decided Mr. Dennis Farraday, positively.

"How'll you make her?"

"You've got to do it. She's got awe of you planted six feet deep in her
soul. Anybody could see that. You've got to send her."

"Can't be done," growled Mr. Vandeford in desperation. "Wish I were
married to six respectable women and then I could make 'em all chaperon
her in turns, while I feed her fool play to the public."

"You'd only have to strike out the syllable 'un' before 'married' by a
little trip to the City Hall to have one mighty fine wife," Mr. Farraday
said with a straight look into Mr. Vandeford's eyes, which was so deeply
affectionate that it gave him the privilege of opening the door to any
holy of holies.

"Violet and I are all off, Denny, and it ought never to have been on,"
was the straight-out answer he got to his venture, an answer that Miss
Hawtry would have felt smoothed greatly the path of her present
adventures in life.

"Poor girl! I knew she was hurt somehow, but I thought--forgive me, old
man." With a tenderness in his voice that both alarmed and puzzled Mr.
Vandeford his big Jonathan closed the subject and snapped a lock on it.
"Come over to the Astor with me for a cold bite."

"Goes!"

The cool, green-leafed Orangery at the Hotel Astor is the oasis in the
desert days of rehearsal for all early fall plays, and beside its
tinkling fountain and under its tinkling music can be found at luncheon
all of the theatrical profession who are not around the corners at the
equally cool, white-tiled Childs restaurants. Beside and around the
green wicker tables careers of managers, artists, actors, playwrights,
electricians, and scenic artists are made and unmade in the twinkling of
some bright or heavy-lidded eye. Each and every feaster watches each and
every other feaster with the quick, wary eye of a jungle being consuming
its food before it is snatched from him or her; and gossip reigns over
all.

"Gee, look at the swell dame Gerald Height has got cornered over there!"
exclaimed Mazie Villines, as she looked up from a frapped melon, which a
"heavy" moving picture man was "buying" for her consumption. "The way
them society queens do fall fer him!"

"Put your blinkers on, Mazie, put 'em on, and don't take a shy at Height
over my knife and fork! Let him eat what he pays for and me the same,"
growled the huge man. "I let you put up that drunk Howard for a week,
and that's rope enough."

"I'd like to feed him the green in his '