"
said Mr. Farraday, with both faith and conviction in his voice. "You do
her an injustice, I say!"

"I'm not going to make her any request or offer, Denny. I can't," said
Mr. Vandeford, as he looked at the ice floating in his glass of tea.

"Of course," assented Mr. Farraday, with pained sympathy in his big
voice. "Would you like me to sound her out?"

"It's half your show; go ahead. She probably knows the situation and has
made her plans for the squeeze or double-cross, but you might try her
out," consented Mr. Vandeford, with a shrewd glance at Mr. Farraday.
"But I wish you wouldn't, Denny," he added, with a sudden glow of
affection in his eyes. Then he was restrained from further remonstrance
with Mr. Farraday by the thought of the author of "The Purple Slipper"
and her plucky sticking by the play through the thick and thin of her
disapproval of it. Again he offered up his big Jonathan as a sacrifice
in hopes of improving the prospects of "The Purple Slipper."

Mr. Farraday took Miss Hawtry into his confidence about the predicament
of finding a New York theater for his play, "The Purple Slipper," that
very evening, out on the veranda of the Beach Inn, where he had motored
her by request for dinner after her fatiguing rehearsals, which she had
made still more fatiguing for Mr. William Rooney.

"And Van sent you to ask me if I was going to stick by?" she asked, with
an effective quaver in her voice.

"He felt that we had no right to--to tie you up for indefinite weeks,"
said Mr. Farraday, constructing and temporizing at the same time.

"Did you think as little of me as he did?"

"No, by George, I knew you'd stick by us, and I said so!" Mr. Farraday
exploded with genuine emotion.

"Thank you. You know me after these few weeks better than he does after
all these years of--" And the Violet bent her head on Mr. Farraday's
nearest arm and began to weep softly. They were in a secluded corner of
the veranda of the Inn, and the Violet raged at herself for having
closed the complete seclusion of Highcliff for herself and her purposes
by renting it to the Trevors when she had gone to town to the rehearsals
of "The Purple Slipper."

And as good Dennis Farraday had no valid reason, either within or
without the law for not doing so, he put consoling and comforting arms
about her, and exposed his wide, silk-garbed shoulder to the rain of her
tears, which were not really raining. In his big heart there was the
same comfo