October came, dragged by, with the opening night of the play coming nearer. Wally induced Max to come to town and open the house. It was a cold autumn and nearly all of their friends returned early, too.

“I had hoped that nobody would be in town when this idiot child of ours makes her ridiculous dÉbut, but now everybody on earth is home. Even the weather favours Isabelle’s plans,” complained Max to her spouse.

“No one need know about it, if we can keep it out of the papers.”

“Yes, if!”

“Better make the best of it. Ask a lot of people to dinner, take all the boxes, and make a joke of it.”

“Isabelle may make a joke of us,” commented her mother.

“She gets away with things,” Wally encouraged her.

As for Isabelle, she was bored to the point of despair with her career. Day in, day out, she said her stupid lines. If she varied one inflection from yesterday’s inflection she was reprimanded by Jenkins. Mary and her lines were as standardized as Webster’s Dictionary, and no original turns were to be permitted. Cartel continued distant, every inch a star, wrapped in his greatness. The other members of the company paid scant attention to her, so she made no friends.

It was all very dull and mechanical. The play started off and ground itself through as automatically as a machine. Jenkins ruled like the boss of the shop. There was no room for genius.

Just to help herself endure the tedium of eternal rehearsal, Isabelle invented an absorbing game. She rewrote the play, in innumerable ways, with the plot revolving around Mary as the central figure. Mary was now the friend and adviser of Mrs.Horton, now the trusted confidante of Mr. Horton. But whichever she was, she was a noble, sublimated creature—no possible relation to Mary, the automatic servant. She had long, beautiful speeches, interesting and unusual stage business; she wore a striking maid’s costume, designed by Isabelle. This Mary managed to keep Isabelle’s imagination awake during the weary weeks in which the other Mary walked on and off, with her “Yes, Mrs.Horton,” and her “No, Mr. Horton.”

Suddenly a Sunday Supplement blossomed out with a full-page drawing of Isabelle, and the announcement of her coming dÉbut on the stage, in Sidney Cartel’s new production to open on such-and-such a date. Thereafter every paper in town blared forth the news of this event. There were full columns of talk about the Bryces, their money, their position, Mrs.Bryce’s beauty, Isabelle’s eccentricities. The originality and daring of their only child were dwelt upon at great length.

The performance with Cartel at the mountain inn was described. The hungry public was told how Cartel had seen her genius at a glance and persuaded her parents to let him have the training of her talent. Isabelle was snapshotted leaving the theatre, or riding in the Park. She was not safe a moment from reporters and camera men.

There was unanimous disapproval of this state of affairs on the part of her parents and her manager. It was difficult to tell which was the angrier. The Bryces accused Isabelle, but for once she was innocent. She had no idea how the reports started. She had talked to nobody. Miss Watts corroborated this statement. Neither of them knew when the artist made the sketch of her, and they never supposed that the photographers were taking her picture.

Cartel was furious. It was not in his plans at all to let this youngster take the middle of his stage on the occasion of his New York opening. He would have dismissed her at once, had the newspaper talk not gone so far. As it was he joined her parents heartily in a determined effort to shut them off. But it couldn’t be done. Isabelle had caught the public eye; she was a marked personality, and editors played her up big.

Secretly she triumphed. It was only the beginning in the inevitable recognition of her greatness. It strengthened her belief that she was of the elect, and she rarely ever thought of the “Mary” part with which she was actually to prove herself, but she hurled herself into the development of the other Mary, which should have been hers, by all the laws of right. The two creatures merged—were one. Once or twice at rehearsal, aroused by her cue from some wonderful scene where Mary held the spotlight, she faltered for a second for those barren lines of the real Mary.

“What’s the matter with you, Miss Bryce? Keep your mind on what you’re doing,” warned Jenkins.

She smiled at him. Poor fool! In a few weeks he would be bragging that he stage-managed her first appearance. She could afford to be patient with his bad temper, now.

Dress rehearsal was called and became a fevered memory. The day of the opening Isabelle spent quietly at home, except for a ride in the Park. She was to rest, and have her supper in her sitting room. Wally came in, in the midst of her repast, and fussed about her room.

“Aren’t you nervous?” he inquired.

“Oh, no.”

“I am. I’m so nervous I could scream!” he exploded. “I hate all this notoriety. They say the house will be packed.”

“We always like a full house,” she said, serenely.

“Suppose you flunk it!”

“But I won’t!”—promptly.

He looked at her uncomprehendingly.

“If you could only be kept in a cage, in the cellar!”

She laughed gaily at that.

“Poor old Wally! Don’t fret. You’ll be very proud of me some day.”

Max floated in.

“I thought I heard laughter.”

“You did,” Isabelle replied.

“Are you cool enough to laugh?”

“Quite. Wally is the only nervous one. Who is coming to dinner, Max?”

“Eighteen people. Christiansen for one.”

“Oh, good!”

“When do you go to the theatre?”

“Seven.”

“Come along, Wally, she ought to rest. For all our sakes, Isabelle, keep your head and don’t make a fool of yourself.”

“Much obliged,” said Isabelle. “I take it you are wishing me luck.”

Wally kissed her cheek, and they went out.

“Poor dears,” mused Isabelle, “it will be hard for them to accommodate themselves to my importance.”

Then she gave herself up to dreams of triumph until it was time to go. There was excitement in the air at the theatre. Voices were high, and eyes were bright. She was greeted loudly from open doors, as she went to her dressing room. Since the papers had boomed her, her position in the company had changed. Every one was dressed early and little knots of people discussed the big house, the critics, the chances of success for the play. It was a “strong” play, and, so far, the season had offered only trifles. It was too soon to know yet what the public appetite craved.

“You got to change its meat. When it’s fed up on crooks, ye got to give it sex; when it turns against that, ye got to try comedy. My opinion is, this is a comedy season,” said the gentleman who played the butler—a part even more inconspicuous than Isabelle’s. They all inquired the state of her pulse, and marvelled at her calm.

“She’ll be a hit, or she’ll be rotten,” was the butler gentleman’s comment.

“She can’t do much in that maid’s part.”

“Can’t she? Remember the time they tried to bury Ethel Barrymore in a maid’s part, when she was a kid? Took the show right away from John Drew!” said the authority.

Finally the curtain was up, and the play was on. Isabelle’s initial appearance was late in the first act, when Cartel was building carefully the foundations of plot for the subsequent superstructure. Isabelle entered with a visitor’s card in the middle of an important speech by Cartel. She had one line. To his intense fury, at sight of her the house burst into applause, and he had to halt his oration until she disappeared.

The play was a domestic drama, with the popular old-fashioned man, wed to the popular-new-fashioned woman who wants to “live her life.” In the first act, the husband’s point of view and character are expounded and contrasted with the woman’s.

In a daring second act, the husband—on the casual invitation of an acquaintance to come along to a supper party in a certain man’s rooms—finds his own wife acting as hostess. After the modern manner he breaks no furniture, makes no scene; but in tense tones, aside, he demands an explanation from her. She promises him an interview at their home, the following day, at five. He refuses to wait; she insists. He leaves. Events follow rapidly. The host has a stroke of apoplexy and dies. A muddle-headed guest summons a police ambulance instead of a hospital one. Police arrive, murder is suspected, every one is arrested. There is a strong finale, with hints of astounding revelations to come—in act three, of course.

The third act opens with a very tense atmosphere. Horton (Cartel), the husband—unaware that his wife is under arrest, suspected of murder—comes to his home, from the club, where he has spent a sleepless night. It is nearly five o’clock, the hour of the interview. Business of excitement, pacing, looking at watch. He rings for Mary, who enters.

“Where is Mrs.Horton, Mary?” he asks.

“Mrs.Horton telephoned she would be here at five o’clock, sir,” answers Mary, who, according to the playwright, then goes out. But Mary did not exit.

“She hasn’t been home all night, sir,” she added suddenly, unexpectedly, “and it may be that she is in some trouble.”

Cartel turned a fierce frown upon her.

“That will do, Mary,” he said, threateningly.

Mary threw herself at his feet.

“Oh, Mr.Horton, don’t be hard on her! She may have been misled by this man; but at heart she is a good woman—I could swear it.”

Cartel was shaking with fury. He leaned over and grasped the prostrate Mary by the arm, so hard that he nearly cracked her bones. “Ouch!” she cried, “you’re hurting me.”

The audience slowly grasped the fact that this scene was a surprise to Cartel. It was so still you could have heard a sigh. Mary resisted any attempt to get her on her feet, and this side of carrying her off Cartel was helpless.

“If you’d only make a confidante of me, Mr.Horton, I could be a help to you in your hour of need,” she cried passionately.

“Get out!” hissed Cartel, sotto voce.

“It looks as if she committed that murder, but I have facts to prove that she did not.”

The rest of the act was devoted to breaking the news of the murder to Horton. In one fell line this demon had demolished the play. The audience began to titter, to laugh, to roar! Cartel dragged Isabelle to the door, and literally flung her forth. But at the expression on her face the audience actually shouted with delight, they applauded deafeningly.

Cartel acted quickly. He went up stage, turned his back, and looked out of a prop. window, for what seemed a lifetime, till the hysterics out in front subsided. Finally it was still enough for him to take up the scene again. But at the dramatic entrance of his wife, fresh from a night in jail, they were off again. Cartel glared at them, and in a shamefaced sort of way, they subsided, and the play creaked on, as dead as last year’s news.

Mary had a later entrance, which Cartel cut, but it necessitated the mention of her name, whereupon the monster mirth was loosed again.

Finally the curtain descended upon the tragedy. Mrs. Horton went into hysterics, and Mr.Horton, bathed in sweat, went to look for Isabelle.

The company stood about in frightened groups, but he did not see them. He threw open her door without so much as a knock upon it, and he shouted so you could have heard him in Harlem.

“You little beast! You—you hell-cat! What d’ye mean by spoiling my scene like that?”

“Oh, I am so sorry,” said Isabelle, “I didn’t mean to do it, but I got the two Marys all mixed up.”

“You’re crazy—you’re a mad woman! What do you think this will mean to me? It means failure—complete failure! I never could get through the scene again. It means thousands of dollars, that’s what it means. Because I let a stage-struck fool like you speak a line! Talk about gratitude! You turn and ruin me!”

“But I didn’t know——”

“Don’t pull that baby stuff!” he shrieked. “You did know. You intended to do it all the time. You’re so crazy about yourself, that you’d murder your own mother to get the spotlight! Get out of here! Don’t you ever let me see your face again! Don’t you ever step in this theatre, you dirty spy! Take her away! Take her away!” he raved, now entirely beside himself.

Isabelle for once was dumb. Poor, terrified Miss Watts seized her by the arm, and dragged her out the stage door, and down the alley.

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