tervelt, this is my answer, and it is final. I will not take the
play off, and I shall expect you to work with your best energy to make
it a success. One night does not prove _Lillian_ a failure. The audience
to-night was not up to it, but that condemns the auditors, not the play.
I do not wish to hear any more argument. Good-night."

The astounded and crestfallen manager bowed his head and went out.

Helen turned to the others. "I am tired of this discussion. One would
think the sky had fallen--from all this tumult. I am sorry for you, Mr.
Royleston, but you are no deeper in the slough than Miss Collins and the
rest, and they are not complaining. Now let us sit down to our supper
and talk of something else."

Royleston excused himself and went away, and only Hugh, Miss Collins,
Miss Carmichael, and the old mother drank with the star to celebrate the
first performance of _Lillian's Duty_.

"I have had a letter from Mr. Douglass," Helen said, softly, when they
were alone. "Poor fellow, he is absolutely prostrate in the dust, and
asks me to throw him overboard as our Jonah. Put yourself in his place,
Hugh, before speaking harshly of him."

"I don't like a coward," he replied, contemptuously. "Why didn't he face
the music to-night? I never so much as set eyes on him after he came in.
He must have been hiding in the gallery. He leads you into this crazy
venture and then deserts you. A man who does that is a puppy."

A spark of amusement lit Helen's eyes. "You might call him that when you
meet him next."

Hugh, with a sudden remembrance of the playwright's powerful frame,
replied, a little less truculently: "I'll call him something more fit
than that when I see him. But we won't see him again. He's out of the
running."

Helen laid her cheek on her folded hands, and, with a smile which
cleared the air like a burst of sunshine, said, laughingly: "Hugh,
you're a big, bad boy. You should be out on the ice skating instead of
managing a theatre. You have no more idea of George Douglass than a bear
has of a lion. This mood of depression is only a cloud; it will pass and
you will be glad to beg his pardon. My faith in him and in _Lillian's
Duty_ is unshaken. He has the artistic temperament, but he has also the
pertinacity of genius. Come, let's all go to bed and forget our hurts."

And with this she rose and kissed her mother good-night.

Hugh, still moody, replied, with sudden tenderness: "It hurt me to see
them go out o