Don't make that noise!" she almost shrieked.

He stopped at once.

"Forgive me," he begged humbly. "I can't help it. I seem to be playing
hide and seek with myself. You haven't finished the story yet--if there
is anything more to tell me."

She drew herself up. She spoke absolutely without faltering.

"I accepted Sylvanus Power's terms," she went on. "He placed large sums
of money in Fink's hands to run the theatre. There was a wonderful
opening. You were not interested then or you might have heard of it. I
produced a new play of Clyde Fitch's. It was a great triumph. The house
was packed. Sylvanus Power sat in his box. It was to be his night.
Through it all I fought like a woman in a nightmare. I didn't know what
it meant. I knew hundreds of women who had done in a small way what I was
prepared to do magnificently. In all my acquaintance I think that I
scarcely knew one who would have refused to do what I was doing. And all
the time I was in a state of fierce revolt. I had moments when my life's
ambitions, when New York itself, the Mecca of my dreams, and that
marvellous theatre, with its marble and silk, seemed suddenly to dwindle
to a miserable, contemptible little doll's house. And then again I
played, and I felt my soul as I played, and the old dreams swept over
me, and I said that it wasn't anything to do with personal vanity that
made me crave for the big gifts of success; that it was my art, and that
I must find myself in my art or die."

The blood was flowing in his veins again. She was coming back to him. He
was ashamed--he with his giant load of sin! His voice trembled with
tenderness.

"Go on," he begged.

"I think that the reason I played that night as though I were inspired
was because of the great passionate craving at my heart for
forgetfulness, to shut out the memory of that man who sat almost
gloomily alone in his box, waiting. And then, after it was all over, the
wonder and the glory of it, he appeared suddenly in my dressing-room,
elbowing his way through excited journalists, kicking bouquets of flowers
from his path. We stood for a moment face to face. He came nearer. I
shrank away. I was terrified! He looked at me in cold surprise.

"'Three minutes,' he exclaimed, 'to say good-by. I'm off to China. Stick
at it. You've done well for a start, but remember a New York audience
wants holding. Choose your plays carefully. Trust Fink.'

"'You're going away?' I almost shrieked.

"He glanced at