g no mean strategist herself. The
worst of being ill was that it made so many things and people look base.

She was always afraid of being disillusioned. She wished to believe that
everything for sale in Vanity Fair was worth the advertised price. When
she ceased to believe in these delights, she told herself, her pulling
power would decline and she would go to pieces. In some way the chill of
her disillusionment would quiver through the long, black line which
reached from the box-office down to Seventh Avenue on nights when she
sang. They shivered there in the rain and cold, all those people, because
they loved to believe in her inextinguishable zest. She was no prouder of
what she drew in the boxes than she was of that long, oscillating tail;
little fellows in thin coats, Italians, Frenchmen, South-Americans,
Japanese.

When she had been cloistered like a Trappist for six weeks, with nothing
from the outside world but notes and flowers and disquieting morning
papers, Kitty told Miles Creedon that she could not endure complete
isolation any longer.

"I simply cannot live through the evenings. They have become horrors to
me. Every night is the last night of a condemned man. I do nothing but
cry, and that makes my throat worse."

Miles Creedon, handsomest of his profession, was better looking with some
invalids than with others. His athletic figure, his red cheeks, and
splendid teeth always had a cheering effect upon this particular patient,
who hated anything weak or broken.

"What can I do, my dear? What do you wish? Shall I come and hold your
lovely hand from eight to ten? You have only to suggest it."

"Would you do that, even? No, _caro mio_, I take far too much of your
time as it is. For an age now you have been the only man in the world
to me, and you have been charming! But the world is big, and I am missing
it. Let some one come tonight, some one interesting, but not too
interesting. Pierce Tevis, for instance. He is just back from Paris. Tell
the nurse I may see him for an hour tonight," Kitty finished pleadingly,
and put her fingers on the doctor's sleeve. He looked down at them and
smiled whimsically.

Like other people, he was weak to Kitty Ayrshire. He would do for her
things that he would do for no one else; would break any engagement,
desert a dinner-table, leaving an empty place and an offended hostess, to
sit all evening in Kitty's dressing-room, spraying her throat and calming
her nerves, using