, I would
have found it quite natural. I saw you out front just before I began
playing. Somehow the simple directness of your expression--I hoped it
was anticipation--didn't seem to me characteristic of the stage. I
fancied that professional people were usually chary of enthusiasm."

"There are at least several sorts of stage people, and they're not all
gutter-children," she answered. "And then I haven't always been an
actress. It was thrust upon me--by necessity."

"When I play," the man assured her, "the faces out front always grow
vague to me. Tonight I saw yours when the others had gone. Then I lost
yours, too. I hope I didn't disappoint you."

She shook her head. "No," she said, but to the simple negative she added
nothing affirmative.

Paul Burton remained silent, half-piqued, and she, divining his thought,
smiled quietly to herself at his petulance, but finally she spoke slowly
and gravely: "You are an artist and until tonight you didn't know of my
existence. Anything I might say would mean little to you."

"Even," he impulsively demanded, "if it came from the last face that
faded?"

"If that is true," she responded, "I don't need to say anything, do I?"

To Paul's subtly attuned nature many things came in intuitive
impressions. Now he was keenly interested because this woman whom he had
met that night had told him only one thing about herself, that she
belonged to a world of which, in the personal sense, his world touched
only the least creditable segments. He felt that she would not, without
a much riper acquaintanceship, tell him anything more. Yet he felt with
conviction that her refinement was not only innate and true, but that of
an aristocrat; that her mind was not only quick, but cultivated. As
though dropping thoughtlessly into a more musical tongue he spoke next
in French, and she replied in that tongue as unconsciously as though she
had not noticed his change of language. But though he questioned
persistently and skilfully until the 'bus rolled under the arch, he
drew no further information from her as to herself, save that at present
she was unemployed, and that her days were filled with that most
cheerless of tasks, calling on managers.

He gathered that the distinguishing difference between triumph and
struggle on the stage was that the managers sent for the triumphant and
the struggling called uninvited.

As Paul helped Miss Terroll out of the 'bus and walked at her side the
short distan