n an ecstasy. Was ever any one so beautiful, so
clever, so altogether marvellous as darling Barbara? This was as it
should be; and we who knew the girl, knowing that she had never before
seen a play, nor the inside of a theatre, thought her pathetic; but
Morgan Bennett, who did not know her, merely thought her pretty and
wondered how he could get to know her. The very flash of his
opera-glasses was interested and eager; and when I proudly took the girl
behind the scenes to compliment Mrs. Bal after the first act, I was far
from surprised to see Bennett appear almost immediately in the same
mystic region. Barrie and I were with Barbara in a little room which she
intended to use as a boudoir for the week of her engagement; and when an
employe of the theatre announced Mr. Bennett, she looked annoyed. For an
instant she hesitated visibly; but as he was probably aware that she had
visitors, there was no good excuse for sending him away. Part of Mrs.
Bal's success with men consists in knowing what kind of snubs they will
meekly endure from a lovely spoiled woman, what kind they neither forget
nor forgive. She sent word to Mr. Bennett that he might come in.

He accepted the invitation promptly, and Barbara, with quick presence of
mind, introduced him to her little "sister Barribel."

"Barribel! That's a pretty name," he said, shaking hands with Barrie,
his eyes on her face. "Miss Barribel Ballantree, I suppose."

"You may suppose so!" returned Mrs. Bal, laughing.

"I saw this young lady sitting out in front," he went on, instead of
congratulating the actress at once on the success of the first act,
which had "gone" splendidly with the large audience. "I said to myself
there must be a relationship between you two: and I was wondering."

"Well, you needn't bother to wonder any more," broke in Mrs. Bal, very
gay but slightly shrill. "I must have spoken to you about Barrie?"

"'Barrie' is what you call her?" said he, smiling at the girl. "That's a
very nice pet name, and suits her, somehow. You surely never spoke of
your sister to me. I shouldn't have forgotten." He added the last words
with a look intended as a compliment for Barrie; and any woman wishing
to monopolize his attention exclusively might have been pardoned for
thinking that he had looked at her more than often enough in the
circumstances. In his big way he is attractive, to certain types of
women, very attractive indeed, and I could understand that his millions