u're not fit to touch
them--not worthy of them--that they're thousands of times too good for
you but--oh, Elinor, Elinor, I just can't stand it any more! Do you love
me, Elinor, because I love you as I never loved anything else in the
world?"

The young Chinese lady doesn't seem to be quite certain of just what is
happening. She has started to speak three times and stopped each time
while the harlequin has been waiting with the suspense of a man hanging
from Heaven on a pack-thread. But then she does speak.

"I think I do, Ted---oh, Ted, I know I do," she says uncertainly--and
then Oliver, if he were there, would have stepped forward to bow like an
elegant jack-knife at the applause most righteously due him for perfect
staging, for he really could not have managed better about the kiss
that follows if he had spent days and days showing the principals how to
rehearse it.

And then something happens that is as sudden as a bubble's going to
pieces and most completely out of keeping with any of Oliver's ideas
on how love should be set for the theatre. For "Oh, what am I _doing_?"
says the harlequin in the voice of a man who has met his airy double
alone in a wood full of ghosts and seen his own death in its face, and
he crumples into a loose bag of parti-colored silks, his head in his
hands. [Illustration: The Young Chinese Lady is Shrinking Inside
Her Silks] It would be nothing very much to any sensible person, no
doubt--the picture that made itself out of cold dishonorable fog in the
instant of peace after their double release from pain. It was only the
way that Elinor looked at him after the kiss--and remembering the last
time he saw his own diminished little image in the open eyes of a girl.

The young Chinese lady is shrinking inside her silks as if frost had
touched her--all she knows is that she doesn't understand. And then
there is the harlequin looking at her with his face gone suddenly
pinched and odd as if he had started to torture himself with his own
hands; and the fact that he will not touch her, and what he says.

"Oh, Elinor, darling. Oh, I can't tell you, I can't."

"But what _is_ it, Ted?"

"It's this--it's what I meant to tell you before I ever told you I loved
you--what I haven't any right not to tell you--and I guess that the fact
I didn't, shows pretty well what sort of a fellow I am. Do you really
think you know about me, dear--do you really think you do?"

"Why, of course, Ted." The voice is