rison brought her
a well-known actor from the legitimate who wanted to rest and make a
corpulent salary in the two-a-day, and she succeeded in fitting him to a
sketch. It brought her fresh laurels and a larger audience and a better
royalty, and she told herself stoutly (as Rodney Harrison had first told
her) that it didn't matter in the least that he wanted a good deal of
broad and rather edgy comedy and, failing to get it from her, had put it
in himself, and, therefore, had his name on the program as joint author.
Every one would know that the clean and clever little story was her own
and the edginess his. She took great pains to write this to Sarah and to
repeat it often to herself and she glowed under Rodney Harrison's pride
in her and the cordial respect of the booking offices and the dazzled
admiration of the boarding house.

But one humid evening, when all the vigor and backbone seemed to have
melted out of the world, Michael Daragh asked her to ride with him on the
top of the bus to Grant's Tomb and walk back along the river, and
presently they sat down on the damp grass like a shop girl and her
gentleman friend and looked off across the river, shining in the
moonlight, and after a silence Jane said pleasantly, with her new
admixture of aloofness and indulgence, "Well, Michael Daragh, I know you
haven't marched me here merely to revel in the beauty of the evening.
It's more a case of--'thank you,' said the oysters, 'we've had a pleasant
run!' You may as well begin. I'm feeling very peaceful and very
prosperous. Who is the poor thing you're concerned with now?"

And the big Irishman, a dull flush mounting in his lean cheeks, faced her
squarely. "The poor thing I'm concerned with now, God save you kindly, is
yourself, Jane Vail!"

She hadn't any words in that first dazed moment. She sat staring at him,
her great eyes wide.

"It's yourself, surely," he said, sternly, "the way you've wandered from
the high road and lost yourself in a bog."

She was still too startled and bewildered to be angry. "I haven't the
vaguest idea what you mean. Have you?"

"I have, indeed, Jane Vail. The thing you've just written and sold,
now,--are you proud in your heart of it?"

"Certainly I am," she said stoutly, her voice beginning to warm with
resentment. "It isn't a classic, of course, but it's a thoroughly
workmanlike, snappy little act, sure to get over, and----"

He shook his head. "Lost in the bog you are, and sinking dee