to go.

"Oh, everything! She was in one of her devil's moods to-night; wanted
everything altered. She's a great artist, but as destructive as a
monkey. She must pull everything to pieces as a beginning. So she's
pulling her part to pieces now."

"How did Claude take it?"

"Very quietly. Tell the truth I think he's a bit tired out to-night."

"Alston," Charmian said, stopping in the corridor, "I won't go home
without him. No, I won't. We must stick to Claude, back him up till the
end. Take me into the stalls. I'm going to sit where he can see us."

"He'll send us away."

"Oh, no, he won't!" she replied, with determination.

The Madame Sennier spirit was upon her in full force.

CHAPTER XXX

It was nearly four o'clock when they left the theater. Jacob Crayford,
Mr. Mulworth and Jimber were still at work when they came out of the
stage door into the cold blackness of the night and got into the
taxi-cab. Alston said he would drive with them to the hotel and take the
cab on to his rooms in Madison Avenue. But when they reached the hotel
Claude asked him to come in.

"I can't go to bed," he said.

"But, Claudie, it's past four," said Charmian.

"I know. But after all this excitement sleep would be out of the
question. Come in, Alston, we'll have something to eat, smoke a cigar,
and try to quiet down."

"Right you are! I feel as lively as anything."

"It would be rather fun," said Charmian. "And I'm fearfully hungry."

At supper they were all unusually talkative, unusually, excitedly,
intimate. Instead of "quieting down" Claude became almost feverishly
vivacious. Although his cheeks were pale, and under his eyes there were
dark shadows, he seemed to have got rid of all his fatigue.

"The climate here carries one on marvellously," he exclaimed. "When I
think that I wanted to go to bed just before you came, Alston!"

He threw out his hand with a laugh. Then, picking up a glass of
champagne, he added:

"I say, let us make a bargain!"

"What is it, old chap?"

"Let us--just us three--have supper together after the first
performance. I couldn't stand a supper-party with a lot of
semi-strangers."

"I'll come! Drink to that night!"

They drank.

Cigars were lit and talk flooded the warm red room. Words rushed to the
lips of them all. Charmian lay back on the sofa, with big cushions piled
under her head, and Claude, sometimes walking about the room, told them
the history of the night in the theat