In the Deerfield Street apartment a young man stood waiting with perhaps less calm than was strictly Oriental. This could no doubt be attributed to the fact that he anticipated with distinct pleasure the coming of somebody, while a true Oriental never really anticipates anything—or if he does, the thought gives him no delight.

But Smith, as he sat in the straight-backed chair, felt very glad indeed that he was about to see the somebody for whom he was waiting. The time which had elapsed since his most recent trip to Boston had somehow gone with unconscionable slowness, and the medium of the mails had proved an alternative means of communication only measurably compensating. He had, in short, discovered that a great deal of his life was concerned with the girl whose footsteps were now to be heard advancing down the hall.

"I'm awfully glad to see you," said Miss Maitland.

"And I you," returned the visitor; and if the words carried only the conventionalities, each found a way to make them more significant.

"Mother will be in to welcome you," the girl continued. "It's a compliment she doesn't pay everyone," she added, with a smile. "She doesn't care, as a rule, for young gentlemen visitors. By the way, we have plenty of time, have we not, before we need to start?"

"Fully twenty minutes," he answered. "I guess I'm absurdly early, but I thought I ought to give the young lady an opportunity to get acquainted with me before starting out alone with me in a taxi."

"Are we ever acquainted with any one?" the girl parried; and a moment later the conversation shifted to meet the entrance of Mrs. Maitland.

Shortly before eight o'clock they set forth for the theater. It was the evening of the twenty-first of February, and the following day, Sunday, was also a holiday in memory of a great man. It was of him that they chanced to speak, almost on entering their conveyance.

"I'm glad to-morrow is a holiday," said Smith. "After a party on the previous night it is always soothing to think one isn't obliged to get up at any particular hour in the morning. But I don't suppose that point of view would appeal to you."

"No," said his companion, with a laugh. "I much prefer having something particular to get up for. But as I seldom have, I presume that's merely another way of saying that every one wants what one hasn't got. I fancy if I had to appear punctually at breakfast every morning, I'd appreciate holidays a great deal more than I do now."

"I used to think we had too many. That was because it tears things up so abominably in an insurance office to get two or three days' work slammed at you at once. But I'm reconciled now. And if we celebrate for any one, we certainly ought to do so for George."

"Seriously speaking, why?" Helen asked. "Probably I should be ashamed of myself, but I've never been able to get up as much enthusiasm for him as I feel I should. Can you tell me any way of doing so?"

"I can tell you how I came to, at all events," said her companion. "The story may not be so romantic, but it made more of a hit with me than the account of the same heroic gentleman nearly freezing to death at Valley Forge, or standing up in a boat while he crossed the Delaware, which is a silly thing to do, even for a hero. Nothing of that sort. But somewhere—I forget just where—I ran across the account of a little episode which showed me that the General was a man of real ability, after all."

"What was it?" asked the girl, with interest.

"Well, it seems that some earnest society of antiquaries had been digging up the back yards of Rhode Island and making idiots of themselves generally in an effort to prove that the Vikings came to America."

"But they did come, didn't they?" Helen interrupted.

"Of course they did; but it wasn't known in Washington's time. However, somebody with a vein of enterprise or malice had salted a Viking mine, so to speak, and under the auspices—and the pay—of the society had contrived to exhume a stone tablet on which were some extremely apropos inscriptions, proving exactly what the amiable old gentlemen desired to prove."

"About the Vikings?"

"Yes. Well, the discovery of this tablet made a deep impression. The society held meetings and passed resolutions and went through all kinds of ponderous and absurd conventionalities, culminating in asking General Washington—at that time I don't believe he was President—to make a speech. He came over from Boston, and they showed him the tablet. And after he had looked it carefully over, he casually called their attention to the fact that the inscription, which was supposed to have been cut in the eleventh century, contained script characters which appeared in no northern alphabet prior to the sixteen hundreds. And what is more, when they looked it up, they found that he was right."

"That is really very interesting," Helen said.

"It gave me a respect for him that I'd never had before, anyway," rejoined Smith. "Think of the old General knowing anything at all about Icelandic sagas—and the offhand way he picked out the anachronism and smashed it in the eye. No—so far as I am concerned, he is entitled to his holiday. Long may it wave—especially as I hope to see you, if you'll let me, while if it were an ordinary business day I should probably have to devote myself to certain distinguished legal gentlemen."

"How is the lawsuit progressing?" asked the girl.

Smith surveyed her doubtfully.

"Have you seen Mr. Osgood recently?" he inquired suspiciously. "One time, you remember, you made me tell a long story all of which you knew perfectly well before I began."

"No—honestly," Helen laughingly denied. "I have hardly seen Uncle Silas for two or three weeks, and the last time we met, he said nothing about it."

"Well, then, in confidence it is my hope and belief that unless our present expectations fall through with a sickening thud, another month or two will see the Guardian and your uncle back in the office that neither of them should ever have left."

"Not really!" said the girl, delighted.

"I have no longer any real doubt of it," Smith said seriously. "It can hardly fail now. I don't mind saying to you that it's about time, too. The Conference has made a good fight; but they were beaten from the start, and they know it now. And I'll be very glad to see some Boston business coming in to us again, I can assure you."

"Haven't you been getting any this last year?"

"Only a little, principally suburban business through a small agent named George Greenwood. Of course we got a lot through Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy, but it was so bad that I canceled nearly every policy they wrote for us. All the Guardian has left in the down-town district is some building business—a few lines written by the Osgood office for three or five years, and which haven't expired yet. And there aren't many of them, for Cole switched some into the Salamander, and besides, we always tried to keep our congested district business on an annual basis. If Boston burned to-morrow, I don't believe the Guardian would lose more than a hundred thousand dollars."

"That sounds to me like quite a loss."

"So it is, but it's only a small fraction of what most companies have at risk here. I'm really not sure but that a year ago we didn't have more than we should. I certainly know a lot of companies that would sit up and take notice with a vengeance if a big fire ever did occur."

"Do you think one likely?" asked Helen. "It makes one shudder just a little to think of it."

"No—probably not. Still, there's really no reason why one shouldn't happen here as well as elsewhere. And big fires are certain to happen somewhere. The city's improving right along, but it's still got its possibilities."

"Yes," said the girl. "For now that I come to think of it, I remember that the conflagration hazard in the congested district is not a thing one can precisely calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate its gravity. Isn't that so?"

Smith looked at her, turning in the taxi to do so. By the flash of a street lamp that they were passing he could see she was smiling whimsically.

"Where did you get that?" he demanded.

"Don't you recall?" she rejoined. "Whether it's greatly to his credit or not, I can't judge, but certainly he himself hath said it."

"That's true," her companion admitted, with a laugh. "I remember now.
But how in the world did you happen to?"

"Should an humble apprentice—an ignorant pupil—forget the first pearl of wisdom that fell from the master's lips? It was the first speech of Mr. Richard Smith that I ever heard repeated—the first time I ever heard his name mentioned."

"If I'd had any idea it would have lived so long, I certainly would have tried to say something more eloquent," the other returned. "However, I still stand by the sentiment. And incidentally, I don't mind saying that if Boston is going to burn, I hope it does so inside of the next two or three months—before Mr. Osgood puts the Guardian back with a half a million dollars' liability scattered about down town."

"Don't talk of so terrible a possibility as the burning of Boston," said the girl. "There has been one very great fire here. Surely there will never be another."

"Surely not," agreed Smith. "At least for the sake of your fellow citizens and my fellow underwriters I cordially hope not. But here we are, apparently."

The taxi was coming to a stop across the street from the Aquitaine, and in front of the theater where already a crowd was congregating. The avenue between the theater itself and the Common was filled with cabs and motor cars moving spasmodically about under the autocracy of a large mounted policeman whose voice easily defied the whirring motors. In the raw northeast wind there was the unpleasant smell and oily smoke of burnt-out gasolene.

Smith and Helen, disembarking at the curb, managed to avoid the worst of the mÊlÉe; and presently, when their coats were checked and out of the way, they reached their seats just as Christopher Sly began his opening speech. The prologue soon played itself through, and the house, now completely filled, burst audibly into speech, as though a long departed sense had been suddenly and miraculously restored. From all sides the swelling tide surged forth, and Helen listened for a moment before she herself spoke.

"You would certainly suppose that no one of them had been allowed to speak for the last five years, wouldn't you?" she asked.

"Oh, well," Smith answered, "perhaps every one of them has some one he's as glad to talk to as I am to you. Although, come to think of it, I hear several voices not possessed by my sex, and I don't know but that I would really rather listen to you."

"But you won't have the opportunity," the girl rejoined. "No, this is your party, and you must be as agreeable and entertaining as you possibly can. You may begin by telling me all about the actors to-night. Why does the star choose to play such a part as old Sly? It surely isn't the star part, is it?"

"It is the tradition—or years ago it used to be. Very few actors do it now; in fact, this is the first time I've seen the star play it for years. It's well done, too, and I haven't seen it well done since old George Clark had his last curtain. This man is a good man."

"He is indeed. I noticed in the Transcript he was English. Is she his wife? I gathered that she was."

"Yes. They've been playing together in London for several years now, and this is their first trip to America. I fancy that he is the real brains and ability of the combination, and her reputation seems mainly to rest on adding obedience and decorative embellishment to his effects. And she certainly is decorative, don't you think?"

"Yes—in a certain way. Tell me—do they always play Shakespeare? I was in London two years ago, but I don't recall hearing anything about them at that time. I should think I would if they'd been there."

"That's odd. I should surely have thought you'd have heard of them.
They've been well known over there for some years. I suppose, though,
they play the provinces, like every one else. No, they don't play
Shakespeare all the time, by any means; they couldn't do it and live."

"You mean that they couldn't get audiences? Why, some actors do. Mantell, for instance—and Sothern and Marlowe. They seem to go on year after year, and they must be at least moderately successful, or they wouldn't keep it up."

"Mantell ought to; he is a real actor—of the traditional school, of course—but great, all the same. It has always seemed to me that his Lear was one of the fine performances of the stage to-day. But even Mantell has to travel halfway across the country every season; he couldn't stay in New York—no, nor in intellectual and appreciative Boston, either. And I doubt whether a man would fare much better trying to play nothing but Shakespeare in London. No, this man can play virtually anything; he made his first big hit—in recent years, that is—playing Maldonado in Pinero's 'Iris.'"

"But go back to Sothern and Marlowe. They go on Shakespearing, world without end."

"If you can call it Shakespeare. I have never been able to see much in their way of doing it. Marlowe does some things well, but I confess that to see her now as Juliet is too great a strain on me. As for Sothern, he's a good romantic actor, but not a Shakespearean one."

"They play this—-'The Taming of the Shrew'—do they not? It seems to me they were here last spring."

"Quite likely. I think they try. One wet and miserable night I went to see. But remembering, as I did, the immortal Katherine of Rehan and the hardly less magnificent Petruchio of Skinner, I never should have gone. There was only one redeeming feature."

"What was that?"

"When the scene comes, watch how this man carries Katherine off. That's one great test. See if he backs her up onto a bench; see if he guides her premeditated fall to the precise center of equilibrium of his shoulders; see if he staggers painfully off with his knees tottering, almost flapping beneath him. By heavens, I have seen Skinner abduct a one hundred and sixty pound Katherine with as little effort as if she had been a wicker basket full of eggshells!"

"Is this dramatic criticism?" asked Helen, maliciously.

"Perhaps not of the academic brand," admitted Smith, laughingly; "but I believe it's good sound criticism just the same. If a man is going to play the swashbuckler, I like to see him able to swash his buckle. But seriously, I shouldn't have objected to that one bad piece of business if it hadn't seemed to me that the whole performance was out of key and wrong. But here's the curtain going up."

The curtain rose on Signor Baptista's house, and for the next half hour farce comedy supreme held the audience in its grasp.

"Katherine is very good, don't you think?" queried Helen, when once more the inane wanderings of the orchestra began to compete with the conversation.

"Very good indeed; I like her rages."

"I have always been sorry that I never saw Ada Rehan; every one who ever saw her says just as you do that no one could equal her."

"I'm sure no one could. I have seen her sit with her hands in her lap and tears—genuine tears—streaming down her cheeks for very rage when Petruchio harries her in this act. Heavens! but she was in a fine fury! Do you know that the only objection I ever had to this play was that I grew sorry for Katherine—sorry to see her proud neck bent to any yoke, so to speak."

"She is made finally to like it, though."

"Yes; she is—in the play. But I never could more than half believe that she actually liked it, for all that. Oh, I've no doubt it's wrong to prefer ungoverned wrath to sane and controlled sobriety; but she was so magnificent in her savagery that it seemed a shame she had to be tamed at all. Like the lions and the other animals that they train to jump through hoops, you miss something, you know; some splendid essence has evaporated, and I for one am sorry to watch it go."

"They tell me," said the girl, demurely, "that under the proper conditions and auspices young ladies are secretly glad to be subjugated."

"I suppose they have it naturally—cradle of the race, and all that sort of thing. Just the same, I still continue to prefer Katherine in her first state."

"You speak of her as though she were an etching."

"She suggests one, in that gown she wore in the last act—or would, except for the color."

"From that rather supercilious remark I should gather that you do not admire colored etchings."

"Hybrid affairs, don't you think?"

But before this subject could be pursued, the play once more resumed the center of the stage.

It is the immortal prototype of farce comedy, this play of the "Taming of the Shrew." In the hands of a lesser author it would have lost its comedy and degenerated purely into farce, restricting itself to more ignoble aims and to a more indulgent public. For farce, after all, is farcical, and the mood for its appreciation is not one which is sympathetic to any great or moving thing. And in the hands of interpreters less than intelligently fine, the play may still descend into the lower class; but this cannot be done without degrading it beyond any likeness to its real self.

Played rightly, however, Petruchio becomes not a brawler, not a kind of damn-my-eyes bully and braggart, but a practical idealist, a man who, happening by chance upon a creature of stupendous undirected power, sets himself to the direction of that power toward nature's, if not humanity's, ends. At the first he cares nothing for Katherine save that the rumor of her fire and spirit has pleased his wild fancy. And never is there the faintest hint of the sentimentalist about him; his is never the softness of the lover, but rather the careful prudence of the utilitarian. Yet he unstintedly admires Katherine; this is somehow felt to be so by his rather pompous implication that he would hardly be taking all this trouble about the woman were she not the makings of a royal mate, fit even for his sky-wide vision and heart and humor.

Perhaps in Elizabethan days most of this was lost; possibly during the author's own life the play assumed rather the wild gayety and license of a farce, and all the comedy had to wait in abeyance for the years to bring it into its own. Undoubtedly very few, if any, of the auditors of Shakespeare's time felt the compunction to which Smith confessed when the pride of a proud woman was seen dragged at a man's chariot wheel. What the women of those days thought about it is not so certain, but probably it was pretty much what they think to-day. Certainly Helen's expressed view was in approximate accordance with the presumably unexpressed opinion of Elizabethan ladies; and to this, in the intermission before the last act, Smith called her attention.

"Do you realize that your belief that Katherine was pleased at being conquered is not at all modern?—it's absolutely medieval."

"Well, we are all medieval—quite largely—are we not?"

"Possibly—in spots. When the girl of to-day is not overpoweringly advanced, perhaps she is quite far behind. But I should hardly have expected so distinctly a medieval opinion from you."

"Heavens! why not? I sound horribly Bostonian. Am I so hopelessly advanced that you can credit me with no human sentiments at all?"

"Well, that," said Smith, "was scarcely my thought."

"It sounded very much like it. However, I'm glad if I were mistaken."

"You know very well," said her companion, in a lower voice, "what I think of you. I think—"

"Oh, but I don't—really," Helen quickly parried. This was getting hazardous; the conversation must be switched at once. "No matter what you think of me, you are almost sure to be quite mistaken. But some things I am willing to confess. And one of them, which may be very primitive, is this—that just because I myself am not a wild, tigress-like creature is no indication that I cannot realize how she would feel. Is it, now?"

Smith said nothing for a long moment.

"I'm very glad that you feel that way about it," he said at last, rather to himself, however, than to her. And for the rest of the intermission he hardly spoke.

It was by this time about half-past ten. Here and there in the house a vacated seat showed that some hopeless and inveterate commuter had felt the call of his homeward street car or train. Never in Boston can an entire audience remain to the close of an entertainment; the lure of the thronging, all-pervading suburb is too strong. Helen, idly watching the exodus of these prudent or sleepy citizens, heard outside what might have been the warning bell that called them forth. She directed Smith's attention to the coincidence.

"They have to go home, you know; and that sounds like the signal they obey."

"It sounds to me like a fire engine," said her companion.

But further speculation was cut short by the sight of "A Road," where presently was to be seen the old man who was so oddly mistook for a "young, budding virgin," and on which soon beat the doubtful rays of the "blessed sun"—or moon, as the case might be. The intermission between the last two scenes of the act was a brief one only—the mere moment required for the rising of a scene curtain upon the banquet hall of Katherine's father. But during that little interval, two things came to Smith's notice; the first being the sound of vague noises in the outside world, and the second the peculiar behavior of a man in evening clothes at the extreme side of the stage aperture.

The seats which the two occupied were in the lower rows of the parquet, close under the right-hand stage box; and from where they sat it was thus possible to look into the wings on the opposite side of the stage. It was in the little opening between the proscenium and the curtain that the man in evening dress unexpectedly appeared. His appearance caught Smith's eye, and he watched curiously to see what was to follow. In his hand this person held a watch at which he glanced hastily, and then made two steps to come before the footlights. But just as he was nearly clear of the scenes, some one out of sight in the wing evidently summoned him, for he stopped short, and then turned back. After a brief colloquy, in which the watch was again consulted, he retired, and a moment later the curtain went up.

It seemed to Smith, watching closely, his curiosity aroused by this half-seen and wholly uncomprehended episode, that the actors in the last act were playing under the pressure of an odd excitement, a sort of suppressed anxiety and haste. It seemed to him they hurried through their lines, and the messengers to the brides came back with an electric promptness more to be desired in real life than in the circumstances of the play.

Finally the whole was done—all except Katherine's final address to the ladies, and this took but a brief moment. Smith, listening tensely to sounds from without, turned and spoke to Helen; and as the curtain fell they started quickly up the aisle. Their seats chanced to be open to the side aisle of the house, and a moment later Smith was handing his check to the cloakroom attendant, with a "Hurry up, please"—and a lubricant to celerity.

The applause was still to be heard in the theater, but after one brief bow the actors appeared no more, and the house began to empty. By this time Smith had reclaimed the wraps, and he and Helen, ready for the open air, moved out through the lobby and onto the sidewalk in front of the theater.

On the sidewalk there was a curious tone of constrained excitement. Evidently something much out of the ordinary had happened—or was happening. People stood in groups, staring northward up Tremont Street; and almost all the passers-by, as though impelled by a nameless, inexplicable force that could not be controlled, were hurrying in the same direction. An ambulance with clattering gong dashed by. The urgent crowds, pouring out of the big theater, were pressing Smith and Helen toward the curb.

"Come on," said the New Yorker, "something's up; let's get out of this." He took the girl's arm, and they crossed Boylston Street and made their stand on the opposite, less crowded walk that edged the Common.

On the sidewalk about them knots of people were eagerly talking, all looking northward as though drawn by the same magnetic force. And as Smith and his companion raised their eyes, they saw in the northern sky an ugly crimson glare that seemed to widen and grow brighter even in the moment as they watched it. From far up Tremont Street, carried by the wind, came an odd murmur of confused noises, and nearer by the sharper sounds of clanging bells and the clatter of galloping horses' feet on the pavement. The crowds were hurrying up the walk, and out in the street, where it was less crowded, men were running in the same direction. The trolley cars seemed to have been blocked; none were coming from the north.

"Great Scott! That must be something terrific!" Smith said, and he felt the beat of his heart perceptibly quicken.

But before he had time to make any further remark, from directly behind them came with the electric unexpectedness of a sharp thunder clap one loud cry, compelling, exigent, almost barbaric.

"Fire!" it said. "Fire!"