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hing was being done to the lights on the ceiling. Tired-looking men in overcoats were creeping into the orchestra, thrusting white faces under screened lights, and rustling papers on stands. Marion had the theatre to herself except for a few whisperers in the back row of the stalls--her maid, an attendant, one or two actors of minor parts who did not appear in the first act, and a few costumiers. It was fiercely cold, and she had not slept for several nights. She wished she had never been born. A magnificent-looking woman, wearing her chin tilted slightly upwards, was squeezing herself and an immense fur coat towards her along the stalls, and sat down beside her. This was Lenore, the leading lady. She turned a colourless, beautifully shaped face and heavy eyes with bistred lashes towards Marion. "I suppose we shall have to wait about two hours for Mr. Montgomery," she said apathetically. "Does he always keep people waiting?" "Always, since he made his great hit in _The Deodars_." There was a moment's silence. "Mr. Montgomery does not like his part," said the leading lady tentatively, hanging a hand in an interminable white glove over the back of the stall in front of her. Marion's face hardened. "It's not a sympathetic part," she said, "but an artist ought not to think of that." "No, it's not sympathetic," acquiesced Lenore, turning up her fur collar. "It seems as if the principal man's part never _is_ sympathetic in a woman's play. If the central figure is a woman, the men grouped round her are generally prize specimens of worms. I wonder why. In your play, now, Maggie's everything! George does not count for much, as far as I can see. Even Maggie had not much use for him." "She loved him," said the author, with asperity. "Did she? Sometimes when I'm playing Maggie to Montgomery's George I wonder if she did. And I just wonder now and then if I would have thrown him over as she did. I mean for good and all. It seems to me--if she'd cared for him, cared _really_, you know----" "She did," interposed Marion harshly. "Wouldn't she have quarrelled and made it up again? Would she have been quite so hard on him?" "Yes, she would. Think, just think what she must have suffered in the third act, the scene at the Savoy, when, loving him as she did, trusting him as she did, she saw him come in with----" "Well, I expect you know best," said Lenore, whose interest seemed to flag suddenly; "any
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