ezebel ... that was his
threat ... ugh!"

"He has waked up the whole crowd against you and frightened your
friends. If ever he tells the Clan-na-Gael about young Everard, your
life won't be worth a pin."

"With you to defend me?" ironically.

"I could only die with you ... against that crowd."

"And you would," she said with conviction, tears in her eyes. "My one
friend."

His cheeks flushed and his eyes sparkled at the fervent praise of his
fidelity.

"Well, it's all up with me," changing to a mood of gaiety. "The Escaped
Nun must escape once more. They will all turn their coldest shoulders to
me, absolutely frightened by this Irish crowd, to which we belong after
all, Dick. I'm not sorry they can stand up for themselves, are you? So,
there's nothing to do but take up the play, and begin work on it in dead
earnest."

"It's a bad time," Curran ventured, as she took a manuscript from a
desk. "But you know how to manage such things, you are so clever," he
hastened to add, catching a fiery glance from her eye. "Only you must go
with caution."

"It's a fine play," she said, turning the pages of the manuscript.
"Dick, you are little short of a genius. If I had not liked the real
play so well, playing to the big world this role of escaped nun, I
would have taken it up long ago. The little stage of the theater is
nothing to the grand stage of the world, where a whole nation applauds;
and men like the Bishop take it for the real thing, this impersonation
of mine. But since I am shut out ... and my curse on this Arthur Dillon
... no, no, I take that back ... he's a fine fellow, working according
to his nature ... since he will shut me out I must take to the imitation
stage. Ah, but the part is fine! First act: the convent garden, the
novice reading her love in the flowers, the hateful old mother superior
choking her to get her lover's note from her, the reading of the note,
and the dragging of the novice to her prison cell, down in the depths of
the earth. How that will draw the tears from the old maids of Methodism
all over the country!"

She burst into hearty laughter.

"Second act: the dungeon, the tortures, old superior again, and the
hateful hag who is in love with the hero and would like to wreak her
jealousy on me, poor thing, all tears and determination. I loathe the
two women. I denounce the creed which invents such tortures. I lie down
to die in the dungeon while the music moans and the deacons and their