with Shiel, and left
him.

CHAPTER XVIII

STAGE THREE

The weeks sped by. Gladys Martin went on the Stage, and thanks to
beauty and influence, rather than to talent--though in the latter
respect she was certainly not wanting--she became an immediate
success. Her photos, some taken alone, and some with Bromley Burnham,
occupied a conspicuous place in all the weekly illustrateds, and in
innumerable shop windows. People talked of her as they do of all
actresses. Some said her father was a broken-down peer; some, a needy
parson, and some, a policeman! Some said the Duke of Warminster was
madly in love with her; others that Seaton Smyth, the notorious
Cabinet Minister, was pining for a divorce on her behalf, and others,
that she was seldom seen off the stage--she was entertaining the King
of the Belgians.

"I've met her," Lilian Rosenberg said to Shiel, as they stopped one
evening to gaze at Gladys's portraits outside the Imperial Theatre.
"She came to our place to have a dream interpreted, and I thought
nothing of her. I don't admire her the least bit in the world, do
you?"

"I do," Shiel replied, rather sharply.

"Why, you sound quite angry," Lilian Rosenberg laughed. "One would
think you knew her. I wonder if Bromley Burnham is very much in love
with her! He looks as if he were in these photographs! Do you think it
possible for a man and woman to make love to each other every night on
the stage, like they do, without one or other of them being affected?"

"I really couldn't say," Shiel replied. "I'm no authority on such
matters--they don't interest me in the least."

But this was an untruth--they did interest him--and very much, too. He
seldom, indeed, thought of anything else. Had Gladys fallen in love
with Bromley Burnham? Could she resist the fascinations of so handsome
a man? He did not, of course, pay any heed to the gossip that coupled
her name with dukes and other notorieties. He knew Gladys too well for
that, but when he saw her thus photographed, clasped in the arms of
Bromley Burnham, he had grave apprehensions. He longed to see her--to
ask her if she were still free; but his every attempt failed. She
always avoided him, and there was no other alternative save to further
his scheme--his scheme for crushing the Sorcery Company--and to hope
for the best.

And in these dark days of his life, when he was tormented by the
yellow demon of jealousy, and at the same time endured hunger, Lilian
Ros