thor of "The Purple Slipper,"
and looked at her with a demand for an immediate answer in his little,
black, driving eyes.

"She can say 'There's chaff in my heart; guard the fire in yours,'" Miss
Adair supplied offhand.

"That hands it to him, and a good double meaning, too," Mr. Rooney
approved. "Go ahead, Height, but don't get this lady mixed with the
other kind. Remember, she lives at the ladies Christian home." The laugh
that greeted this sally was an uproar that added to the dash and quick
fire of the big scene, which Miss Adair and Mr. Rooney had so quickly
expurgated and reconstructed between them.

At seven o'clock the play had been entirely run through, and Fido had
the result in his prompt copy and was beginning to rapidly write it into
their lines for each of the cast.

"One half hour to get breakfast and Miss Herne's back hair down," Mr.
Rooney said, with the callousness of a slave-driver. "Then if you run
through again fairly well we'll be done by noon, and everybody can hit
the hay for six hours."

Mr. Vandeford watched his author's proud little head droop on the box
rail in front of her, and with his face very white he motioned Mr.
Farraday to come to her. After his degrading the night before at the
hands of Miss Hawtry, he felt that he would be unable to endure the pain
of the repulsion he felt sure he would find in her eyes if she ever
looked at him again.

But his summons of Mr. Farraday failed in peremptoriness, for that big,
bonny gentleman nodded to him, then stood in the wing to catch Miss
Lindsey in his arms and bear her away to immediate nourishment. In the
excitement of the last few hours a domesticity had grown up between Mr.
Farraday and Miss Lindsey that it would have taken months to build in a
world less hectic than that in which they were then living.

Their courtship had been brief, and consisted in one question, asked by
Mr. Farraday while Miss Lindsey stood in the wings waiting for a
moderated, impassioned cue from Mr. Height, and answered by her as she
responded to him and the call of her stage lover at the same moment.

"When will you marry me?"

"When 'The Purple Slipper' goes on Broadway."

In the circumstances it was natural that Mr. Dennis Farraday should take
Miss Lindsey for a reminiscent beefsteak and mushrooms during the only
free half hour she would have for either him or food in the ensuing day,
and to fail to heed Mr. Vandeford's summon.

Thus deserted, Mr. Van