"I don't know," he said politely, wearily, uninterestedly.

"How did you hear this, Warren?" his wife asked, with a deceitful air of innocence.

"Met her," he answered briefly.

"Well, we must see the play," Rachael said briskly. For some reason her heart was lighter than it had been for weeks. This was something definite and in the open at last after all these days of blundering in the dark. "We could take a box, couldn't we, and ask George and Alice?" she added. Warren's expression was that of a boy whose way with his first sweetheart is too suddenly favored by parents and guardians, and Rachael could have laughed at his face.

"Well," he said without enthusiasm. A week later he told her that he had secured the box, but suggested that someone else than the Valentines be asked, Elinor and Peter, for instance.

"You and George aren't quite as good friends as you were, are you?" Rachael said, gravely.

"Quite," Warren said with his bright, deceptive smile and his usual averted glance. "Ask anyone you please--it was merely a suggestion!"

Rachael asked Peter and Elinor, and gave them a delicious dinner before the play. She looked her loveliest, a little fuller in figure than she had been seven years before, and with gray here and there in her rich hair, but still a beautiful and winning presence, and still with something of youth in her spontaneous, quick speech and ready laughter. Warren was, as always, the attentive host, but Rachael noticed that he was abstracted and nervous to-night, and wondered, with a chill at her heart, if Magsie's new venture meant so much to him as his manner implied.

It was an early dinner, and they reached the theatre before the curtain rose.

"It looks like a good house," said Rachael, settling herself comfortably.

"You can't tell anything by this," Warren said, quickly; "it's a first night and papered."

"Aren't you smart with your professional terms?" Elinor Pomeroy laughed, dropping the lorgnette through which she had been idly studying the house. "What _I_'D like to know," she added interestedly, "what _I_'D like to know is, who's doing this for Magsie Clay? Vera Villalonga says she knows, but I don't believe it. Magsie's a little n.o.body, she has no special talent, and here she is leading in a Barrett play--"

Peter Pomeroy's foot here pressed lightly against Rachael's; a hint, Rachael instantly suspected, that was intended for his wife.

"Now I think Magsie's as straight as a string," the unconscious Mrs. Pomeroy went on, "but she must have a rich beau up her sleeve, and the question is, who is he? I don't--"

But here, it was evident, Peter's second appeal to his wife's discretion was felt, and it suddenly arrested her flow of eloquence.

"--I don't doubt," floundered Elinor, "that--that is--and of course Magsie IS a talented creature, so that naturally-- naturally--some girl makes a hit every year, and why shouldn't it be Magsie? Which is right, Peter, 'why shouldn't it be she' or 'why shouldn't it be her?' I never know," she finished somewhat incoherently.

"I should think any investment in Magsie would be perfectly safe,"

said Rachael's delightful voice. And boldly she added: "Do you know who is backing this, Warren?"

"To a certain extent--I am," Warren said, after an imperceptible pause. To Peter he added, in a lower voice, the voice in which men discuss business matters: "It was a question of the whole deal falling through--I think she'll make good--this fellow Barrett--"

Rachael began to chat with Elinor, but there was bitterness in her soul. She had leaped into the breach, she had saved the situation, at least before Elinor and Peter. But it was not fair--not fair for Warren to have been deep in this affair with Magsie, with never a word to his wife! She--Rachael--would have been all interest, all sympathy. There was no reason between civilized human beings why this eternal question of s.e.x should debar men and women from common ambitions and common interests! Let Warren admire Magsie if he wanted to do so, let him buy her her play, and stand between her and financial responsibility, jet him admire her--yes, even love her, in his generous, big-brotherly way! But why shut out of this new interest the kindly cooperation of his devoted wife, who had never failed him, who had borne him sons, who had given him the whole of her pa.s.sionate heart in the full glory of youth, and in health, and in sickness, when it came, had turned to him for all the happiness of her life!

The play began, and presently the house was applauding the entrance of Miss Margaret Clay. She came down a wide, light- flooded stairway, and in her childish white gown and flower- wreathed shepherdess hat looked about sixteen. "How young she is!"

Rachael thought with a pang. Her voice was young, too, the fact being that Magsie was frightened, and that Nature was helping her play her first big ingenue part.

Rachael glanced in the darkness at Warren. He had not joined in the applause, nor did his handsome face express any pleasure. He was leaning forward, his hands locked and hanging between his knees, his eyes riveted on the little white figure that was moving and talking down there in the bright bath of light beyond the footlights.

Despite all reason, despite her desperate effort at self-control, Rachael felt an agony of pure jealousy seize her. In an absolute pa.s.sion of envy she looked down at Magsie Clay. The young, flower- crowned head, the slender, slippered feet, the youthful and appealing voice--what weapons had she against these? And beyond these was the additional lure--as old as the theatre itself--of the fascinating profession: the work that is like play, the rouge and curls, the loves and rages so openly a.s.sumed yet so strangely and stirringly effective! Rachael had gowns a thousand times handsomer than these youthful muslins and embroideries; Rachael's own home was a setting far more beautiful than any that could be simulated within the limits of a stage; if Magsie was a successful ingenue, Rachael might have been called a natural queen of tragedy and of comedy! And yet--

And yet, it was because she, too, saw the charm and came under the spell, that Rachael suffered to-night. If she could have laughed it to scorn, could have admired the surface prettiness, and congratulated Magsie upon the almost perfect illusion, then she would have had the most effective of all medicines with which to cure Warren's midsummer madness.

But it seemed to Rachael, stunned with the terrible force of jealousy, that Magsie was the great star of the stage, that there never had been such a play and such a leading lady. It seemed to her that not only to-night's triumph, but a thousand other triumphs were before her, not only the admiration of these twelve or fifteen hundred persons, but that of thousands more! Magsie would be a rage! Magsie's young favors would be sought far and wide. Magsie's summer home, Magsie's winter apartments, Magsie's clothes and fads, these would belong to the adoring public of the most warmhearted and impressionable city in the world! Rachael saw it all coming with perhaps more certainty than did even the little actress behind the footlights.

"Cute play, but I don't think much of Magsie!" Elinor Pomeroy said frankly. Elinor Vanderwall would not have been so impolitic. But Rachael felt that she would have liked to kiss her guest.

"I think Magsie is rather good," she said deliberately.

"Nothing like praising the girl with faint d.a.m.ns!" Peter Pomeroy chuckled.

"Well, what do you think, Peter?" his hostess asked.

"I--oh, Lord! I don't see a play once a year," he said, with the manner, if not the actual presence, of a yawn. "I think it's rather good. I'll tell you what, Greg, I don't see you losing any money on it," he added, with interest; "it'll run; the matinee girls will come!"

"Magsie'd kill you for that," Elinor said.

"I don't suppose we could see Magsie, Warren, after this is over?"

Rachael asked to make him speak.

"What did you say, dear?" He brought his gaze from a general study of the house to a point only a few inches out of range of her own.

"No, I hardly think so," he answered when she had repeated her question. "She's probably excited and tired."

"You wouldn't mind my sending a line down by the boy?" Rachael persisted.

"Well, I don't think I'd do that--" He hesitated.

"Oh, I'm strong for it!" Elinor said vivaciously. "It'll cheer Magsie up. She's probably scared blue, and even I can see that this isn't making much of a hit!"

The note was accordingly scribbled and dispatched; Rachael's heart was singing because Warren had not denied Elinor's comment upon the success of the play. The leading man, a popular and prominent actor, was disturbingly good, and there was the part of an Irish maid, a comedy part, so well filled by some hitherto unknown young actress that it might really influence the run of the play; but still, there was a consoling indication already in the air that Margaret Clay's talent was somewhat too slight to sustain a leading woman.

At eleven it was over, and if Rachael had had to endure the comment that the second act was "the best yet," there was the panacea, immediately to follow, that the end of the play was "pretty flat."

Presently they all filed back to the dark, windy stage, and joined Magsie in her dressing-room. She was glowing, excited, eager for praise. Never was a young and lovely woman more confident of her charm than Magsie to-night. A flushed self-satisfaction was present on her face during every second of the ten minutes she gave them; her laughter was self-conscious, her smile full of artless gratification; she could not speak to any member of the little group unless the attention of everyone present was riveted upon her.

A callow youth, evidently her adorer, was awaiting her. She spoke slightingly of Bryan Masters, the leading man.

"He's charming, Rachael," said Magsie, smiling her bored young smile, with deliciously red lips, as she was b.u.t.toned into a long fur coat, "but--he wants to impose on the fact that--well, that I have arrived, if you know what I mean? As everyone knows, his day is pretty well over. Now you think I'm conceited, don't you, Greg.

Oh, I like him, and he does do it rather well, don't you think?

But Richie"--Richie was the escorting young man--"Richie and I tease him by breaking into French now and then, don't we?" laughed Magsie.

Sauntering out from the stage entrance with her friends, Miss Clay was the cynosure of all eyes, and knew it; part of the audience still waited for the tedious line of limousines to disperse. She could not move her bright glance to Warren's without encountering the admiring looks of men and women all about her; she could not but hear their whispers: "There, there she is--that's Miss Clay now!" Richie, introduced as Mr. Gardiner, muttered that his car was somewhere; it proved to be a handsome car with a chauffeur.

Magsie raised her bright face pleadingly to Warren's as she took his hands for goodbye.

"Say you were proud of me, Warren?"

He laughed, his indulgent glance flashing to Elinor and to Rachael, as one who invited their admiration of an attractive child, before he looked down at her again.

"Proud of you! Why, I'm as happy as you are about it!"

"You know," Magsie said to Elinor naively, still holding Warren's hands, "he's helped me--tremendously. He's been just--an absolute angel to me!" And real and becoming tears came suddenly to her eyes; she dropped Warren's hands to find a filmy little handkerchief. A second later her smile flashed out again. "You don't mind his being kind to me, do you, Rachael?" she asked childishly.

Rachael's mouth was dry, she felt that her smile was hideous.

"Why should I, Magsie?" she asked a little huskily, "He's kind to everyone!"