ould make people look at him, if he sat there
much longer. So he turned into a side street and leaned against a wall
for a little time, until he felt cool and refreshed. The evening was
warm, considering that the month was March, and the air that played upon
his face was soft and balmy. When he had recovered himself a little, he
noticed a group of young men lighting their cigarettes and loitering
about a door in the vicinity. Presently he made out that this was the
stage-door, and that these young men were waiting to see one of the
actresses come out. By the fragments of their talk that floated to him
on the still evening air in the quiet side street, Francis Trent
gathered that they spoke a good deal of Ethel Kenyon.

"So this is the last we shall see of pretty little Ethel," he heard one
man say. "Who's the man she's hooked, eh?"

Nobody seemed to know.

"Why did she go on the boards at all, I wonder? She's got money, and
belongs to a pre-eminently respectable family. Her brother's a doctor."

"Stage-struck," said another. "She'll give it up now, of course. Here's
her carriage. She'll be here directly."

"And the happy man at her heels, I suppose," sneered the first speaker.
"They say she's madly in love with him, and that he, of course, wants
her money."

"He's a cad, I know that," growled a younger man.

Impelled by an interest of which he himself did not know the source,
Francis Trent had drawn nearer to the stage door as the young fellows
spoke. He was quite close to it, when it opened at last and the pretty
actress came forth.

She was escorted by a train of admirers, rich and poor. Her maid was
laden with wraps and bouquets. The manager and the actor who played the
leading part were on either side of her, and Ethel was laughing the
merry, unaffected laugh of a perfectly happy woman as she made her
triumphal exit from the little theatre where she had achieved all her
artistic success. Another kind of success, she thought, was in store for
her now. She was to know another sort of happiness. And the whole world
looked very bright to her, although there was one little cloud--no
bigger than a man's hand, perhaps--which had already shown itself above
the horizon, and might one day cloud the noontide of her love.

Francis Trent was so absorbed in watching her lovely face, and in
wondering why her name had seemed so familiar, that he paid scant
attention to her followers. It was only as the carriage drove off