more than
the worth of their money. In a few moments the stage was crowded with
people from the audience, but both Jopp and O'Ryan had disappeared.

Among the visitors to the stage was Molly Mackinder. There was a meaning
smile upon her face as she said to Dicky Fergus:

"It was quite wonderful, wasn't it--like a scene out of the
classics--the gladiators or something?"

Fergus gave a wary smile as he answered: "Yes. I felt like saying Ave
Caesar, Ave! and I watched to see Artemis drop her handkerchief."

"She dropped it, but you were too busy to pick it up. It would have
been a useful sling for your arm," she added with thoughtful malice.
"It seemed so real--you all acted so well, so appropriately. And how you
keep it up!" she added, as he cringed when some one knocked against his
elbow, hurting the injured tendons.

Fergus looked at her meditatively before he answered. "Oh, I think we'll
likely keep it up for some time," he rejoined ironically.

"Then the play isn't finished?" she added. "There is another act? Yes, I
thought there was, the programme said four."

"Oh yes, there's another act," he answered, "but it isn't to be played
now; and I'm not in it."

"No, I suppose you are not in it. You really weren't in the last act.
Who will be in it?"

Fergus suddenly laughed outright, as he looked at Holden expostulating
intently to a crowd of people round him. "Well, honour bright, I don't
think there'll be anybody in it except little Conny Jopp and gentle
Terry O'Ryan; and Conny mayn't be in it very long. But he'll be in it
for a while, I guess. You see, the curtain came down in the middle of a
situation, not at the end of it. The curtain has to rise again."

"Perhaps Orion will rise again--you think so?" She laughed in satire;
for Dicky Fergus had made love to her during the last three months with
unsuppressed activity, and she knew him in his sentimental moments;
which is fatal. It is fatal if, in a duet, one breathes fire and the
other frost.

"If you want my opinion," he said in a lower voice, as they moved
towards the door, while people tried to listen to them--"if you want
it straight, I think Orion has risen--right up where shines the evening
star--Oh, say, now," he broke off, "haven't you had enough fun out of
me? I tell you, it was touch and go. He nearly broke my arm--would
have done it, if I hadn't gone limp to him; and your cousin Conny Jopp,
little Conny Jopp, was as near Kingdom Come as a man w