u have forgiven the others. Can't you
forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive," he quietly told her. "You saw a chance and
you took it. In the same conditions, I suppose any other girl would have
done the same thing. It's quite all right, and I wish you the best luck
in the world. We'll try to make the new play worthy of you."

He held out his hand, but she shrank away from it.

"You're _not_ going to forgive me!" she cried. "And--I don't blame you!"

She walked away from him, and, sinking into the chair Epstein had so
recently vacated, sat bending forward, her elbow resting on its broad
arm, her chin in her hand. It was the pose he knew so well and had loved
so much.

"I don't blame you," she repeated. "What I was doing was--horrible. I
knew it all the time, and I tried to get out of it the second day. But
they wouldn't let me."

She waited, but he did not speak.

"Can't you understand?" she went on. "I've hated it from the start. I've
hated deceiving you. You see--I--I didn't know you when I began. I
thought it was just a good joke and awfully interesting. Then, when I
met you, and you were so stunning, always, I felt like a beast. I told
them I simply couldn't go on, but they coaxed and begged, and told me
what it would mean to you as well as to me-- They made a big point of
that."

He took his favorite position by the mantel and watched her as she
talked.

"Don't feel that way," he said at last. "You were playing for big
stakes. You were justified in everything you said and did."

"I hated it," she repeated, ignoring the interruption. "And to-day, this
afternoon, I tried to tell you everything. Don't you remember?"

"Yes, I remember." He spoke as he would to a child, kindly and
soothingly. "Don't worry about it any more," he said. "You'll forget all
this when we begin rehearsing."

She sprang to her feet.

"I don't want the play!" she cried passionately. "I wouldn't appear in
it now under any conditions. I don't want to go on the stage. It was
just a notion, an impulse. I've lost it, all of it, forever. I'm going
back home, to my own people and my--own Virginia, to--to try to forget
all this. I'm going to-morrow."

"You're excited," said Laurie, soothingly. He took her hands and held
them. "I've put you through a bad half-hour. You understand, of course,
that I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been made to realize that your
whole thought, throughout this experiment, has been of the play, and
on