an or a woman."

His eyes blazed so that the long lashes lowered over the stars in hers,
and she saw the curtain fall on the last scene in a mist of tears. The
onrush of applause that raised the curtain half a dozen times was
confused in her by the pounding of Mr. Vandeford's heart back of her
shoulder and the echo in her own.

"Fifty weeks and then some, Van," she heard the young press-agent
declare, in business-like congratulation.

"Sure-fire hit," Mr. Rooney pronounced, as he spat on the stage floor
behind the curtain. "Rehearsals at ten to-morrow to tighten up, Fido. Me
for the hay." Miss Adair had gone back of the footlights to cast her
gratitude into his arms, and he had failed to notice her appearance in
any way at all, but had spat and gone on his autocratic way. Perhaps in
the New World of the Theater, stage-managers may be able to afford to be
human, perhaps not.

Mr. Vandeford's supper-party to the cast of "The Purple Slipper" and the
friends from New York who had come down to see its try-out, lasted until
two o'clock in the morning, but when it was over neither the moon, which
was as full that night as Mr. Kent had become by coffee and cigars, nor
Dago Italiana had retired, and both stayed on their jobs out at the
south end of the board walk, where boards melt off into sand and ocean
and sky.

Mr. Godfrey Vandeford had got about two thirds of the way along the
painful stretch of autobiography, with which he was inflicting agony on
himself by recounting to Miss Adair, when she raised her gray eyes to
his with the faith and reverence still at their average level, even
slightly higher, and stopped his punishment.

"I understand exactly why people like you and Miss Hawtry don't marry
each other," she astonished him by saying in all calmness. "Mr. Height
explained it all to me the other day. Actors and actresses have
peculiar temperaments that fly together when they ought not to, and fly
apart when they ought to stay together. I know just how that is because
I feel--"

"Hush!" commanded Mr. Vandeford, as he laid his hands on the shoulders
of his author, who was standing close to him, with the moonlight full on
her clear-cut, high-bred face, and he gave her a savage shake. "The
whole crazy bunch will have to have law and order shot into 'em or the
theatrical profession will follow horse-racing to the devil. If they
don't give up unfaith and the double-cross Broadway will open some night
and swallow them