whatsoever!_" His own hand was trembling with excitement. The
eagerness of delight with which he listened to every word uttered by the
low-toned and gentle voice was almost painful; and yet he knew it not.
He was as one demented. This was Gertrude White--speaking, walking,
smiling, a fire of beauty in her clear eyes; her parted lips when she
laughed letting the brilliant light just touch for an instant the
milk-white teeth. This was no pale Rose Leaf at all--no dream or
vision--but the actual laughing, talking, beautiful woman, who had more
than ever of that strange grace and witchery about her that had
fascinated him when first he saw her. She was so near that he could have
thrown a rose to her--a red rose, full blown and full scented. He
forgave the theatre--or rather he forgot it--in the unimaginable delight
of being so near her. And when at length she left the stage, he had no
jealousy of the poor people who remained there to go through their
marionette business. He hoped they might all become great actors and
actresses. He even thought he would try to get to understand the
story--seeing he should have nothing else to do until Gertrude White
came back again.

Now Keith Macleod was no more ignorant or innocent than anybody else;
but there was one social misdemeanor--mere peccadillo, let us say--that
was quite unintelligible to him. He could not understand how a man could
go flirting after a married woman; and still less could he understand
how a married woman should, instead of attending to her children and her
house and such matters, make herself ridiculous by aping girlhood and
pretending to have a lover. He had read a great deal about this, and he
was told it was common; but he did not believe it. The same authorities
assured him that the women of England were drunkards in secret; he did
not believe it. The same authorities insisted that the sole notion of
marriage that occupied the head of an English girl of our own day was as
to how she should sell her charms to the highest bidder; he did not
believe that either. And indeed he argued with himself, in considering
to what extent books and plays could be trusted in such matters, that in
one obvious case the absurdity of these allegations was proved. If
France were the France of French playwrights and novelists, the whole
business of the country would come to a standstill. If it was the sole
and constant occupation of every adult Frenchman to run after his
neighbor