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hat I had, not that it was much, hoping to marry her and take her back with me.... But that is not what would make my Emmy happy _now_. What she needs is to go on in this perfect little doll's house, this little haven, thinking of me, and praying for me, and tending her flowers, and mourning like a dove in its tree because we are parted." It was exactly what Aunt Emmy needed. I could not have put it into words, but this strange man had done so. "You will not speak," he said, "but you agree with me for all that. I had to make sure you agreed. Your confirmation is all I wanted, and now I have it." It was not that I would not speak. I could not speak. I was thinking of the room in that horrid wooden house which he had built for her. After a few minutes he went on quietly: "I think the thing for me to do is to be ruined, only partially, of course, not enough to make her miserable, and to hurry back to Australia without her at once for the time being, and from there to write regularly by every mail, nice letters (they cannot be forbidden now); but never to come back any more. A bank has just failed in Australia in which I had money. The situation can be arranged." I looked away from him. "I owe it to her," he said. THE UNDERSTUDY The only form of human love that atrophies the heart is the love of self. Marion Wright sat in the centre seat of the third row of the stalls, shivering in spite of her sables. It was the dress rehearsal of her first play, that play on which she had spent herself to the verge of mental bankruptcy. The nauseating presentiment of failure, the distaste and scorn of her own work, were upon her, which the artist never escapes, which return as acutely after twenty successes as in the hours of suspense before the first essay. Marion's surroundings were not of a nature to reassure her. To her unaccustomed eyes the empty, dimly lit theatre, swathed and bandaged in dust-sheets, looked ominously dreary. Had any one ever laughed in this shrouded desert? The long lines of stalls huddled under their wrinkled coverings stretched before and behind her. The boxes were shapeless holes of pallid grime. It was as if a London fog had trailed its dingy veil over everything. There was a fog outside as well, and the few electric lights which had been turned up peered blurred and yellow. An immense ladder, three ladders tied together, reared itself from the stalls to the roof. Somet
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