int of view,
her lack of sympathy, her abuse of her dramatic temperament in her
private affairs, had been such as to make it impossible for her
sincerely to impress audiences with real emotional power, and,
therefore, despite the influences which she always had at hand, she
remained a mediocre artist.

At the time of the opening of our play, she has played a summer
engagement with a stock company in Denver, which has just ended. She
has met JOHN MADISON, a man of about twenty-seven years of age, whose
position is that of a dramatic critic on one of the local papers.
LAURA MURDOCH, with her usual wisdom, started to fascinate JOHN
MADISON, but has found that, for once in her life, she has met her
match.

JOHN MADISON is good to look at, frank, virile, but a man of broad
experience, and not to be hoodwinked. For the first time LAURA MURDOCH
feels that the shoe is pinching the other foot, and, without any
possible indication of reciprocal affection, she has been slowly
falling desperately, madly, honestly and decently in love with him.
She has for the past two years been the special favourite and mistress
of WILLARD BROCKTON. The understanding is one of pure friendship.
He is a man who has a varied taste in the selection of his women; is
honest in a general way, and perfectly frank about his amours. He has
been most generous with LAURA MURDOCK, and his close relations with
several very prominent theatrical managers have made it possible for
him to secure her desirable engagements, generally in New York. With
all her past experiences, tragic and otherwise, LAURA MURDOCH has
found nothing equal to this sudden, this swiftly increasing, love for
the young Western man. At first she attempted to deceive him. Her baby
face, her masterful assumption of innocence and childlike devotion,
made no impression upon him. He has let her know in no uncertain way
that he knew her record from the day she stepped on American soil in
San Francisco to the time when she had come to Denver, but still he
liked her.

JOHN MADISON is a peculiar type of the Western man. Up to the time of
his meeting LAURA, he had always been employed either in the mines
or on a newspaper west of the Mississippi River. He is one of those
itinerant reporters; to-day you might find him in Seattle, to-morrow
in Butte, the next week in Denver, and then possibly he would make
the circuit from Los Angeles to 'Frisco, and then all around again.
He drinks his whiskey stra