he folded it.

"Charmian," he said, "I'm going to keep this letter. Do you know why?
Because I love the man who wrote it. Because I know that if ever I am
tempted again, by anyone or by anything, to prostitute such powers as
have been given me, I have only to look at this letter, I have only to
remember to-night, to be saved from my own weakness, from my disease of
weakness."

Still she did not look at him. But she noticed in his voice a sound of
growing excitement. And now she heard him get up from the sofa.

"But I believe, in any case, what has happened to-night would have cured
me. I've had a tremendous lesson to-night. We've both had a tremendous
lesson. Do you know that after the call at the end of the third act
Armand Gillier very nearly assaulted me?"

"Claude!"

Now she looked up. Claude was standing a little way from her by the
piano. With one hand he held fast to the edge of the piano, so fast that
the knuckles showed white through the stretched skin.

"Miss Mardon and he realized, as of course everyone else realized, my
complete failure which dragged his libretto down. The way the audience
applauded him when I left the stage told the story. No other comment was
necessary. But Gillier isn't a very delicate person, and he made
comments before Miss Mardon, Crayford, and several of the company,
before scene-shifters and stage carpenters, too. What he said was true
enough. But it wasn't pleasant to hear it in such company."

He came away from the piano, turned his back on her for a moment, and
walked toward the farther wall of the room.

"Oh, I've had my lesson!" she heard him say. "Miss Mardon said nothing
to you?"

He had turned.

"No," she said.

"Crayford said nothing?"

"Mr. Crayford was surrounded. He said, 'It's gone grandly. We've all
made good. I don't care a snap what the critics say to-morrow.'"

"And you knew he was telling you a lie!"

She was silent.

"You knew the truth, which is this: everyone made good except myself.
And everyone will be dragged down in the failure because of me. They've
all built on a rotten foundation. They've all built on me. And
you--you've built on me. But not one of you, not one, has built on what
I really am, on the real me. Not one of you has allowed me to be myself,
and you least of all!"

"Claude!"

"You least of all! Don't you know it? Haven't you always known it, from
the moment when you resolved to take me in hand, when you resolved to
guide