is on I _can_ be the captain
of my soul--and you can be pretty sure I will."

CHAPTER XV

TWO DISCOVERIES

Bob Maxwell was standing before the fire. He turned abstractedly and set
his untouched glass on the mantel shelf.

"You've got a grouch, Bobby," lectured the young actress, "at a time
when you ought to be all puffed up and chesty. Aren't you glad we made
good in the same piece? It would be nice of you to say so."

He turned on her a face strangely drawn and his words came swiftly in
agitation.

"Triumph, did you say? Don't you know that it's only when you get the
thing you've worked for, that you realize it's not worth working for?
That's not triumph--it's despair. Triumph means laying your prize at
somebody's feet--" he broke off with a sort of groan. "To hell with such
success!" he burst out with sudden bitterness. "To hell and damnation
with the whole of it!"

For a long while the girl held him in a steady scrutiny. They had both
forgotten me, silent in my corner. Her cheeks paled a little, and when
finally she reiterated her old question, her steady voice betrayed the
training of strong effort.

"Who is she?"

"Listen, Grace," he said. "I've got to talk to some one. You have come
here, so you let yourself in for it.... Ten years ago I was reporting on
a paper for a few dollars a week. It was a long way from Broadway. There
was a dusty typewriter and dirty walls decorated with yellowed
clippings--but ... There was wild young ambition and all of life ahead.
_That_ was living."

"Who was she?" insistently repeated the actress, when he paused.

"What can it matter how big a play one writes," demanded the author, "if
he presents it to an empty house? The absence of one woman can make any
house empty for any man. I'd give it all, to hear her say once more--"
He broke off in abrupt silence.

"To hear her say what, Bobby?" prompted Grace Bristol, softly.

"Well," he answered with a miserable laugh, "something she used to say."

"I suppose, Bobby--" the girl spoke very slowly, and a little wistfully,
too--"I suppose it wouldn't do any good to--to hear any one else say
it?"

He shook his head.

"Do you remember, Grace," he went on, "the other evening, when we were
sitting in the cafe at the Lorillard and the orchestra in another room
was playing 'Whispering Angels'? The hundred noises of the place almost
drowned it out, yet we were always straining our ears to catch the
music--and when there