ion with
Lindenberg and then it'll be time for luncheon, and we'll go--"

"Mr. Vandeford, sir, Mr. Height would like to be in next," Mr. Meyers
interrupted his chief, just a second too soon, or rather just in time,
for if Mr. Vandeford had settled Miss Adair's luncheon plans in that
second the fate of "The Purple Slipper" might have been different.

"Show him in, Pops, and have the rest come back at two-thirty," Mr.
Vandeford commanded.

Mr. Gerald Height entered.

For five successive seasons on Broadway, with brief dazzling flights
into the provincial towns of Chicago, Boston, Washington, and
Philadelphia, Mr. Gerald Height had been the reigning beauty, and he
well deserved it. He was both slender and broad, with the grace of a
faun in young manhood, and with the deviltry of a satyr of more advanced
age in his yellow-green eyes, which tilted under high black brows that
were arched penciled bows across his forehead. His lips were full and
red, but chiseled like a youth's on a Greek frieze and they were mobile
and tender and hard by turns. His red-gold hair clung to his head in
burnished waves, and this head was set upon his broad, strong shoulders
as a flower is set on its parent plant, and his smile was a conquering
triumph. He poured it all over Miss Adair as Mr. Vandeford introduced
them, and took the chair opposite the producer and the author, with the
light from the window fully revealing all of his charms.

"New Hawtry play on, Height, by Miss Adair." Mr. Vandeford began the
conversation with his usual directness, and somehow his voice was
crisper than usual, for he seemed to get a shock from the radiance of
the stage beauty before him that pushed him, with his white-tinged black
hair, well forward into middle age.

"Dolph was telling me, and I ran through a synopsis he had on the
machine. Powder and furbelows!" As he spoke Mr. Height smiled at Miss
Adair with appreciation of herself and got in return a smile of the same
degree of appreciation of himself, both smiles not at all lost on the
psychologically aging Mr. Vandeford.

"That clause in your contract that lets you out of all costume plays is
perfectly good, you know," Mr. Vandeford heard himself saying when he
had intended to bluster that same clause aside if the favorite had tried
to stand on it, because he well knew that to see Gerald Height in silk
stockings and lace ruffles a quarter of a million women might be counted
upon to pay two dollars per