tumes, and the property man was checking over and over each demand of
each and every person, from the fresh rose Mr. Kent was to give to Dame
Carrington to the mud that was to be splashed every day upon Mr. Gerald
Height's riding-boots for his last and triumphant entry. Miss Adair had
lost all sense of the play as a whole and only thought of it as
distracting and distracted bits. She had, of course, never witnessed the
scenes between Miss Hawtry and Mr. Height, as they were still rehearsed
in private and would be until the night of the dress rehearsal on Monday
at Atlantic City. This was well.

But one thing she kept with her through the whole strain; the sense of
being one with Mr. Godfrey Vandeford and that one working for pure joy.

As for Mr. Vandeford, his eyes sank back under his brows, and Mr. Adolph
Meyers was with him far into every night.

"How does the booking stand now, Pops?" Mr. Vandeford demanded on the
Thursday night before the opening Tuesday.

"Atlantic City next week, Wilmington and New Haven the next if need be,
and--it is to Syracuse or Toronto we must jump, Mr. Vandeford, sir,"
answered Mr. Meyers, with beads of perspiration on his high brow.

"Violet will never make that jump, Pops. Her contract closes the day we
open in Atlantic City, and there we'll close, too, if we haven't New
York right in sight. What'll we do?"

"It is many a show closed before it opened," Mr. Meyers said, with a
wary look at Mr. Vandeford.

"This show is going to open and never close--until it's had a thorough
Broadway try-out, Pops," said Mr. Vandeford, quietly. "Anything from Mr.
Breit?"

"Nothing to hope for a Broadway opening before November first."

"I'll pass the question up Friday, and then see what I'll do," Mr.
Vandeford said slowly as if turning his back for the moment to
something that stared him in the face.

All Friday morning he worked with "The Purple Slipper" machine with a
bitter defiance in his eyes that made Miss Adair keep close to his side,
though she didn't understand her reason for doing so.

"Is anything the matter?" she questioned, with her gray eyes stricken
with alarm. The fear for her play in those gray eyes sent Mr. Vandeford
into desperate measures. He asked Miss Hawtry to go to luncheon with
him, and she graciously accepted.

"Where do we get in on Broadway after Atlantic City, Van?" she asked as
soon as she was served with her iced melon.

"We get in all right," he parried, put