side, but
he led the way in silence down the stairs to the box that he had taken
for the season.

"And now," she exclaimed with a pout, as she leaned back in the corner,
"my little reign is over! You will sit in the front seat and you will
look at Louise, and feel Louise, and your eyes will shine Louise, until
the moment for your escape comes, when you can go round to the back and
meet her; and then you will try to make excuses to get rid of me, so
that you can drive her home alone!"

"Rubbish, Sophy!" he answered, as he drew a chair to her side. "You know
quite well that I can't sit in the front of the box, for the very
prosaic reason that I haven't changed my clothes. We shall both have to
linger here in the shadows."

"Well, there is some comfort in that, at any rate," Sophy confessed. "If
I become absolutely overcome by my emotions, I can hold your hand."

"You had better not," John observed. "The stage manager has his eye on
you. If his own artists won't behave in the theater, what can he expect
of the audience?"

Sophy made a little grimace. "If they stop my three pounds a week," she
murmured, "I shall either have to starve or become your valet!"

The curtain was up and the play in progress--a work of genius rather in
its perfectly balanced development and its phraseology than in any
originality of motive. Louise, married as an ingenue, so quickly
transformed into the brilliant woman of society poking mild fun at the
unsympathetic husband to whom she has been sold while still striving to
do her duty as a wife, easily dominated every situation. The witty
speeches seemed to sparkle upon her lips. While she was upon the stage,
every spoken sentence was listened to with rapt attention. Graillot,
seated as usual among the shadows of the opposite box, moved his head
appreciatively each time she spoke, as if punctuating the measured
insolence of her brilliance.

Exquisitely gowned, full of original and daring gestures, she moved
about the stage as if her feet scarcely touched the boards. She was full
of fire and life in the earlier stages of the comedy. She heaped mild
ridicule upon her husband and his love-affairs, exchanged light sallies
with her guests, or parried with resourceful subtlety the constant
appeals of the man she loved.

The spell of it all, against which he had so often fought, came over
John anew. He set his chair back against the wall and watched and
listened, a veritable sense of hypnotism c