o
close her own.

"How are your mother and father?" He asked, holding the door open, while
she turned for her fan, thus concealing a slight embarrassment.

"They are as usual," she answered. "Father expects to see you after the
play. You will come in for a little supper, will you not?"

"That sounds alluring," he responded lightly, his quick eye remarking,
as she came toward him, the dainty femininity of her loveliness, that
seemed to have caught a grace beyond the reach of art.

It thus happened that they took their places just as the curtain rose.

Chapter IX

Everybody remembers the sad old comedy, as differently interpreted in
its graver sentiment as there are different interpreters. Ruth had
seen one who made of Shylock merely a fawning, mercenary, loveless,
blood-thirsty wretch. She had seen another who presented a man of quick
wit, ready tongue, great dignity, greater vengeance, silent of love,
wordy of hate. Booth, without throwing any romantic glamour on the Jew,
showed him as God and man, but mostly man, had made him: an old Jew,
grown bitter in the world's disfavor through fault of race; grown old in
strife for the only worldly power vouchsafed him,--gold; grown old with
but one human love to lighten his hard existence; a man who, at length,
shorn of his two loves through the same medium that robbed him of his
manly birthright, now turned fiend, endeavors with tooth and nail
to wreak the smouldering vengeance of a lifetime upon the chance
representative of an inexorable persecution.

All through the performance Ruth sat a silent, attentive listener. Kemp,
with his ready laugh at Gratiano's sallies, would turn a quick look at
her for sympathy; he was rather surprised at the grave, unsmiling
face beside him. When, however, the old Jew staggered alone and almost
blindly from the triumphantly smiling court-room, a little pinch on his
arm decidedly startled him.

He lowered his glass and turned round on her so suddenly that Ruth
started.

"Oh," she faltered, "I--I beg your pardon; I had forgotten you were not
Louis."

"I do not mind in the least," he assured her easily.

The last act passes merrily and quickly; only the severe, great things
of life move slowly.

As the doctor and Ruth made their way through the crowded lobby, the
latter thought she had never seen so many acquaintances, each of whom
turned an interested look at her stalwart escort. Of this she was
perfectly aware, but the same h