pany finds the
association so distasteful that she wants to get away!"

"Oh, no, Mr. Potter!" the stage-manager protested. "Not that at all!
She's very sorry to go. She asked me to tell you that she felt she was
giving up a great honour, and to thank you for all your kindness to
her."

"Go on!" Potter sternly bade him. "Why does she wish to leave my
company?"

"Why, it seems she's very much in love with her husband, sir, Vorley
Surbilt--"

"It doesn't seem possible," said Potter, shaking his head. "I know him,
and it sounds like something you're making up as you go along, Packer."

"Indeed, I'm not, Mr. Potter!" the stage-manager cried, in simple
distress. "I wouldn't know how."

"Go on!"

"Well, sir, it seems Vorly Surbilt was to go out with Mrs. Romaley, and
it seems that when Miss Lyston left rehearsal she drove around till she
found him--"

"Ah! I knew she was fooling me! I knew she wasn't sick! Went to drive
with her husband, and I pay the cab bill!"

"No, no, sir! I forgot to tell you; she wouldn't let me pay it. She took
him home and put him to bed--and from what I heard on Broadway it was
time somebody did! It seems they'd had an offer to go into a vaudeville
piece together, and after she got him to bed she telephoned the
vaudeville man, and had him bring up a contract, and they signed it,
though she had to guide Vorley's hand for him. Anyway, he's signed up
all right, and so is she. That's why she was so anxious about fixing it
up with us. I told her it would be all right."

Potter relapsed into his chair in an attitude of gloom. "So they've
begun to leave Talbot Potter's company!" he said, nodding his head with
bitter melancholy. "For vaudeville! I'd better go to farming at once; I
often think of it. What sort of an act is it that Miss Lyston prefers to
remaining with me? Acrobatic?"

"It's a little play," said Packer. "It's from the Grand Guignol."

"French!" Potter this simply as an added insult on the part of Miss
Lyston. "French!"

"They say it's a wonderful little thing," said Packer innocently, but
it was as if he had run a needle into his sensitive employer. Potter
instantly sprang up again with a cry of pain.

"Of course it's wonderful! It's French; everything French is wonderful,
magnificent, Supreme! Everything French is HOLY! Good God, Packer!
You'll be telling me what my 'technique' ought to be, next!"

He hurled himself again into the chair and moaned, then in a dismal
voice i