hope you are hungry. Let us
take our places. Hugh is fairly used up this morning. Do you see that
bunch of papers?" she asked, pointing at a ragged pile. "After
breakfast we take our medicine."

"No," he said, firmly. "I have determined not to read a line of them. To
every word you speak I will listen, but I will not be harrowed up by a
hodgepodge of personal prejudices written by my enemies before the play
was produced or in a hurried hour between the fall of the curtain and
going to press. I know too much about how these judgments are cooked up.
I saw the faults of the play a good deal clearer than did any of those
sleepy gentlemen who came to the theatre surfeited and weary and
resentful of your change of programme."

She looked thoughtful. "Perhaps you are right," she said, at last. "I
will not read them. I know what they will say--"

"I thought the play was very beautiful," said Mrs. MacDavitt. "And my
Nellie was grand."

Helen patted her mother's hand. "We have one loyal supporter, Mr.
Douglass."

"Ye've many more, if the truth were known," said the old mother,
stoutly, for she liked young Douglass.

"I believe that," cried Helen. "Did you consider that as I change my
roles and plays I must also, to a large extent, change my audience? The
people who like me as _Baroness Telka_ are amazed and angered by your
play. They will not come to see me. But there are others," she added,
with a smile at the slang phrase.

"I thought of that, but not till last night."

"It will take longer to inform and interest our new public than any of
us realized. I am determined to keep _Lillian_ on for at least four
weeks. Meanwhile you can prune it and set to work on a new one. Have you
a theme?"

"I have a scenario," he triumphantly answered. "I worked it out this
morning between two o'clock and four."

She reached her hand to him impulsively, and as he took it a warm flush
came into her face and her eyes were suffused with happy tears.

"That's brave," she said. "I told them you could not be crushed. I knew
you were of those who fight hardest when closest pressed. You must tell
me about it at once--not this minute, of course, but when we are alone."

When Hugh came in a few minutes later he found them discussing a new
automobile which had just made a successful trial run. The play became
the topic of conversation again, but on a different plane.

Hugh was blunt, but not so abusive as he had declared his intention to
b