had started up with three, but gave one to a woman on the way. Miss
Jolivet had provided herself with a belt.

Scott started to put one of the life-preservers on Frohman, who
protested. Finally, with great reluctance, he acquiesced. There was no
belt left for Scott. Frohman insisted that he get one, whereupon the
soldier said:

"If you must die, it is only for once."

There was a responsive look and a whimsical smile on Frohman's face at
this remark. He kept on smoking. Then he started to talk about the
Germans. "I didn't think they would do it," he said. He was apparently
the most unruffled person on the ship.

The great liner began to lurch. Frohman now said to Miss Jolivet:

"You had better hold on the rail and save your strength."

The ship's list became greater; huge waves rolled up, carrying wreckage
and bodies on their crest. Then, with all the terror of destruction
about him, Frohman said to his associates, with the serene smile still
on his face:

"Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure of life."

Instinctively the four people moved closer together, they joined hands
by a common impulse, and stood awaiting the end.

The ship gave a sudden lurch; once more a mighty green cliff of water
came rushing up, bearing its tide of dead and debris; again Frohman
started to say the speech that was to be his valedictory. He had hardly
repeated the first three words--"Why fear death?"--when the group was
engulfed and all sank beneath the surface of the sea.

No situation of the thousands that he had created in the theater was so
vividly or so unaffectedly dramatic as the great manager's own exit from
the stage of life. Smilingly he had made his way through innumerable
difficulties; smilingly and with the highest heroism he met his fate.

The only survivor of the quartet that stood hand in hand on those
death-cluttered decks was Miss Jolivet, and it was she who told the
story of those last thrilling minutes.

Charles Frohman's body was recovered the next day and brought to
Queenstown. A fortnight later it reached New York. On the casket was the
American flag that the dead man had loved so well. Though princes of
capital, famous playwrights, and international authorities on law and
art went down with him, the loss of Frohman overshadowed all others. In
the eyes of the world, the loss of the _Lusitania_ was the loss of
Charles Frohman.

His noble and eloquent final words, so rich with courageous phi