not in the least interested in her culinary accomplishments. It
offended his sense of the proprieties to see his divinity reduced to such
necessities, and he did not at all approve of her surroundings.

"When are you coming home?" he asked abruptly.

Eleanor's eyes dropped.

"That depends. I may be here all summer. I've had an engagement offered
me."

Quin's hands grew cold. "You don't mean that you're going to act for
_pay_?"

"Of course. Why not? That's what I've been working for."

"But I thought when you tried it out that you would change your
mind--that you wouldn't like it as much as you thought you would."

"But I _do_. I adore it! Nothing on earth can ever make me give it up!"

Quin's heart sank. "But I thought you'd had enough," he said. "I thought
you were homesick and lonesome."

"Who wouldn't have been? Look at the way they have treated me at home? Do
you know, none of them ever write to me any more?"

Quin tried not to look guilty, but the fact that he had counseled this
course of discipline weighed upon him.

"Haven't I written enough for the family?" he asked.

But she was not to be put off.

"They treat me as if I had done something disgraceful!" she said
indignantly. "My allowance is just half what it used to be, and yet I
have to pay all my own expenses. As for clothes, I never was so shabby in
my life. But I can stand that. It's grandmother's silence that I resent.
How can she pretend to care for me when she ignores my letters and treats
me with perfect indifference?"

Hurt pride quivered through the anger in her voice, and she looked at
Quin appealingly. Stung by his silence, she burst out afresh:

"Doesn't she ever ask about me? Has she let me go for good and all?"

"Wasn't that what you wanted?"

"You _know_ it wasn't! I did everything to get her consent. I'd--I'd give
anything now if she would look at things differently. Do you think, when
she finds out that I am actually on the stage, that she will ever forgive
me--that she will ever want me to come home again?"

That was the moment when Quin should have delivered Madam's ultimatum;
but, before he had the chance, a key was turned in the lock, and the next
instant Claude Martel's effulgent presence filled the room.

For a moment he stood poised lightly, consciously, his cane and gloves in
one hand, and his soft felt hat turned gracefully across the other. On
his ankles were immaculate white spats, and in his buttonhole bloss