n you--"

"No," he said, and went back to the beginning. "I have come--I wanted
to come--I wished to say that I wi--" He put forth a manful effort which
made him master of the speech he had planned. "I want to thank you for
the way you play your part. What I wrote seemed dry stuff, but when you
act it, why, then, it seems to be--beautiful!"

"Oh! Do you think so?" she cried, her eyes bedewing ineffably. "Do you
think so?"

"Oh--I--oh!--" He got no further, and, although a stranger to the
context of this conversation might have supposed him to be speaking of
a celebrated commonwealth, Mother of Presidents, his meaning was
sufficiently clear to Wanda Malone.

"You're lovely to me," she said, wiping her eyes. "Lovely! I'll never
forget it! I'll never forget anything that's happened to me all this
beautiful, beautiful week!"

The little kerchief she had lifted to her eyes was wet with tears not of
the stage. "It seems so foolish!" she said bravely. "It's because I'm so
happy! Everything has come all at once, this week. I'd never been in New
York before in my life. Doesn't that seem funny for a girl that's been
on the stage ever since she left school? And now I am here, all at
once I get this beautiful part you've written, and you tell me you like
it--and Mr. Potter says he likes it. Oh! Mr. Potter's just beautiful to
me! Don't you think Mr. Potter's wonderful, Mr. Canby?"

The truth about Mr. Canby's opinion of Mr. Potter at this moment was not
to the playwright's credit. However, he went only so far as to say: "I
didn't like him much yesterday afternoon."

"Oh, no, no!" she said quickly. "That was every bit my fault. I was
frightened and it made me stupid. And he's just beautiful to me to-day!
But I'd never mind anything from a man that works with you as he does.
It's the most wonderful thing! To a woman who loves her profession for
its own sake--"

"You do, Miss Malone?"

"Love it?" she cried. "Is there anything like it in the world?"

"I might have known you felt that, from your acting," he said, managing
somehow to be coherent, though it was difficult.

"Oh, but we all do!" she protested eagerly. "I believe all actors love
it more than they love life itself. Don't think I mean those that never
grew up out of their 'show-off' time in childhood. Those don't count,
in what I mean, any more than the 'show-girls' and heaven knows what not
that the newspapers call 'actresses'. Oh, Mr. Canby, I mean the people
wi