n who did it? There she
is before you," and Dicky waved his hand grandiloquently.

"Lillian Gale!" I almost gasped the name.

"The same," rejoined Dicky, and turned again to his program, while I
sat in amazed horror, with all my oldtime theories crumbling around
me.

For I had read of Lillian Gale and her married troubles. I knew that
Harry Underwood was her second husband and that she had been divorced
from her first spouse after a scandal which has been aired quite fully
in the newspapers. She had not been proved guilty, but her skirts
certainly had been smirched by rumor. According to the ideas which had
been mine, Dicky should have shrunk from having me ever meet such a
woman, let alone planning to have me on terms of intimacy with her.

What should I do?

When the curtain went down on the first act I turned to Dicky happily,
eager to hear his comments and filled with a throng of thoughts to
wipe away any remembrance from his mind of the unhappiness that had
promised to mar my evening, and which I feared he had read in my
eyes. But just as I opened my lips to speak, he interrupted me with a
startled exclamation:

"Sit down, Lil. Hello, Harry."

Dicky was on his feet in an instant and Lillian Gale was seated next
to me with Dicky and her husband leaning over us before I had fully
realized that the woman, the thought of whom had so disturbed my
evening, was so close to me.

"I want you to know Mrs. Graham, Harry," Dicky said.

I glowed inwardly at the note of pride in his voice and looked up to
meet a pair of brilliant black eyes looking at me with an appraising
approval that grated. He was a tall, good looking chap, with an air of
ennui that sat oddly on his powerful frame. I felt sure that I would
like Lillian Gale's husband as little as I did the woman herself.

I was glad when the lights dimmed slowly, that the second act
was about to begin. Mrs. Underwood rose with a noisy rustling of
draperies. She evidently was one of those women who can do nothing
quietly, and turning to me said, cordially:

"Be sure to wait for us in the lobby when this is over. We have a
plan," and before I had time to reply she had rustled away to her own
seat, her tall husband following at some little distance behind her,
but apparently oblivious of her presence as if she were a stranger.

I didn't much enjoy the second act, even though I realized that it was
one of the best comedy scenes I had ever seen, both in its lines a