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