"I don't care if it is. I want to get back to New York."

"You Irish are all crazy!" he remarked, with the Hebraic patience of one
whose gods are all outraged. "She don't care for money, she likes New
York," he mocked her.

Her friends came back in numbers after the play. She was invited to sup,
to dine, to play bridge, to take tea. She refused to go anywhere until
she was rested after the strain of the first night, and when they had
all departed, she hurried into her street clothes. All at once it came
to her that there was no need of this rush. Paul would not be pacing the
corridor to-night. With a sigh and a sudden acute sense of loneliness,
she led the way to the hotel.

As she stopped for her key the clerk told her that New York would call
her at midnight. She hurried to her room, her heart beating, and as she
opened the door the telephone rang. She flew to it.

"Yes, yes, _Paul_!" she said, and scarcely knew her own voice. "Yes,
great success. I was wonderful, thanks to you ... yes, I was so happy
about the flowers and the telegram; it sang in my playing. Tell me about
your day. What happened?" She listened attentively. "Everything all
right, then. Empty?... You mean you miss me? I can't be sorry for that,
Playmate."

They talked on for several minutes. When good-nights were said, Bob
crossed the room to lay off her cloak, smiling. She caught sight of
herself in the mirror.

"Why, Barbara Garratry," she said, staring at herself. "How can you look
like that after a Boston opening?" Then she laughed.

Friends absolutely closed in on her after the first few days. She had
all she could do to protect herself.

The days were crowded with little things, people and teas. She found
herself too restless to work. She could not analyze her state of mind at
all. Nothing interested her, people seemed unusually stupid and
bromidic, she lost interest in the play she was writing and found the
one she was playing a bore. She knew that her health was perfect and she
could not make it out.

In her search for something to divert her mind and serve as an escape
from over-devoted admirers, she discovered a public municipal bath
house, where she could go to swim. Clad in the shapeless blue garment
provided by the bath house--Bob called it "the democratic toga"--she
would shut her eyes and dive off the spring board, pretending that she
was going into the mountain pool in the dark. The strength she had
stored up in the hills sto