id sense of power. "When she met me she was
queen of the city; now she is an object of pity."

This feeling of guilt, this egotism deepened each night as he watched
the city's pleasure-seekers pace past the door. It was of no avail to
say that the few who entered were of higher type than the many who
passed. "The profession which Helen serves cannot live on the wishes of
the few, the many must be pleased. To become exclusive in appeal is to
die of hunger. This is why the sordid, commonplace playwrights and the
business-like managers succeed while the idealists fail. There is an
iron law of limitation here."

"That is why my influence is destructive," he added, and was reassured
in the justice of his resolution to take himself out of Helen's life.
"Everything I stand for is inimical to her interests. To follow my path
is to eat dry crusts, to be without comfort. To amuse this great,
moiling crowd, to dance for them like a monkey, to pander to their base
passions, this means success, and so long as her acting does not smirch
her own soul what does it matter?" In such wise he sometimes argued in
his bitterness and wrath.

From the brilliant street, from the gay crowds rolling on in search of
witless farce-comedy and trite melodrama, the brooding idealist climbed
one night to the gallery to overlook a gloomy, empty auditorium.
Concealing himself as best he could, he sat through the performance,
tortured by some indefinable appeal in Helen's voice, hearing with cold
and sinking heart the faint applause from the orchestra chairs which
used to roar with bravos and sparkle with the clapping of white and
jewelled hands.

There was something horrifying in this change. In his morbid and
overwrought condition it seemed murderous. At last a new resolution set
his lips in a stern line, and when the curtain fell on the last act his
mind was made up. "I will write one more play for the sensation-loving
fools, for these flabby business men and their capon-stuffed wives. I
will mix them a dramatic cocktail that will make them sit up. I will
create a dazzling role for Helen, one that will win back all her
old-time admirers. They shall come like a roaring tide, and she shall
recoup herself for every loss--in purse and prestige."

It was this night, when his face was white with suffering, that Helen
caught a glimpse of him hanging across the railing of the upper balcony.

He went no more to see her play. In his small, shabby room in a