her own lines gains but the narrowest and baldest view of the character. Sybil had studied the environment of the brilliant, high-born, wilful "she Mercutio," as Jim Roberts in an inspired moment of intoxication had termed Beatrice, in order to know in what manner she should address her impertinences to her uncle—whether with a spoiled-child daring, made pardonable by a respectful bearing; in open insolence, or in veiled dislike. So she studied Leonato carefully, and so she did all the characters she came in contact with, with the result that her manner varied according to her varying companions; and the tension of the bow was not strained to the breaking-point at any time.

Actors and certain critics knew that that swallow-like skimming from laughing badinage to biting satire—that fine restraint, that incredible lightness of touch was backed by certainty, that certainty meant knowledge, and that knowledge meant work. Yet, though Thrall told her again and again that she had in herself the same mocking spirit that informed Beatrice, she would have it that he and he alone had made the performance possible to her. And though he denied it, the assertion was like nectar to the vanity of the artist—like balm to the heart of the man who longed to serve her.

And as it happened the newspapers had, in so many words, hailed her as Queen of the Stage. The term had not been inspired by a suggestion from him. It was extravagant, perhaps, but it was impromptu. And as he read it, the blood swept over his face so redly that the watchful eyes of Mrs. Thrall, sitting behind the tea-urn at the breakfast-table, saw and noted, and when he had left for the theatre, she had studied eagerly that side of the paper, but could not solve the riddle of that deep flush of pleasure. For, though the notice of the play was very flattering to his Benedick, he could not be moved so by the praise of a single newspaper, she thought, even though he triumphed doubly as actor of a part and as managerial producer of nobly correct scenery.

No, she could not solve the riddle; she could never have understood that, because the praise had not been extorted, it was doubly precious, or that one who lauded Sybil—magnified him.

"Yes," the girl said to herself, as she sat there, "he has crowned me, but—" She sighed, and turned the ruby to catch the light. "I wonder what your message is? One word, he says; perhaps it's faith. And yet, no! that would be satirical. What is there to be faithful to—no churchly vows! no!" she bit her lip to silence.

She missed Dorothy very greatly, now, in the lull that always follows the hurry and excitement of preparing for a production, for an irregular love is a great isolation—of necessity.

Dorothy, now two years a wife, had become so precious that she might no more be permitted to pass through that tunnel than to kneel before the car of the Juggernaut. Indeed, Leslie challenged the right of the very winds of heaven to blow too harshly on her face, and if any sweet folly of exaggerated care escaped him John Lawton was on hand to bring it to his attention.

"Ja!" said Lena, who was herself preparing for marriage to her "Mickle," her "mash-man." "Ja, my Miss Lady, I youst hav' ter make of der lies to der Herr Galts und der Herr Boss in der fron' uf der house, und keep der' tentions, vile der Miss Dorrie-Galts com' by der back porch und find out uf she's got any feet on der legs. Youst vat I tell you—der Herr Mens vatch her like der two pig cats, und, ven she get der chance, she laf und say, 'Lena! com' take me out uf der cottin'-battin, quvick! und let's see den uf I break ven I cross der room!"

When the news had reached Sybil first, she had lain across her bed and sobbed and wept the night away. But next day, when she had repeated it to Thrall, she had withstood the piercing inquiry of his searching eyes, until she heard the sigh of relief that told her he had seen no sign of pain. And she had had hard work to convince him that the splendor of the gift he wished her to send the happy, expectant young mother would not be consistent with her supposed salary, and that Leslie would not be as innocently unobservant as Dorothy.

So now she had not the dear pleasure of her sister's occasional visits. Her face was unutterably sad. Suddenly she stretched her arms above her head, in the same passionate gesture which she had used that night at the old White house, under the starry sky, and now as then she cried out against the bondage that held her! Then it had been poverty—now it was sin! She wore her crown; she lived in luxurious comfort; Stewart's loyalty was complete, beyond question, but—"Love and the world well lost!" she quoted, and laughed aloud—such a woful little laugh. For now, with tear-washed, experienced eyes, she saw the awful error she had made, when in ignorant young passion she had declared "that love was enough"!

A certain austere power of endurance had developed in her during these crowded years. She neither whimpered nor complained, only to her own soul she admitted that lawful, virtuous living was better than love alone; that one could not depart from rectitude and morality without sorrow, tears, and much bitterness of spirit. Just at first the wild sweetness of the forbidden fruit enthralled her—the romance of secret love, the thrill of stolen caresses, of fingers pressed under cover of a stage direction, of kisses swiftly given upon the little "scolding" lock of hair upon her neck, as he deftly and gallantly tied her veil after rehearsal, the precious rare half-days stolen from task-mistress and the world, and spent with her among the palms and poinsettias. Then all the levity fell from him, and he was at his fascinating best—witty, gracious, tender, sympathetic, wholly free from the smell of the footlights that some actors carry about with them all their days. The tiny notes pressed into warm palms, the code of signals—had all been so deliciously mysterious that she had felt herself a real heroine of romance.

"Poor little fool!" she murmured, contemptuously now, for she recalled that for a time in her infatuation she had felt how ineffably superior was her own romantic, secret, self-sacrificing love to the dull, commonplace, strictly legalized affection of Dorothy and Leslie. But since then—oh, since then! she had had time to wake from her beautiful dream, she had had time to think and to suffer. She knew now that the beautiful temple of love must stand on a foundation of legality, or it would tremble dangerously under every wind that blew! She no longer found anything to deride in the word "propriety," since she had come in bitterness of spirit to realize its meaning: "What ought to be—what should be." And dear Dorothy's life was what it should be, and she had peace and security and had never known humiliation. "Humiliation!" Sybil twisted her hands and gasped aloud, "God! oh, God!" at the recollections that came to her. For Stewart Thrall's wife had kept her word and stood at his side, and shared his popularity, and applauded him from her box, and called him "dear" before all men on all possible occasions. And suspecting that Sunday evenings might not be spent with "the boys," she had inaugurated small "at homes," to give her dear Stewart a chance to gather his valued friends about him in his own home. And he who had never disregarded public opinion felt compelled to dance attendance upon his wife in name, who held him to his bond for her vanity and convenience. The trite endearments necessity forced from his lips were torture to Sybil when she chanced to hear them; and oh, the agony of a woman, who is secretly loved, when she sees the man who is hers—for whom she has paid with her pride and honor and self-respect—held to the side of another woman, by her legitimate rights! Just as maddening pain will sometimes drive a sufferer to press upon the torturing wound, so Sybil would cry to herself: "She is his true wife, and I am a—caprice!"

It was not true, she knew it was not true, yet a strange necessity for self-torture forced her to repeat the cruel words, as it forced her often to remind Stewart that it was time for him to hasten to some appointment, to drive or to lunch with Mrs. Thrall, who much enjoyed displaying publicly the devotion of her actor-husband. And once, when Sybil had longed to attend a sacred concert that offered her an only opportunity to hear a certain great singer, she had been forced either to accept Roberts's escort or remain at home, because Mr. Thrall learned at the last moment that Lettice had invited a large party, who were to return afterward and sup with them in the informal way "dear Stewart so enjoys." And, having swiftly decided in favor of a long evening of loneliness at home, taking a bitter pleasure in her own suffering, she had tried to hasten his departure, saying: "A man should never keep his wife waiting."

And in sudden passion, shamed, wounded, angry, he had turned upon her, forbidding her ever to so misapply that word again. "If you must call her Mrs. Thrall, well, be it so—that is enough to bear!"

But Sybil pressed upon the wound, insisting obstinately: "But she is your wife!" and he had doggedly contradicted: "No! no! She is a sort of legalized money-changer in the temple of marriage! She is not a wife! Our wedded life is a monstrous hypocrisy! We are false to ourselves, false to society, false in word, deed, and thought! And yet she is a good woman, whose legal and technical virtue would certainly have given her the valued right to hurl rocks at the woman taken in adultery. Wife? She? The woman whose companionship dragged me down to a lower level than that at which she found me? Oh, I see in your cloudy, scornful face your contempt for the man who blames a woman, and Lettice Rowland Thrall should not be censured for not giving what she has not to give! But oh, her chains are very heavy, and my bondage grows more bitter day by day! Sometimes I think that I could welcome the death that, taking me from you, beloved, would at least free me from her!"

Frankness was so natural to Sybil's nature that the secrecy and stratagem of intrigue wearied her; the manœuvring, the clandestine, the sly, the underhand, shamed her. She knew now the secret of the window-curtained door in Thrall's private office, opening on a narrow passage that led up a stair to another door opening in turn behind a wardrobe in a dressing-room—her dressing-room now these three years. And Jim Roberts knew of it, too; she wondered why, and reddened as she glanced toward a key that lay in an open desk-drawer.

"Oh!" she groaned, "how can I bear it! I love him! I love him! but it is not right that love should bring only dishonor! I do not need churchly vows to keep me loyal! I shall be faithful till I die; but I am a woman, and I long for the privileges and prerogatives that marriage gives—and that she receives!"

She thought that she hid her suffering—she tried to do so, and sometimes, in her work, forgot for a while her false position and the weight of the chains she had herself forged. But those brilliant blue eyes saw more than she guessed; and always, beside the growing hatred of his bitter bondage, there was the agony of fear that this young creature, made to win love, would weary of the double life, would some day be sought by one brave enough to take her to wife—knowing all there was to know! He saw glowing admiration in the eyes of men young and free, and he cursed them in his heart for their freedom, for he knew he had no claim upon her, no legal tie bound her to him. She, the wife of his heart and soul, might turn from him. Her beautiful, cloudy face might flash into smiles for another, should she weary of him and of his secret love. Therefore his days, too, were often days of torment, and the blonde woman, who watched them both with cold, keen eyes, knew much and understood perfectly. She believed the taste for forbidden fruit was common to all men. Thrall's conduct in the past had done little to dispel that belief; but she knew now that his love for the beautiful, gifted girl, whose faith he longed to justify by wedding her, was a real—and oh! galling thought—a loyal love! In the past her suspicions had often borne fruit, and she could recall certain gas-lit, laughing trysts, very scant of secrecy, mere counterfeit amours, that he had lived to loathe, and she knew that this was no such caprice.

When he escaped for a little, she knew that he was at the feet of the girl whose sombre eyes were so woful that sometimes they moved her heart to a faint throb of pity. A nobler, warmer, more self-sacrificing woman would have set them free, to find a purer faith, to form happier ties. But Lettice, forced to realize the existence of this great mutual love, this loyal passion, watched, and slowly grew to hate—intensely, bitterly to hate—them both. Verily a noxious plant is illegitimate love, and its poison far-reaching!

"Oh! Dorothy!" cried Sybil to the silent walls; "dear little mother to be! I shall be so thankful when you can once more bring a breath of honesty, of every-day open frankness, into this house!"

And then she heard a step, light but firm, coming from the back of the hall, and the blood rushed into her face as she sprang to her feet, for her fear was great lest the approaching man might read her grieving thoughts in her face.

He entered, and, tossing a bunch of violets to the table, came to her, and, taking her in his arms, buried his face in the cloudy, dark hair that had always tempted him. Presently he said: "I should have been here earlier, sweetheart, for I thought you would be lonely after your people's departure." (She looked gratefully at him.) "But Jim kept me; yes, he has broken loose again, and though I had someone take him home and look after him, I was so doubtful of his being able to play to-night that I gave his small part to an understudy, and that all took time."

"How good you are to that poor, worthless fellow! I don't believe any other man in the world would be so generous and so patient as you are."

But Thrall said quickly, almost sharply: "Don't—don't say that!" and turned away his face, while Sybil continued:

"But actors are so queer—actresses, too. They will hide malice under compliments; they will deliver innuendoes in a jest; they will make most injurious statements about one another; but let one of them be stricken down with sickness or trouble and every hand goes instantly into the pocket, even if it is already nearly empty, and the only feeling is sympathy, the only thought relief for the unfortunate. You are a generous people, Stewart!"

"You?" he repeated, pointedly.

And she laughed, and answered: "Oh, well! we are generous—is that better?"

"Yes!—much!" he answered, and knelt at her feet.

"What are you doing there?" she asked.

"One kneels to a queen!" replied he. She laughed, and flushed a little. She had become actress enough to send out early for her papers. "And," he added, "particularly when one wishes to make an offering. This is an anniversary, beloved!"

Her color fled, for that was the one unsympathetic note that had ever sounded between them. She did not understand him in that one respect. To her it seemed almost indelicate to remind her of that day when she had forgiven. She was to understand him later; but now he saw the shadow on her face, and his interpretation was, she "regrets her generosity," and all his love shone appealing in his eyes as he took her hand, and, whispering, "In memory of your mercy, beloved," slipped a great ring upon her finger.

She glanced down at it, and a startled cry came from her lips. It was an opal—a marvel! a very wonder! It was not merely the play of color through the soft, milky translucence, the ghost of blue, the vivid flecks of green, the pale rose deepening into flashes of ruby red, the amber glow, but it was the strange quiver and throb in it that made it seem alive—uncanny! She looked at him questioningly. "Did he not know, then," she asked herself, "the superstition attached to this noblest, most fascinating gem, that he offered it as a love gift?"

"See," he said, "how sharp the diamond scintillations are compared to this softened glory! Do you see that throbbing that keeps the colors all the time in play? That's my heart, beloved, as it quivers with pain and shame when, belonging to you utterly, I have to ignore you before the world. Do you guess how I suffer—I, who am bound—I, who am helpless! I live only by your mercy—for I love you with all my soul!"

And, woman-like, she hid her own grief, and comforted him, and arranged her violets and talked over their mutual triumphs and Dorothy's last note. For he had great regard for the gentle creature in whom he recognized great moral strength. And, as he was leaving, he looked at a trophy of small arms and weapons on the wall, and said: "This Turkish inlaid thing is rusting, Sybil, and this dagger—which is genuine—needs attention, too. Let Jane Penny bring them over to-night, with that bulldog revolver I left upstairs. If Jim is straightened up by that time he will clean the whole outfit to-morrow. The property-man's shooting-irons are all out of kilter, too. There'll be a good day's job to clean and oil them all, but it's the sort of pottering work Jim likes. Good-by, sweetheart! Take an hour's rest, dear, before going to the theatre. Beatrice needs to be well keyed up, you know." He kissed her lips and eyes and hair, and left her.

And she stood and cried: "He loves me! He has crowned me! I love him with my whole heart! I thank him from my very soul! But oh, what a position is mine! Unmarried—I am deprived of all freedom and girlish pleasures! A wife—I am denied the honors and prerogatives of marriage!" Her eyes fell upon the great opal, quivering, glowing, glinting! "He suffers, too," she said. "Poor Stewart!" and again she wondered if he knew the superstition attached to opals, and, turning, took the rusting weapons from the trophy.

CHAPTER XXVII

"But," argued Sybil, "the poor, lovely, tormented, blundering queen would have lost her royal head even if she had never owned an opal."

"You don't know that," answered Stivers; "but you do know that she wore opals and lost it. My very own cousin had a little, weeny, footy bit of an opal scarf-pin given him, and wore it, like the fool he always was, and had his house burned over his head for his pains. Don't talk to me! I know! Wasn't a friend of my husband's given an opal, and while he was carrying it round in his clothes, making up his silly mind how to set it, didn't his mother-in-law, a great, bouncing, big, hearty woman, up and die?"

Sybil nearly strangled over a combination of coffee and laugh. "Oh, Mrs. Stivers," she exclaimed, "if you make that story public there will certainly be a boom in the sale of small opals—if one can believe the statements of the comic papers, at least."

"All right, Miss. You may laugh, but I'll watch my home closer than ever for fire or burglars. I'd as soon move into a new house on Friday, and I'd a sight rather break a looking-glass than wear that thing for an hour!" and she retired pretty thoroughly vexed.

Sybil touched the great, shimmering quiver of color with her lips, whispering: "Poor heart, that suffers for me!" And then, with the fresh odor of the lilacs about her, she opened the envelope which contained a note from Dorothy, enclosing a portion of a letter written by Mrs. Lawton within the hour of her arrival at the White house.

Dorrie wrote briefly, sending proudest congratulations to "the successful, admired, newly triumphant actress, who was yet her own dear Sybbie—sweet sister, all unchanged, in truth and love," and a tender assurance of her own well-being, of her hopeful, trustful waiting, knowing that whether she received death or life the gift would come from God, who never made mistakes. So she waited calmly. "It seems rather mean," she added, "to enclose a portion of mamma's 'note'—of six pages—but, Syb, I can't help it, I simply can't! I wouldn't let papa or Leslie know it for the world, but you will understand and not think it disrespectful. Do write, Sybbie, to your Dorothy!"

"Yes," the fragment of Mrs. Lawton's letter read, "I'm afraid I overdid it a bit. Shopping, you know, is very fatiguing, even to one who like myself never loiters or hesitates. Anyway, if my looking-glass did not so flatly contradict me, I should call myself quite an old woman to-day. But let me get on to what I wish to say. I hate anyone who meanders—never meander, Dorothy. Though you are a married woman you should not be averse to a little advice now and then from one who watched over your infancy—and a very quiet, well-sleeping babe you were, too, quite different from Sybil, who was— Well, as I was saying, meeting Mr. Thrall—a man très comme il faut—as I have always said, I mentioned your hopes—he being a married man these years past, and most friendly in his inquiries. He, in offering congratulations, expressed the opinion that a gift of twins would be desirable, as it was easier to select names for two than for one, and family friction would be lessened in consequence. I confess I was startled, and 'er, well, not far from being vexed, and I plainly told him I hoped you would be guilty of no such vulgarity. You should have seen his eyes—very remarkable eyes, you must have noticed their amazing blueness—quite like the paler sapphires. Yes, he looked perfectly amazed. 'Vulgar?' he repeated. 'Could a Merivale-Merivale be guilty of vulgarity? You must surely know the Merivale-Merivales, Mrs. Lawton?' Imagine my haste to tell him that Mrs. Merivale-Merivale was the only child and heiress of my friend old Tom Bligh, who used to say she was so democratic that she would never be content till she had every Tom, Dick, and Harry in society about her. And people said she married Dick Merivale-Merivale so that she could help out her father's saying. And Mr. Thrall said: 'Dear me! and did you not know that she has twin boys, and that she calls them Tom and Harry? Quite clever, for society, is it not? Tom, Dick, and Harry, right in her own family, too!' My dear, I was never more taken aback! And then he went on to tell me of Lady Somebody-Somebody, of some sort of 'hurst,' in some shire in England, who has twin daughters, and drives about with them, and has them always mentioned as 'Lady So-and-So's lovely twins' in the society journals. I declare, I was quite startled; but fashions do change so, and I'm sure its no fault of mine that I have fallen so far behind the times—and been so out of everything. But I have hastened to write this all out for your comfort, in case you have any anxiety on that score. I don't suppose you have, but I frankly admit that I should myself have looked upon the simultaneous arrival of yourself and Sybil as verging upon an impropriety. But different times—different manners, and there is no questioning the fact that twins, if not de rigueur, are at least genuinely fashionable now."

Peal after peal of laughter from Sybil brought Stivers to the door, pale and with distinctly frightened eyes. "In the name of heaven, what's the matter with you? Stop it! stop it! You're fey—that's what you are! Ill will come of it—now mind!"

"Fey?" repeated Sybil, gurgling still with laughter. "What is fey, Mrs. Stivers? Why, you look quite frightened!"

"You laugh in a room all by yourself! You're fey, and that means you're sort of possessed. It's an evil spirit of mischievous fun that takes hold of you just before a stroke of bad luck comes upon you. Lord knows you've naught more to do now than to get up and smash a looking-glass!"

"Don't be worried!" said Sybil, seeing the woman's distress! "I was not fey, because I had cause for laughter. It was this letter that amused me."

"But you laughed in a room by yourself," gloomily insisted Stivers, who would not be comforted, and removed the tray rather sullenly.

And Sybil laughed again and yet again, for she could not know that there was hurry and confusion at the old White house; that at the little Riverdale station, crouching at the foot of the hill beside the swift-running river, the quick tic-tic-tacking, and dot-dot-dot dashing were spelling out words of sorrow for her. But, later, as she rose from the piano and went to the window to look out, a messenger boy on the steps reached far over and stole a flower from her balcony before he rang the bell; and she laughed again, because he so nearly landed on his head in his effort to reach the blossom.

She always remembered, with a sick misery, that she was laughing when she opened the telegram that said: "Your mother has died in her sleep. Discovered an hour ago. Dorothy must not know. Come. Father."

She never remembered how she was made ready for the street. She seemed to recover her consciousness only as she found herself going into the theatre by the back way, and she wondered vaguely why she had not gone in the front. With the telegram crushed in her ungloved hand she had flown instantly to Stewart—in the first place, from the blind instinct that sends the stricken into the arms of the loved one for shelter, for comfort; and now, in the second place, she sought him for business reasons, so that he might have all the time possible in which to arrange matters theatrical during her necessary absence.

She made her hurried way to Thrall's private office—that little red-walled room, where she had first met him, and where her own picture as Juliet now reigned supreme.

An old cloth had been spread over the open desk, and on it lay a litter of oily rags, bits of wire, polishing powder, loose cartridges, several revolvers, a tiny pistol used by stage heroines, and Sybil's beautiful dagger.

Jim Roberts, pallid, puffy-eyed, and trembling visibly, sat there at work, and Thrall, seeing the great trickling drops of perspiration which the slightest effort brought out upon his pasty skin, said: "Jim, either you must give that job up for to-day or you must take a nip to steady your nerves. You can't break short off after being on the rampage as you were yesterday."

But Jim lifted miserable eyes, and said, doggedly: "No! She—the Princess—might come in, and notice—" (He had not forgotten that remark about his fondness for cloves.)

"She's not at all likely to come in to-day, and if she did, she would only feel sorry for your recklessness." He turned, and, taking a handsome travelling-flask from a shelf, shook it, and smilingly announced: "Half full yet." He poured a pretty stiff drink into a glass, brought it to Jim, and, pointing to water standing on top of the desk, said: "There you are, old man—racer—chaser—everything to your hand, and, for heaven's sake, wipe your dripping face!"

Jim swallowed his liquor and resumed his work, asking, querulously: "Where is that chamois skin? I've hunted that infernal thing till my head is all a-buzz."

"Go to the box-office and get a new one," said Thrall. "There's a bundle of them in the drawer. Barney will give you one."

"No! no!" irritably replied Jim. "I want the one I've been using! I hate a new chamois; besides, how the devil could the thing disappear! I used it on that 'bulldog' of yours a while ago. You're a nice man to own a fine revolver like that, and let it get spotted and ate into with rust. You ought to carry a bargain-counter ninety-nine-and-a-half-cent sort of shooting-iron."

Thrall laughed good-temperedly, and, picking up the revolver, said: "Well, you have cleaned and polished and oiled the old thing up in great shape." He stood looking down at the weapon, whose white ivory handle and heavily nickled barrel and trimmings took nothing from its threatening look. Short, thick, heavy, the three-inch double barrel and the wide ugly muzzle were so suggestive that Thrall exclaimed: "By Jove! it's well named, for the bulldog is just what it reminds one of."

"Yes," answered Jim, still searching for the mislaid chamois; "that's a dog whose bark is not worse than his bite. Be a little careful, will you! That's a mighty easy trigger, and something less than ten-horse power will cock the thing full. Oh, damn! damn! where is that chamois?"

How cruel is the despotism of trifling circumstance! It is humiliating to think that a life's career—nay, even more than that—hung upon the finding or the losing of a dirty bit of leather!

Thrall "broke" the revolver to look at the cartridges, somehow expecting to see new ones, and remarked: "Oh, you've returned the old cartridges, I see?"

"Yes," replied Jim, fretfully; "but what of it? I haven't get any new 32s on hand, but the old ones will bore holes in a man that will serve every purpose. I wish I had an old silk handkerchief to polish this inlaid work with." And just then they heard the rustling of skirts, the tap of heels, and Sybil was in the room.

Jim Roberts looked up, and, at sight of her white face and frightened eyes, his own expression changed so swiftly that Thrall was startled. The latter turned, and, in the instant of recognition, the thought flashed through him that, as Sybil had come without appointment, Barney, unwarned, might send anyone here that asked for him; and he said, surprisedly, even a little sharply: "Good heaven, child, what are you doing here?" and the girl moaned:

"Oh, Stewart! Stewart! the message! the awful message!" and crept to him and hid her face on his arm.

Roberts, weak and trembling, and with glaring eyes, made his way out, muttering something about "going to the office." Outside he held his head hard between his hands and leaned against the wall for support. "It's come," he said, "at last! Oh, damn him! It's so awfully sudden, too, but that's him all over—his love flaming sky-high one moment and black out the next!"

He groaned, and rolled his head miserably about. He had understood Sybil's words to be: "Your message—your awful message!" and that was enough to arouse the suspicions of the poor half-crazed creature. "'What are you doing here?' Curse him! I can remember how hard it was for you to get her here in the first place! It was coax and plead and promise then! Now, it's 'what are you doing here!' She is not like little Bess. She will be more likely to kill him than herself!"

He started, and stood upright. "That must not be!" he said. "That would utterly ruin her young life! No, my beautiful! so pale—so frightened! Oh, I—" He broke off, and went shambling over to the box-office and asked for the chamois.

"In the drawer, there," said Barney, briefly.

"Hand one out," said Jim; "my hands are all oily and grimy from cleaning that arsenal in there. I can't touch anything without leaving a mark."

Barney handed out the article, and Jim deliberately returned to the private office. As he entered he drew the heavy portière over the closed door and passed to the desk in the corner and sat down.

Stewart had been much shocked at the blow that had fallen so suddenly upon Sybil, and had shown her such tender sympathy and love that at last the tears had rushed to her hot eyes, and now, within the circle of his arm, her head against his shoulder, she stood and sobbed piteously. Neither of them noticed Jim, and then suddenly, for the first time, she put into words something of her longing for his open protection and love. "Oh," she cried, "must I go there alone? Must I face this terrible thing without you?"

Jim heard, and his face was dreadful. A pale fire shone in his watery eyes, his nostrils dilated and quivered rapidly, his upper lip drew tremblingly upward at one corner, he had all the look of a helpless cur about to pass into a convulsion.

Sybil had but spoken Thrall's own thought. He, too, was thinking how hard it was that he could not take a husband's place by the side of this stricken creature of his love, and he groaned but made no answer. And then, poor child, the thought came to her of some other woman acting with him. A jealous pain was in her voice as she cried: "And you will put another woman in my place, Stewart? Oh, Stewart, how can I bear it all?"

There came from the corner a strange sort of snarl. Jim Roberts was on his feet, a dull red had spread over his face, his very eyeballs were suffused. Thrall turned his head, saw, and, with all his strength, flung Sybil from him, and simultaneously with Jim's "No, damn you, you'll put no other woman in her place!" the "bulldog" barked, and the bullet crashed into the breast where her head had rested.

For an instant there was utter silence; a smoke, an evil odor, and three white faces—that was all! Thrall, who had clapped his hand over the wound, stood tall and erect a moment, then he began to settle together, as it were, and slowly he sank backward upon the couch behind him, his head against the wall, his right hand partly supporting him. He was perfectly ghastly, but entirely conscious, and calm and self-controlled to an astounding degree. He tried to draw a long breath, and then a new horror was in the room—the horror of that agonized breathing. He spoke, painfully, word by word, and his thought was all for the woman he loved, who lay against the wall opposite, her arms outstretched on either side just as she had staggered there when Stewart flung her to safety.

"Jim—the—private—door—get—Princess—away—quick! Save—her—from—scandal!"

And Jim, falling back instantly into the old subserviency and obedience, sprang to the curtained door, that in opening outward took with it the pedestal and statuette of the little "Love," which were securely fastened to it, so that when the door was closed again the room looked utterly undisturbed. Pushing the door open he flew to Sybil, who had never moved, and, catching her about the waist, dragged her toward it. As she was passing Thrall he took his hand from his breast and caught at her fingers. She shuddered at the touch, so cold, so clammy, so—so wet!

"Beloved!" his eyes looked enormous in his pallid face. "Beloved!—I—sinned—against—you—but—it—was—from—love! Forgive—can—you?"

A sort of surprise came upon her face, and she said, simply, as if that answered completely his question: "I love you, dear heart!"

One flash of the old triumphant light came to his eyes; then, though Death's grim face looked at him, over her shoulder, the tormenting jealousy of the passionate lover flared up in him, and he gasped, painfully: "For—all—time—beloved?"

She bent and kissed his eyes, kissed his gasping clay-cold lips, and answered: "I love you for time and for eternity!"

And Roberts, whispering: "Quick! Someone will come!" lifted her in his arms and carried her to the passage and set her down. As the door was closing on her she thought she heard Stewart say: "The word—the ruby—" and then she was hurrying up to her dressing-room, passing through it and down to the stage entrance, where there was no doorman at that hour, and so out into the street.

At the corner she glanced down toward the theatre, and saw a hatless man tearing madly out of the front door. It was Barney. He said something as he ran. Two people stopped, turned, and stared at the building, and so formed the nucleus of the swiftly gathering, traffic-impeding crowd—that mushroom growth, so common to excitable Broadway.