a
fashion; could you not build a home of your own?"

"Always to be identified as the actress? To be looked at curiously, to
be annoyed by those who are not my equals, and only tolerated by those
who are? No! I want a man who will protect me from all these things,
who will help me to forget some needless follies and the memory that a
hundred different men have made play-love to me on the other side of
the footlights."

"Some men marry actresses to gratify their vanity; does this man love
you?"

"Yes; and he will make me what Heaven intended I should be--a woman.
Oh, I have uttered no deceit. This man will take me for what I am."

"And you have come here to-night to ask me to forget, too?" There was
no bitterness in his tone, but there was a strong leaven of regret.
"Well, I promise to forget."

"It was not necessary to ask you that," generously. "But I thought I
would come to you and tell you everything. I did not wish you to
misjudge me. For the world will say that I am marrying this good man
for his money; whereas, if he was a man of the most moderate
circumstances, I should still marry him."

"And who might this lucky man be? To win a woman, such as I know you
to be, this man must have some extraordinary attributes." And all at
once a sense of infinite relief entered into his heart: if she were
indeed married, there would no longer be that tantalizing doubt on his
part, that peculiar attraction which at one time resembled love and at
another time was simply fascination. She would pass out of his life
definitely. He perfectly recognized the fact that he admired her above
all other women he knew; but it was also apparent that to see her day
by day, year by year, his partner in the commonplaces as well as in
the heights, romance would become threadbare quickly enough. "Who is
he?" he repeated.

"That I prefer not to disclose to you just yet. What are you going to
call your new play?" with a wave of her hand toward the manuscript.

"I had intended to call it Love and Money, but the very name presages
failure."

"Yes, it needs the cement of compatibility to keep the two together."

"Well, from my heart I wish you all the best luck in the world," he
said, the absence of any mental reservation in his eyes. "You would
make any man a good wife. If I weren't a born fool--"

She leaned toward him, her face suddenly tense and eager.

"--if I weren't a born fool," with a smile that was whimsical, "I'd
have married