to suspect. The
truth, when it came home, smote him like a blow; his hatred for the
author, which had been momentarily forgotten--momentarily lost in his
admiration of the artist--rose up anew, and he recognized this occult
spell which had held him breathless as the thrall of a vital reality,
not, after all, the result of inspired acting. Instantly he saw past the
make-believe, into the real, and what he saw caused him to utter a
smothered cry.

Leontine turned her face to him. "You fool!" she whispered through
livid lips.

Francis was a huge, leonine man; he rose now to his full height, as a
cat rises. But the drama drew his gaze in spite of himself; he could
not keep his eyes from his wife's face. Leontine plucked at his sleeve
and whispered again:

"You _fool_!"

Something contorted the actor's frame bitterly, and he gasped like a
man throttled. Leontine could feel his muscles stiffen.

But the two players were in Elysium. They had reached the climax of
the scene; Danton had told his love as only a great, starved love can
tell itself, and with swimming eyes and fluttering lids, with heart
pounding beneath her folded hands, Diane swayed toward him and his
arms enfolded her. Her body met his, yielded; her face was upturned;
her fragrant, half-opened lips were crushed to his in a fierce,
impassioned kiss of genuine ecstasy.

Up to this moment the intensity of Francis's rage had held him
paralyzed, despite the voice which was whispering so constantly at his
ear; but now, when he saw his wife swooning upon the breast of the man
who had played his part, he awoke.

"She knows he loves her," Leontine was saying. "You let him tell her
in front of your face. He has taken her away from you!"

Mrs. Phillips's eyes fell upon the working fingers of the man as they
rested beside her own. They were opening and closing hungrily. She
also saw the naked knife which lay upon the table, and she moved it
forward cautiously until the eager fingers twined about it. Then she
breathed, "Go!" and shoved him forward fiercely.

It was Irving Francis's cry of rage as he rushed upon them which
aroused Norma Berwynd from her dream, from her intoxication. She saw
him towering at Phillips's back, and with a scream she tried to save
the latter.

The husband's blow fell, however; it was delivered with all the savage
fury that lay in Irving Francis's body, and his victim was fairly
driven to his knees beneath it. The latter rose, then stag