now,
the last being a picture card saying he would spend the winter in Egypt
with some well-known capitalists that wouldn't take no for an answer.
And did I believe he might now be wandering over the face of the earth,
sick and worn, and trying to get back to her; didn't I think some day he
would drag himself to her door, a mere wreck of his former self, to be
soothed at last on her breast? That was why she kept a light burning in
the front window of this here bungalow. He would know she had waited.

Well, I'd never said a word against Clyde except in conversation with
myself, and I wasn't going to break out now. I did go so far as to hint
that an article that had come out about her in this same magazine might
draw Clyde back a little quicker than the light in the window. The
article said her salary was enormous. I thought its rays might carry.

So I come home again and near a year later I get a telegram from Vida:
"Happy at last--my own has come home to me." I threw up my hands and
swore when I read this. The article had said her salary was seven hundred
and fifty dollars a week.

The next winter I run down to see the happy couple. Vida was now looking
a good forty, but Clyde was actually looking younger than ever; not a
line nor a wrinkle to show how he had grieved for her, and not a sign of
writer's cramp from these three picture cards he had sent her in five
years. She'd been afraid he'd come back worn to the bone.

But listen! By the time I got there Clyde was also drawing money. He'd
felt a little hurt at first to find his wife a common actress, and asked
to see her contract because you couldn't believe what you see in these
magazines. Then he'd gone round the lot and got to be an actor himself.
I gathered that he hadn't been well liked by the men at first, and two or
three other directors, when Vida insisted he should have a chance to act,
had put him into rough-house funny plays where he got thrown downstairs
or had bricks fall on him, or got beat up by a willing ex-prize fighter,
or a basket of eggs over his head, or custard pies in his perfect
features, with bruises and sprains and broken bones and so forth--I
believe the first week they broke everything but his contract.

Anyway, when he begun to think he wasn't meant for this art, who steps in
but this same director that had made such a beast of himself with Vida?
He puts Clyde into a play in which Vida is the mother and Clyde is the
noble son that take