The stage director rose and rolled up his copy of the play, pushing toward me with his disengaged hand the half-dozen round white peppermints which, arranged on a chalk-lined blue blotter, had been chastely representing my most important characters in their most vital scene. His smooth, round face was pale with fatigue; the glow of his brown eyes had been dimmed by sleepless nights; he had the weary air of a patient man who has listened to too much talk—but not for one moment had he lost his control of the situation or of us.

"That might have made a better picture," he conceded, graciously. "But we can't make any more changes till after the dress rehearsal to-night; and if that goes well we won't want to make any. Don't you worry, Miss Iverson. We've got a winner!"

This, coming from Herbert Elman at the close of our last official conference, was as merciful rain to a parched field, but I was too weary to respond to it, except by a tired smile. Under its stimulation, however, our star, who had been drooping forward in her chair surveying the peppermints much as Lady Macbeth must have gazed upon the stain on her hand, blossomed in eager acknowledgment.

"Bertie, you are a trump!" she exclaimed, gratefully. "It's simply wonderful how you keep up your enthusiasm after three weeks of work. It was criminal of Miss Iverson and me to drag you here this afternoon. I suppose we had lost our nerve, but that doesn't excuse us."

Elman had started for the door on the cue of his valedictory. At her words he turned and came back to the desk where we sat together, his face stamped with a sudden look of purpose; and upon my little study, in which for the past three hours we had wrangled over a dozen unimportant details, a hush fell, as if now, at last, something had entered which was real and vital. For an instant he stood before us, looking down at us with eyes that held an unaccustomed sternness. Then he spoke.

"I had a few words to say to you two when I came here," he began, "but you were both so edgy that I changed my mind. However, if you're talking about losing your nerve you need them, and I'm going to get them off my chest."

Miss Merrick interrupted him, her blue eyes widening like those of a hurt baby.

"Oh, Bertie," she begged, "p-please don't say anything disagreeable. Here we've been rehearsing for weeks, and we three still speak. We're al-most friendly. And now, at the eleventh hour, you're going to spoil everything!"

Her words came out in a little wail. She dropped her head in her hands with a gesture of utter fatigue.

"You are," she ended. "You know you are, and I'm so-o tired!"

Elman laughed. No one ever took Stella Merrick seriously, except during her hours on the stage when she ceased to be Stella Merrick at all and entered the soul of the character she was impersonating.

"Nonsense," he said, brusquely. "I'm going to show my friendship by giving you a pointer, that's all."

Miss Merrick drew a deep breath and twisted the corner of her mouth toward me—a trick I had learned from Nestor Hurd five years ago and had unconsciously taught her in the past three weeks.

"Oh, if that's all!" she murmured, in obvious relief.

"You should have been in your beds the entire day," continued Elman, severely, "both of you, like the rest of the company. We'll rehearse all night, and you know it; and I'll tell you right now," he added, pregnantly, "that you're going to be up against it."

He waited a moment to give his words the benefit of their cumulative effect, and then added, slowly:

"Just before I came here this afternoon T.B. told me that to-night he intends to rehearse the company himself."

I heard Stella Merrick gasp. The little sound seemed to come from a long distance, for the surprise of Elman's announcement had made me dizzy. "T.B." was our manager, better known as "The Governor" and "The Master." He had more friends, more enemies, more successes, more insight, more failures, more blindness, more mannerisms, more brutality, and more critics than any other man in the theatrical world. His specialty was the avoidance of details. He let others attend to these, and then, strolling in casually at the eleventh hour, frequently undid the labor to which they had given weeks.

Though his money was producing my play, I had met him only once; and this, I had been frequently assured by the company, had been the one redeeming feature of an unusually strenuous theatrical experience. "T.B." never attended any but dress rehearsals, leaving everything to his stage directors until the black hours when he arrived to consider the results they had accomplished. It was not an infrequent thing for him on these occasions to disband the company and drop the play; that he should change part of the cast and most of the "business" seemed almost inevitable. For days I had been striving to accustom myself to the thought that during our dress rehearsal "T.B." would be sitting gloomily down in the orchestra, his eyes on the back drop, his chin on his breast, a victim to that profound depression which seized him when one of his new companies was rehearsing one of his new plays. At such times he was said to bear, at the best, a look of utter desolation; at the worst, that of a lost and suffering soul.

At long intervals, when Fate perversely chose to give her screw the final turn for an unhappy playwright, "T.B." himself conducted the last rehearsal, and for several months after one of these tragedies theatrical people meeting on Broadway took each other into quiet corners and discussed what had happened in awed whispers and with fearsome glances behind them. It had not occurred to any of us that "T.B." would be moved to conduct our last rehearsal. This was his busiest season, and Elman was his most trusted lieutenant. Now, however, Elman's quiet voice was giving us the details of "T.B.'s" intention, and as she listened Stella Merrick's face, paling slowly under the touch of rouge on the cheeks, took on something of the exaltation of one who dies gloriously for a Cause. She might not survive the experience, it seemed to say, but surely even death under the critical observation of "T.B." would take on some new dignity. If she died in "T.B.'s" presence, "T.B." would see that at least she did it "differently"!

"But, Bertie, that's great!" she exclaimed. "He must have a lot of faith in the play. He must have heard something. He hadn't any idea of conducting when I spoke to him yesterday."

"Oh yes, he had!" Elman's words fell on her enthusiasm as frost falls on a tree in bloom. "He didn't want to rattle you by saying so, that's all. And he isn't doing this work to-night because he's got faith in the play. It's more because he hasn't. He hasn't faith in anything just now. Three of his new plays have gone to the store-house this month, and he's in a beastly humor. You'll have the devil of a time with him."

Miss Merrick sprang to her feet and began to pace the study with restless steps.

"What are you trying to do?" she threw back at him over her shoulder. "Take what little courage we have left?"

Elman shook his dark head.

"I'm warning you," he said, quietly. "I want you both to brace up. You'll need all the nerve you've got, and then some, to get through what's before us. He'll probably have an entirely new idea of your part, Stella; and I don't doubt he'll want Miss Iverson to rewrite most of her play. But you'll both get through all right. You're not quitters, you know."

His brown eyes, passing in turn from my face to hers, warmed at what he saw in them. When he began to speak we had been relaxed, depressed, almost discouraged. Lack of sleep, nervous strain, endless rehearsals had broken down our confidence and sapped our energy; but now, in the sudden lift of Stella Merrick's head, the quick straightening of her shoulders, I caught a reflection of the change that was taking place in me. At the first prospect of battle we were both as ready for action as Highland regiments when the bagpipes begin to snarl. Looking at us, Elman's pale face lit up with one of his rare and brilliant smiles.

"That's right," he said, heartily. "A word to the wise. And now I'm really off."

Almost before the door had closed behind him Miss Merrick had seized her hat and was driving her hat-pins through it with quick, determined fingers.

"I'm going home and to bed," she said. "We can both get in three hours' sleep before the rehearsal—and believe me, Miss Iverson, we'll need it! Do you remember what General Sherman said about war? He should have saved his words for a description of 'T.B.'"

I followed her out into the hall and to the elevator door. I felt oddly exhilarated, almost as if I had been given some powerfully stimulating drug.

"He doesn't exactly kill, burn, or pillage, does he?" I asked, gaily.

With one foot in the elevator, our star stopped a second and looked back at me. There was a world of meaning in her blue eyes.

"If he did nothing but that, my lamb!" she breathed, and dropped from sight.

I returned to my desk. I had no idea of going to bed. I was no Napoleon, to slumber soundly on the eve of a decisive battle, but there was nothing else I could do except to sweep the peppermint drops out of sight and tuck the diagrammed blotter behind a radiator. While I was engaged in these homely tasks the bell of my telephone rang.

"Hello, Miss Iverson," I heard when I took down the receiver. "Are you going to be at home to-night?"

My heart leaped at the familiar greeting of Billy Gibson, star reporter of the Searchlight, and one of my stanch friends ever since the days, five long years ago, when he had given me my first lesson in practical reporting. Almost before I could reply to him I noticed something unnatural in the quality of his voice. It was a little too easy, too casual, too carefully controlled.

"Heard any late news about Morris?" asked Gibson.

"News?" I echoed. "What news? What do you mean?"

"Oh, then you don't know."

Gibson's voice was still ostentatiously cheerful, but it dropped a little on his next words.

"Why, he's sick," he said. "Pretty sick. Has pneumonia."

"I didn't know," I said, slowly. It had been difficult to bring out the words. It was for some reason impossible to say more, but Gibson went on without waiting, thus giving me time to think.

"Haven't lost all interest in us, have you, now that you've been away from us a year and are writing plays?" he asked, cheerfully.

"Oh, Billy, what about him?" At last I was able to bring out the words. "Is it serious?" I asked.

"No one at the office realized it was until to-day," said Gibson. "This morning Colonel Cartwell stopped at the Morris house on his way down-town and happened to meet one of the consulting physicians. Godfrey's pretty low," he added, gently. "The crisis is expected to-night."

For what seemed a long time I sat staring blankly at the telephone. Once or twice I tried to speak, but no speech came. The forgotten receiver shook in my hand. Every thought but one was wiped out of my mind. Godfrey Morris was ill—very ill. He had been ill for days—perhaps for weeks—and I had not known it because I had been absorbed in my petty interests, which until this moment had seemed so big.

"If you care to have me," went on Gibson, hesitatingly, "I'll telephone you later. I'm to be at the Morris house most of the night and keep the office posted from there. I can call you up once or twice if—it won't disturb you."

I found my voice, but it sounded strange in my own ears. For an instant I had seen myself sitting in my study the long night through, getting messages from the sick-room, but now I remembered my work and the others who were concerned in it.

"Billy," I said, "we're having the dress rehearsal of my play to-night. I may have to be at the Berwyck Theater until three or four in the morning. Can you send me word there—several times?"

Gibson's answer was prompt.

"You bet I can," he said. "I'll bring it. The Morris house is only a few blocks from the Berwyck, and I'll be glad of something to do besides receiving and sending bulletins. Tell your door-man to let me pass, and I'll drop in two or three times during the night." His voice changed. "I thought," he added, almost diffidently, "you'd want to know."

"Yes," I said, slowly, "I want to know. Thank you."

I hung up the receiver, which slipped in my stiff fingers. The exhilaration of a few minutes before lay dead within me. I felt cold and numb. From the living-room off my study the light of my open fire winked at me as if in cheery reassurance. I crossed the room and crouched down before it, stretching out shaking hands to the blaze. I seemed to be moving in a nightmare, but with every sense horribly acute. I remembered previous dreams in which I had seemed to see, as I saw now, the familiar objects of my home around me. I heard the beating of my heart, the hammering of the blood in my head, the sound of the quick breath I drew—almost the murmur of Godfrey's voice as he babbled in delirium in his distant sick-room.

"The crisis is expected to-night." Gibson's words came back to me. What was it we had arranged? Oh yes—that he was to drop into the Berwyck several times and give me the latest bulletins. But that would be hours from now, and suddenly I realized that I could not wait. With a rush I was back at the telephone asking for the Morris home. I had neglected Grace Morris during the past few months, as I had neglected all my other friends in the work which had absorbed me. I dared not ask for her now, when the English accents of the Morris butler met my ear.

"Is that you, Crumley?" I asked. "This is Miss Iverson. I've just heard that Mr. Morris is very ill. Can you tell me how he is?"

Crumley's reply showed the impassiveness of the well-trained servant.

"He's very low, Miss," he replied, evenly. "Very low indeed. Two of the doctors are here now. They don't hope for any change till toward morning."

I found words for one more question.

"Is he suffering?" I asked, almost in a whisper.

"Suffering, Miss?" echoed Crumley. "No, Miss, I think not. He's very quiet indeed—in a stupor-like."

I hung up the receiver with a steadier hand and sat down, staring straight before me. As I had rallied to Elman's words half an hour ago, so now I tried to meet this new demand upon me. There was nothing I could do for Godfrey; but a few hours later there might be much to do for the manager and the company who were giving my work to the public. I must stand by them and it—that was the one clear fact in a reeling world. I must be very cool, very clear-headed, very alert. I must have, Elman had told me, all my nerve, "and then some." All this, as I repeated it to myself, was quite plain, yet it meant nothing vital to me. It was as if one side of me had lashed with these reminders of duty another side which remained unmoved. The only thing of which I was vividly conscious was a scene which I suddenly visualized—a sick-room, large and cool and dim, a silent figure in a big bed, doctors and nurses bending over it. At the foot of the bed sat a figure I recognized, Godfrey's mother. Of course she would be there. I saw the gleam of her white hair, the look in the gray eyes which were so like her son's.

"The crisis is expected to-night." The old clock in my hall seemed to be ticking off the words, over and over. The hammering blood in my brain was making them into a refrain which I found myself dully repeating.

With a start I pulled myself together. I was on my feet again, walking back and forth, back and forth, across my study. It was growing late. Through my dark windows the lights of surrounding buildings glowed in at me like evil eyes. I must get ready for my work. Resolutely I held my thoughts to that point for an instant, then they swung away. "The crisis is expected to-night. The—crisis—is—expected—to-night. Time—to—get—to—work. The crisis is expected to-night."

I found that I was dressing. Well, let "T.B." do his worst. He could tear me and my play to tatters, he could disband the company and disrupt the universe, if only for a few blessed hours he could keep me from seeing that shadowy room, that still, helpless figure. But he couldn't. "The—crisis—is—expected—to-night. The—crisis—is—expected—to-night." And when it came, while the great battle was waged that I now knew meant life to me, too, I would be in an up-town theater, listening to petty human beings recite the petty lines of a petty play, to which in my incredible blindness I had given my time for months, shutting myself away from my friends, shutting myself away from Godfrey. How many times had he telephoned and written? Half a dozen at least. He had urged me to go to a concert or two, to a play or two, but I had been "too busy." It was monstrous, it was unbelievable, but it was true. "The—crisis—is—expected—to-night."

I was at the theater now. How I had reached it was not quite clear. The members of the company were there before me, scattered about in the wings and on the big empty stage, lit by a single "bunch" light. The information that "T.B." himself was to conduct had fallen upon them like a pall. Under its sable influence they whispered together in stricken groups of three or four. Near the right first entrance Elman and Miss Merrick sat, their heads close, the star talking softly but rapidly, Elman listening with his tired, courteous air. They nodded across the stage at me when I appeared, but I did not join them. Instead I slipped down into the dark auditorium and took my place in an orchestra seat, where I could be alone. The whole thing was a nightmare, of course. I could not possibly be sitting there when only a few blocks away that sick-room held its watching group, its silent, helpless patient. "The—crisis—is—expected—to-night."

There was a sudden stir on the stage, a quick straightening of every figure there, a business-like bustle, and much scurrying to and fro. "T.B." had entered the theater by the front door and was striding down the middle aisle. I saw a huge bulk that loomed grotesque for an instant as it leaned toward the dark footlights for a word with Mr. Elman, and dropped with a grunt into a chair in the third row. Other figures—I did not know how many—had entered the dark theater and taken their places around me. From where I sat, half a dozen rows behind him, I had a view of "T.B.'s" hair under the slouch hat he kept on his head, the bulge of his jaw as he turned his profile toward me, the sharp upward angle of the huge cigar in his mouth. The company were in their places in the wings and on the stage. I heard Elman's quick word, "Curtain." The rehearsal had begun. The familiar words of the opening scene rolled over the footlights as cold and vague as a fog that rolls in from the sea. "The—crisis—is—expected—to-night." No, that was not what the office boy on the stage had just said. It was what Gibson had said that afternoon, a thousand years ago, when he had called me on the telephone.

Things were going badly up there on the stage. Like a patient coming out of ether during an operation, and vaguely conscious of what was passing around her, I had moments of realizing this. Boyce did not know his lines; he was garbling them frightfully, and, by failing to give his associates their cues, was adding to the panic into which "T.B.'s" presence had already thrown them. There! He had ruined Miss Merrick's opening scene, which was flattening out, going to pieces. It seemed as if some one should do something. Yet, what could be done? "The—crisis—is—expected—to-night." What difference did it make what happened on that stage? The conscious interval was over. The babble that came over the footlights meant nothing.

From his orchestra seat, into which he seemed to be sinking deeper as the moments passed, "T.B." sent forth a sardonic croak. It was a horrible noise—nerve-racking. It reached down to where I was submerged, caught me, drew me up to the surface again. I saw the company cringe under it, heard Elman's reprimand of Boyce, and his sharp command to begin the scene again. Confusion, confusion, so much confusion over such little things, when only a few blocks away was that shadowy sick-room in which the great battle between life and death was being fought with hardly a sound.

It was midnight. "T.B." was conducting the rehearsal. For three hours he had poured upon the company the vitriol of his merciless tongue. For three hours he had raced up and down the aisles of the theater, alternately yelping commands and taking flying leaps across the footlights to the stage to go through a scene himself. He had laughed, he had wept, he had pleaded, he had sworn, he had cooed, he had roared. He had been strangely gentle with the white-haired old man of the company, and wholly brutal to a young girl who was doing beautiful work. He had reduced every woman to tears and every man to smothered and stuttering profanity. And all the time, sitting in my seat in the auditorium, I had watched him as dispassionately and with almost as detached an interest as if he were a manikin pulled by invisible wires and given speech by some ventriloquist. It was all a bad dream. He did not exist. We were not really there. The things he said to the company swept by my ears like the wail of a winter wind, leaving an occasional chill behind them. The remarks he addressed directly to me touched some cell of my brain which mechanically but clearly responded. I struck out lines and gave him new speeches, scrawling them with a pencil on a pad upon my knee; I "rebuilt" the curtain speech of the second act according to his sudden notion and to his momentary content; I transferred scenes and furnished new cues while he waited for the copy with impatiently extended hand. All the time the hush of the sick-room lay around me; I saw the still figure in the great four-poster bed.

I had never seen Godfrey Morris's bedroom, though his sister had shown me his study. But now it was clear in every detail—the polished, uncarpeted floor, the carved pineapple tops of the four-poster, the great windows, open at top and bottom, the logs on the brass andirons in the grate, the brass-bound wood-box near it, the soft glow of the night lamps, the portrait of his mother which Sargent had painted ten years ago and which Godfrey had hung in his own room at the front of his bed. Yes, I remembered now, he had told me about the portrait. That was why I saw it so plainly, facing him as he lay unconscious. He had told me about the four-poster, too, and the high-boys in the room, and some chests of drawers he had picked up. He was interested in old mahogany. No, he was not interested now in anything. He was "in a stupor-like," Crumley had said. "The—crisis—is—expected—to-night."

"Great Scott, Miss Merrick!" shouted "T.B." "Don't you realize that the woman would have hysterics at this point? First she'd whimper, then she'd cry, then she'd shriek and find she couldn't stop. Like this—"

The theater filled with strange sounds—the wail of a banshee, the yelps of a suffering dog, a series of shrieks like the danger-blasts of a locomotive whistle. Something in me lent an ear to them and wondered what they meant. Surely they could not mean that my heroine was to have an attack of hysteria at that moment in my play. That was all wrong—wholly outside of the character and the scene; enough, indeed, to kill the comedy, to turn it into farce.

"That's the idea," I heard "T.B." say. "Now you try it. Here, we'll do it together."

Something flamed within me, instinctive, intense. I half rose, then sank numbly back into my chair. What did it matter? The only thing that disturbed me was the noise. The uproar beat against my eardrums in waves of sound that threatened to burst them. My nightmare was growing worse. Was it taking me to Bedlam? Was I shrieking, too? I must not shriek in the big, quiet room where the silent figure lay "in a stupor-like."

The chair beside me creaked. Gibson had dropped into it. "T.B." and Miss Merrick were on the top notes of their hysteria, but suddenly I ceased to hear them. Every sense I had hung on the new-comer's words. "No change," said Gibson, briefly. "None expected till three or four o'clock. Thought I'd drop in, anyway. Say"—a wraith of his wide and boyish grin appeared—"what's going on? Is this your rehearsal?"

The question meant nothing to me.

"Did you see any of the family?" I whispered.

Gibson nodded.

"Miss Morris came in for a minute at midnight," he told me, "while I was having supper. I opened the door of Godfrey's room an inch, too, and saw him through the crack."

"See here!" "T.B." was bellowing to a frightened boy on the stage. "You're not giving an imitation of Corbett entering the ring; you're supposed to be a gentleman coming into a drawing-room. See? Hook in your spine an' try it. And now you're not havin' a hair-cut. You're greeting a lady. And you're not makin' a face at her, either. You're smiling at her. Smile, smile—my God, man, smile! Try it. T-r-y-y it!"

His voice broke. He seemed about to burst into tears. I caught Gibson's arm.

"Oh, Billy," I gulped, "how did he look?"

Gibson patted my hand glancing away from me as he answered.

"Very quiet," he said. "He's unconscious. The nurse said he was 'resting comfortably.' That's their pet formula, you know. Occasionally he mutters something—a few disconnected words. By Jove, what is that fellow doing now?"

I followed the direction of his eyes. "T.B." had taken one of his flying leaps over the footlights, assisted midway by a chair in the aisle which served the purpose of a spring-board in this acrobatic feat. Now he was at the right first entrance, swaggering through the open door, his hands deep in his pockets, every tooth in his head revealed in a fixed and awful grin. Yet, strangely, through the swagger, under the grin, one detected for an instant something resembling a well-bred college boy entering a drawing-room—something, too, of radiant youth, irresponsible and charming.

"Jove," breathed Gibson, "he gets it, somehow, doesn't he? One sees exactly what he's driving at."

But the little scene had faded as I looked at it, like a negative dimming in the light. The door that opened was the door of the sick-room, and the man who had entered was one of the specialists who watched over Godfrey to-night. I saw him approach the bed and lean over the patient, looking at him in silence for a moment, his finger on the pulse of the thin hand that lay so still. Somewhere near a woman was sobbing. Was it Mrs. Morris, or the young girl in the wings? I did not know. "T.B.'s" voice was cutting its way to me like the blast of a steam siren through a fog.

"Miss Iverson," he yelled. "Cut out that kid's love scene. He can't do it, and no one wants it there, anyway. You've got some drama here now, and, by Heaven, it's about time you had! Don't throw it away. Keep to it." His voice broke on the last words. Again he seemed to be on the verge of tears. "Keep—to—it," he almost sobbed.

I carried my manuscript to a point in the wings where, vaguely aided by one electric light hanging far above me, I could make the changes for which "T.B." had asked. They meant new cues for several characters and a number of verbal alterations in their lines. Far down within me something sighed over the loss of that love scene—sighed, and then moaned over the loss of something else. "T.B.," his chin on his chest, his eyes on the floor, brooded somberly in an orchestra seat until we were ready to go over the revised scene. As I finished, Stella Merrick leaned over me, her hand clutching my left shoulder in a grip that hurt. Her teeth were chattering with nervousness.

"How can you be so calm?" she gasped. "I've never seen him as devilish as he is to-night. If you hadn't kept your nerve we'd all have gone to smash. As it is, I have a temperature of a hundred and four!"

I wondered what Godfrey's temperature was. Gibson had not told me. There must be a fever-chart in the sick-room. It seemed almost as if I could read it. Certainly I could see the jagged peaks of it, the last point running off in a long wavering line of weakness. Perhaps Gibson knew what the temperature was. But when I returned to my seat in the orchestra Gibson was no longer there.

"Open some of those windows," ordered "T.B.," irritably. "It's like a furnace in here."

Was that an ice-cap on Godfrey's head? Of course. The nurse was changing it for a fresh one. For a moment, the first in that endless night, I seemed to see his face, waxen, the sensitive nostrils pinched, the gray eyes open now and staring unseeingly into space.

"No change," said Gibson's voice.

Another period of time had dragged its way past me like a sluggish snake.

"What o'clock?" I heard myself ask.

Gibson looked at his watch.

"Quarter of two," he told me, snapping the case shut. "I saw Dr. Weymarth just before I left."

"What did he say?"

Gibson's eyes shifted from mine, which vainly tried to hold them.

"No change," he repeated.

"Was that all?"

Gibson's eyes returned to mine for an instant and shifted again.

"Tell me," I insisted.

"He's disappointed in the heart. It's been holding its own, though the temperature has been terrific from the first. But since midnight—"

"Yes, since midnight—"

"It's not quite so strong."

Gibson's words came slowly, as if against his will. There was a strange silence over the theater. Through it the voice of "T.B." ripped its way to us.

"Now we'll run through that scene again. And if the author and the ladies and gentlemen of the company will kindly remember that this is a rehearsal, and not an afternoon tea, perhaps we'll get somewhere."

"Billy," I whispered, "I can't bear it."

"I know." Gibson patted my hand. "Sit tight," he murmured. "I'm off again. I'll be back in an hour or so. By then they ought to know."

I watched him slip like a shadow through the dark house, along the wall, and back toward the stage-door. The voice of Stella Merrick was filling the theater. I heard my name.

"Miss Iverson doesn't agree with me," she was saying, "but I think that in this scene, when we are reconciled and I say to my husband, 'My boy,' he ought to answer, 'My mumsey!'"

"T.B.'s" reply sounded like a pistol-shot.

"What for?" he exploded. "Want to turn this play into a farce?"

"Certainly not!"

"Then follow the lines."

It was the settlement for all time of an argument which Miss Merrick and I had waged for weeks. One scene at least, the final, vital scene, would be spared to me. I felt a throb of gratitude, followed by a sudden sick, indescribable sinking of the heart. Had I for one instant forgotten? I remembered again. Nothing mattered. Nothing would ever matter.

Some one sat down beside me, smiled at me, then stared frankly. "Good Heaven, Miss Iverson, did I frighten you?" cried Elman. "You look like a ghost!"

Before I could answer, "T.B." approached us both. Leaning over Elman, he nodded toward the youth who was still vainly trying to act like a gentleman.

"Get rid of him."

"But we open in Atlantic City to-morrow night—" began Elman.

"Get rid of him." "T.B.'s" tones permitted no argument. "Get rid of Haskins, too, and of Miss Arnold."

"But, great Scott, Governor—"

Elman's voice, usually so controlled, was almost a wail. "T.B." strolled away. To "open" the next night with three new members in the company seemed impossible. Probably we wouldn't open at all. By to-morrow night I would know. Godfrey would be out of danger, or Godfrey would be—Why didn't Gibson come? Elman murmured something to me about "not taking it so hard," but I caught only a few words. He said it could be done—that he had the right people at hand. He would see them the first thing in the morning, and go over the lines with them and have them word-perfect by night.

My eyes were strained in the direction of the stage-door. My ears were awaiting the sound of Gibson's quick footsteps. For now, I knew, in the sick-room, where my mind and heart had been all night, the crisis was near. Through the open windows the blue-gray dawn was visible. The shaded lights were taking on a spectral pallor. Nurse and doctors were close to the bed, watching, listening for the change that meant life or death.

"Good—mighty good!" whispered Elman.

On the stage Miss Merrick and Peyton, the leading man, were going through their final scene. The familiar words, over which I had labored for months, came to me as if out of a life I had lived on some other planet ages back.

"You seem so far away," said the man. "I feel as if I'd have to call across the world to make you hear me. But I love you. Oh, Harriet, can't you hear that?"

The voice of his wife, who was forgiving him and taking him back, replied with the little break in its beautiful notes which Stella Merrick always gave to her answer.

"Yes, dear; I guess I'd hear that anywhere." And then, as she drew his head to her breast, "My boy!"

Within me something alive, suffering and struggling, cried out in sick revolt. What did these puppets know about love? What had I known about it when I wrote so arrogantly? But I knew now. Oh yes, I knew now. Love and suspense and agony—I knew them all.

On the dim stage the leading man and woman melted into the embrace that accompanied the slow fall of the curtain. In the wings, but well in view, the members of the company clustered, watching the final scene and wiping their wet eyes. They invariably cried over that scene, partly because the leading man and woman set the example, but more because they were temperamental and tired. Even the brilliant eyes of Elman, who still sat beside me, took on a sudden softness. He smiled at "T.B.," who had dropped into a seat near us.

"No change there, I guess," he hazarded.

"T.B." looked at his watch.

"Quarter of four," he said, with surprise. Then he yawned, and, rising, reached for his light overcoat which lay on the back of a chair.

"That's all," he called, as he struggled into it. "Boyce, study your lines to-morrow, or you're going to have trouble. Peyton, you and Miss Mason better go over that scene in the second act in the morning. So-long, Miss Merrick."

He started to go, then stopped at my seat.

"Good night, Miss Iverson," he said, kindly. "You've got the right nerve for this business. Of course we can't make predictions, but I shouldn't wonder if we're giving the public what they want in this play."

He nodded and was gone. I had barely caught his words. Over his big shoulders I saw Gibson approaching, his face one wide, expansive grin. Never before had anything seemed so beautiful to me as that familiar Gibson smile. Never had I dreamed I could be so rapturously happy in seeing it.

"Good news," he said, as soon as he came within speaking-distance; and he added when he reached me, "He's better. The doctors say they'll pull him through."

At the first glimpse of him I had risen to my feet with some vague impulse to take, standing, whatever was coming. For a moment I stood quite still. Then the thing of horror that had ridden me through the night loosened its grip slowly, reluctantly, and I drew a deep, deep breath. I wanted to throw myself in Gibson's arms. I wanted to laugh, to cry, to shout. But I did none of these things. I merely stood and looked at him till he took my hand and drew it through his arm.

"Rehearsal's over, I see," he said. "I'm going to hunt up a taxi and take you home."

Together we went out into the gray morning light, and I stood on the curb, full-lunged, ecstatic, until Gibson and the taxi-cab appeared. He helped me into the cab and took the seat beside me.

"You ought to go home," I murmured, with sudden compunction. "You must be horribly tired."

They were my first words. I had made no comment on the message he brought, and it was clear that he had expected none. Now he smiled at me—the wide, kind, understanding smile that had warmed the five years of our friendship.

"Let me do this much for you, May," he said. "You see, it's all I can do."

Our eyes met, and suddenly I understood. An irrepressible cry broke from me.

"Oh, Billy," I said. "Not you! Not me!"

He smiled again.

"Yes," he replied. "Just that. Just you and me. But it's all right. I'd rather be your friend than the husband of any other woman in the world."

The taxi-cab hummed on its way. The east reddened, then sent up a flaming banner of light. I should have been tired; I should have been hungry; I should, perhaps, have been excited over "T.B.'s" final words. I was none of those things. I was merely in a state of supreme content. Nothing mattered but the one thing in life which mattered supremely. Godfrey was better; Godfrey would live!