families in the audience groan. Don't you think, Dicky dear, I can do
the dying act to perfection?"

"On the stage perfectly."

"You're a wretch," she shrieked with sudden rage. "You hint at the night
I took a colic and howled for the priest, when you know it was only the
whisky and the delirium. How dare you!"

"It slipped on me," he said humbly.

"The third act is simply beautiful: chapel of the convent, a fat priest
at the altar, all the nuns gathered about to hear the charges against
me, I am brought in bound, pale, starved, but determined; the trial, the
sentence, the curse ... oh, that scene is sublime, I can see Booth in it
... pity we can't have him ... then the inrush of my lover, the terror,
the shrieks, the confusion, as I am carried off the stage with the
curtain going down. At last the serene fourth act: another garden, the
villains all punished, my lover's arms about me, and we two reading the
flowers as the curtain descends. Well," with a sigh of pleasure, "if
that doesn't take among the Methodists and the general public out West
and down South, what will?"

"I can see the fire with which you will act it," said Curran eagerly.
"You are a born actress. Who but you could play so many parts at once?"

"And yet," she answered dreamily, giving an expressive kick with
unconscious grace, "this is what I like best. If it could be introduced
into the last act ... but of course the audiences wouldn't tolerate it,
dancing. Well," waking up suddenly to business, "are you all ready for
the _grand coup_--press, manager, all details?"

"Ready long ago."

"Here then is the program, Dicky dear. To-morrow I seek the seclusion of
the convent at Park Square--isn't _seclusion_ good? To-night letters go
out to all my friends, warning them of my utter loneliness, and dread of
impending abduction. In two or three days you get a notice in the papers
about these letters, and secure interviews with the Bishop if possible,
with McMeeter anyway ... oh, he'll begin to howl as soon as he gets his
letter. Whenever you think the public interest, or excitement, is at its
height, then you bring your little ladder to the convent, and wait
outside for a racket which will wake the neighborhood. In the midst of
it, as the people are gathering, up with the ladder, and down with me in
your triumphant arms. Pity we can't have a calcium light for that scene.
If there should be any failure ... of course there can't be ... then a
note of w