der that she could so coolly
have played him false. But the thing was not to be questioned. She--and
Baird--had made a fool of him.

As he left the theatre, the crowd about him commented approvingly on the
picture: "Who's this new comedian?" he heard a voice inquire. But "Ain't
he a wonder!" seemed to be the sole reply.

He flushed darkly. So they thought him a comedian. Well, Baird wouldn't
think so--not after to-morrow. He paused outside the theatre now to
study the lithograph in colours. There he hurled Marcel to the antlers
of the elk. The announcement was "Hearts on Fire! A Jeff Baird Comedy.
Five Reels-500 Laughs."

Baird, he sneeringly reflected, had kept faith with his patrons if not
with one of his actors. But how he had profaned the sunlit glories
of the great open West and its virile drama! And the spurs, as he had
promised the unsuspecting wearer, had stood out! The horror of it,
blinding, desolating!

And he had as good as stolen that money himself, taking it out to the
great open spaces to spend in a bar-room. Baird's serious effort had
turned out to be a wild, inconsequent farrago of the most painful
nonsense.

But it was over for Merton Gill. The golden bowl was broken, the silver
cord was loosed. To-morrow he would tear up Baird's contract and hurl
the pieces in Baird's face. As to the Montague girl, that deceiving jade
was hopeless. Never again could he trust her.

In a whirling daze of resentment he boarded a car for the journey home.
A group seated near him still laughed about Hearts on Fire. "I thought
he'd kill me with those spurs," declared an otherwise sanely behaving
young woman--"that hurt, embarrassed look on his face every time he'd
get up!"

He cowered in his seat. And he remembered another ordeal he must
probably face when he reached home. He hoped the Pattersons would be in
bed, and walked up and down before the gate when he saw the house
still alight. But the light stayed, and at last he nerved himself for a
possible encounter. He let himself in softly, still hoping he could gain
his room undiscovered; but Mrs. Patterson framed herself in the lighted
door of the living room and became exclamatory at sight of him.

And he who had thought to stand before these people in shame to receive
their condolences now perceived that his trial would be of another but
hardly less-distressing sort. For somehow, so dense were these good
folks, that he must seem to be not displeased with his own