?"

"Quite. Wally is the only nervous one. Who is coming to dinner, Max?"

"Eighteen people. Christiansen for one."

"Oh, good!"

"When do you go to the theatre?"

"Seven."

"Come along, Wally, she ought to rest. For all our sakes, Isabelle, keep
your head and don't make a fool of yourself."

"Much obliged," said Isabelle. "I take it you are wishing me luck."

Wally kissed her cheek, and they went out.

"Poor dears," mused Isabelle, "it will be hard for them to accommodate
themselves to my importance."

Then she gave herself up to dreams of triumph until it was time to go.
There was excitement in the air at the theatre. Voices were high, and
eyes were bright. She was greeted loudly from open doors, as she went to
her dressing room. Since the papers had boomed her, her position in the
company had changed. Every one was dressed early and little knots of
people discussed the big house, the critics, the chances of success for
the play. It was a "strong" play, and, so far, the season had offered
only trifles. It was too soon to know yet what the public appetite
craved.

"You got to change its meat. When it's fed up on crooks, ye got to give
it sex; when it turns against that, ye got to try comedy. _My_ opinion
is, this is a comedy season," said the gentleman who played the
butler--a part even more inconspicuous than Isabelle's. They all
inquired the state of her pulse, and marvelled at her calm.

"She'll be a hit, or she'll be rotten," was the butler gentleman's
comment.

"She can't do much in that maid's part."

"_Can't_ she? Remember the time they tried to bury Ethel Barrymore in a
maid's part, when she was a kid? Took the show right away from John
Drew!" said the authority.

Finally the curtain was up, and the play was on. Isabelle's initial
appearance was late in the first act, when Cartel was building carefully
the foundations of plot for the subsequent superstructure. Isabelle
entered with a visitor's card in the middle of an important speech by
Cartel. She had one line. To his intense fury, at sight of her the house
burst into applause, and he had to halt his oration until she disappeared.

The play was a domestic drama, with the popular old-fashioned man, wed
to the popular-new-fashioned woman who wants to "live her life." In the
first act, the husband's point of view and character are expounded and
contrasted with the woman's.

In a daring second act, the husband--on the casual invitation of an