ook in her eyes like that which you have seen in the eyes of a dog that
is waiting for a door to be opened.

Fifteen minutes passed. The look in the eyes of the leading lady began
to fade. Then a footstep sounded down the hall. The leading lady cocked
her head to catch it, and smiled blissfully. It was a heavy, comfortable
footstep, under which a board or two creaked. There came a big, sensible
thump-thump-thump at the door, with stout knuckles. The leading lady
flew to answer it. She flung the door wide and stood there, clutching
her kimono at the throat and looking up into a red, good-natured face.

Pearlie Schultz looked down at the leading lady kindly and benignantly,
as a mastiff might look at a terrier.

"Lonesome for a bosom to cry on?" asked she, and stepped into the room,
walked to the west windows, and jerked down the shades with a zip-zip,
shutting off the yellow glare. She came back to where the leading lady
was standing and patted her on the cheek, lightly.

"You tell me all about it," said she, smiling.

The leading lady opened her lips, gulped, tried again, gulped
again--Pearlie Schultz shook a sympathetic head.

"Ain't had a decent, close-to-nature powwow with a woman for weeks and
weeks, have you?"

"How did you know?" cried the leading lady.

"You've got that hungry look. There was a lady drummer here last winter,
and she had the same expression. She was so dead sick of eating her
supper and then going up to her ugly room and reading and sewing all
evening that it was a wonder she'd stayed good. She said it was easy
enough for the men. They could smoke, and play pool, and go to a show,
and talk to any one that looked good to 'em. But if she tried to amuse
herself everybody'd say she was tough. She cottoned to me like a burr to
a wool skirt. She traveled for a perfumery house, and she said she
hadn't talked to a woman, except the dry-goods clerks who were nice to
her trying to work her for her perfume samples, for weeks an' weeks.
Why, that woman made crochet by the bolt, and mended her clothes evenings
whether they needed it or not, and read till her eyes come near going
back on her."

The leading lady seized Pearlie's hand and squeezed it.

"That's it! Why, I haven't talked--really talked--to a real woman since
the company went out on the road. I'm leading lady of the 'Second Wife'
company, you know. It's one of those small cast plays, with only five
people in it. I play