. You are a--an
angel-woman, but you can play a she-devil like an inspired creature. You
don't mean that you seriously contemplate ruining _my_ reputation and
your own--by--"

"I mean," said the angel-woman, sipping her sauterne, "that I don't care
a flip for your reputation or mine--the weather's too hot--but I'm not
going to trail through another slimy play! No; I'll go into the movies
first!"

Camden twisted his collar; he felt as if he were choking. "Heaven
forbid!" was all he could manage.

"I want woods and the open! I want a character with a little, twisted,
unawakened soul to be unsnarled and made to behave itself. I don't mind
being a bit naughty--if I can be spanked into decorum. But when the
curtain goes down on my next play, Camden, the women are going out of
the theatre with a kind thought of me, not throbbing with
disapproval--good women, I mean!"

And then, because Camden was a bit of a sentimentalist with a good deal
of superstition tangled in his make-up, he took Truedale's play out of
his pocket--it had been spoiling the set of his coat all the
evening--and spread it out on the table that was cleared now of all but
the coffee and the cigarettes which the angel-woman--Camden did not
smoke--was puffing luxuriously.

"Here's some rot that a fellow managed to drop on me to-day. I didn't
mean to undo it, but if it has an out-of-door setting, I'll give it a
glance!"

"Has it?" asked the angel, watching the perspiring face of Camden.

"It has! Big open. Hills--expensive open."

"Is it rot?"

"Umph--listen to this!" Camden's sharp eye lighted on a vivid sentence
or two. "Not the usual type of villain--and the girl is rather unique.
Up to tricks with her eyes shut. I wonder how she'll pan out?" Camden
turned the pages rapidly, overlooking some of Con's best work, but
getting what he, himself, was after.

"By Jove! she doesn't do it!"

"What--push those matches this way--what doesn't she do?" asked the
angel.

"Eternally damn the man and claim her sex privilege of unwarranted
righteousness!"

"Does she damn herself--like an idiot?" The angel was interested.

"She does not! She plays her own little role by the music of the
experience she lived through. It's not bad, by the lord Harry! It's got
to be tinkered--and painted up--but it's original. Just look it over."

Truedale's play was pushed across the table and the angel-woman seized
upon it. The taste Camden had given her--like caviar--sharp