Dan Blair had not been back of the scenes at the Gaiety since his first call on the singer. Indeed, though he had told the duchess he pitied Miss Lane, he had not been able to approach her very closely, even in his own thoughts. When she first appeared on his horizon his mind was full of the Duchess of Breakwater, and the singer had only hovered round his more profound feelings for another woman. But Letty Lane was an atmosphere in Dan’s mind which he was not yet able to understand. There was so little left that was connected with his old home, certainly nothing in the British Isles, excepting Ruggles, and to the young man everything from America had its value. Decidedly the nice girl of whom he had spoken to Gordon Galorey, the print-frocked, sun-bonneted type, the ideal girl that Dan would like to marry and to spoil, had not crossed his path. The Duchess of Breakwater did not suggest her, nor did any of the London beauties. Dan’s first ideal was beginning to fade.

He left Osdene Park on protest and returned the same night to London, and all the way back to town tried to register in his mind, unused to analysis, his experience with the Duchess of Breakwater on this last visit.

He had experienced his first disappointment in the sex, and this disappointment had been of an unusual kind. It was not that he had been turned down or given the mitten, but he had seen one woman turn another down. A woman had been mean, so he put it, and the fact that the Duchess of Breakwater had refused to lend a moral hand to the singer at the Gaiety hurt Dan’s feelings. Then, as soon as his enthusiasm had calmed, he saw what a stupid ass he had been. A duchess couldn’t mix up with a comic opera singer, of course. Still, he mused, “she might have been a little nicer about it.”

The education his father had given him about women, the slender information he had about them, was put to the test now; the girl he had dreamed of, “the nice girl,” well, she would have had a tenderer way with her in a case such as this! Back of Dan’s hurt feelings, there was a great deal on the Duchess of Breakwater’s side. She had not done for herself yet. She hadn’t fetched him nearly up to the altar for nothing, and back of his disapproval, there was a long list of admirations and looks, memories of many tÊte-À-tÊtes and of more fervent kisses which scored a good deal in the favor of Dan’s first woman. The Duchess of Breakwater had gone boldly on with Dan’s unfinished education, and he really thought he loved her, and that he was in honor bound to see the thing through.

That evening, once more in the box he had taken all to himself, he listened to Mandalay, carried away with the charm of the music and carried away by the singer. He was in the box nearest the stage and seemed close to her, and he imagined that under her paint he could see her pallor and how thin she was. Nothing, however, in her acting or in her voice revealed the least fatigue. Blair had obtained a card of entrance to the theater, which permitted him to circulate freely behind the scenes, and although as yet the run of his visits had not been clear, this night he had a purpose. Dan stood not far from the corridor that led to Letty Lane’s room, and saw her after her act hurriedly cross the stage, a big white shawl wrapping her slender form closely. She was as thin as a candle. Her woman Higgins followed closely after her, and as they passed Dan, Letty Lane called to him gaily:

“Hello, you! What are you hanging around here for?”

And Dan returned: “Don’t stand here in the draft. It is beastly cold.”

“Yes, Miss,” her woman urged, “don’t stand here.”

But the actress waited nevertheless and said to Dan: “Who’s the girl?”

“What girl?”

“Why, the girl you come here every night to see and are too shy to speak to. Everybody is crazy to know.”

Letty Lane looked like a little girl herself in the crocheted garment her small hands held across her breast. Dan put his arm on her shoulder without realizing the familiarity of his gesture:

“Get out of this draft—get out of it quick, I say,” and pushed her toward her room.

“Gracious, but you are strong.” She felt the muscular touch, and his hand flat against her shoulder was warm through the wool.

“I wish you were strong. You work too darned hard.”

Her head was covered with the coral cap and feather. Dan saw her billowy skirt, her silken hose, her little coral shoes. She fluttered at the door which Higgins opened.

“Why haven’t you been to see me?” she asked him. “You are not very polite.”

“I am coming in now.”

“Not a bit of it. I’m too busy, and it is a short entr’acte. Go and see the girl you came here to see.”

Dan thought that the reason she forbade him to come in was because Prince Poniotowsky waited for her in her dressing-room. It was his first jealous moment, and the feeling fell on him with a swoop, and its fangs fastened in him with a stinging pain. He stammered:

“I didn’t come to see any girl here but you. I came to see you.”

“Come to-morrow at two, at the Savoy.”

But before Dan realized his own precipitation, he had seized the door-handle as Letty Lane went within and was about to close her room against him, and said quickly:

“I’m coming right in now.”

“Why, I never heard of such a thing,” she answered sharply, angrily; “you must be crazy! Take away your hand!” And hers, as well as his, seized the handle of the door. Her small ice-cold hand brought him to his senses.

“I beg your pardon,” he murmured confusedly. “Do go in and get warm if you can.”

But instead of obeying, now that the rude young man withdrew his importuning, Miss Lane’s hands fell from the knob, and close to his eyes she swayed before him, and Dan caught her in his arms—went into her room, carrying her. He had been wrong about Prince Poniotowsky; save for Higgins, the room was empty. The woman, though she exclaimed, showed no great surprise and seemed prepared for such a fainting spell. Dan laid the actress on the sofa and then the dresser said to him:

“Please go, sir; I can quite manage. She has these turns often. I’ll give her brandy. She will be quite right.”

But Dan hesitated, looking at the bit of humanity that he had laid with great gentleness on the divan covered with pillows. Letty Lane lay there, small as a little child, inanimate as death. It was hard to think the quiet little form could contain such life, fire and motion, or that this senseless little creature held London with her voice and grace. Higgins knelt down by Letty Lane’s side, quiet, capable, going about the business of resuscitating her lady much as she laced the singer’s bodice and shoes. “If you would be so good as to open the door, sir, and send me a call page. They’ll have to linger out this entr’acte or put on some feature.”

“But,” exclaimed Blair, “she can’t go back to-night?”

“Lord, yes,” Higgins returned. “Here, Miss Lane; drink this.”

At the door where he paused, Dan saw the girl lifted up, saw her lean on Higgins’ shoulder, and assured then that she was not lifeless in good truth, he went out to do as Higgins had asked him. In a quarter of an hour the curtain rose and within half an hour Dan, from his box, saw the actress dance to the rajah her charming polka to the strains of the Hungarian Band.