"You have no social ambitions?"
"None whatever--in the sense you mean.  I like my fellow men stripped
to the bone.  That's indecent when one dines out."

"And your fellow woman?"

He shrugged and laughed.

"She's a child--adorable always.  But then I never understand her--nor
she me."

She sipped tea and smiled.

"Woman is at once the woman and the serpent, _mon ami_.  All she needs
is a man and a Garden of Paradise."

He frowned into his teacup but did not reply.

"Is it true, John?" she asked quietly.

"What is true?"

"That Hermia is to marry Trevvy Morehouse?"

"From whom did you hear that?" he asked.

"From whom have I not heard it?  Everyone.  Hermia hasn't denied it,
has she?"

"Not that I'm aware of.  Why should she deny it?  It's her own affair."

His tone rebuked her.

"I don't want to be meddlesome, you know.  I only thought--"

"Oh, I'm glad you spoke," he murmured.  "I--I wanted to talk about her.
You know, you and I--when you left me--there in the Park--you gave me
the impression that you--er--that you didn't care for Miss Challoner
any more--"

"Did I?  I'm glad I did.  That's the truth.  I don't care for her.  She
cut me very prettily on the street the week after she got back from
Europe.  Evidently the antipathy is mutual."

He paused, considering.

"I'm sorry she saw fit to do that.  That was foolish--very foolish of
her."

"Wasn't it?  Especially as I had about decided to forget that I'd ever
been in Alenon--"

He put his hand over hers and held it there a moment.

"I want you to forget that, Olga," he muttered.  "It--it never
happened."

She smiled, her gaze on the andirons.

"You're quite positive of that?"

"Yes.  I was--er--in Holland last summer."

"Oh, _were_ you?"

"Yes.  And Hermia--Miss Challoner was in Switzerland."

"Yes.  So I hear.  Very interesting.  But how does that explain things
to Pierre de Folligny?  He met her the other day--and remembered her
perfectly--"

Markham rose and paced the floor.

"Oh," he heard her saying, "she denied seeing him in France, of
course,--but it was quite awkward--for her, I mean."

He took two or three turns, his brows serious, and then came and stood
near her at the mantelpiece.

"You must straighten things out, Olga--with De Folligny," he muttered.
"It will ruin her, if he speaks--you know what New York is.  Gossip
like that travels like fire.  And she doesn't deserve it--not that.
You've told me that you don't believe in her innocence, but at heart I
think you do.  You must.  I swear to you--on the honor of--"

She raised a hand.

"Don't--!" quickly. "I'm willing to assume her innocence.  Haven't I
told you that I had been prepared to forget the whole incident--when
she cut me.  Why did she do that?  What does that mean?"

"Not guilt surely--wouldn't she be trying to get you on her side?"

Olga waved an expressive hand.

"Oh, that's impossible--and she knows it."

"Why?"

She paused, shielding her eyes with her fingers.  He was such an
innocent.  But she had no notion of enlightening him.

"She has given you up--to marry.  That's clear.  I told her secret.
The simplest way out of her difficulty is to ignore me.  Well--let her.
I don't mind.  I'll survive.  But I would give my ears to let Fifth
Avenue know--"

"No--no," he put in quickly, "you mustn't do that--  If you've ceased
to care for her, you've got your duty to me to consider.  Do you hold
my honor so lightly--"

"Yours?"

"Yes.  She was in my care.  I let her go with me.  The responsibility
was sacred.  I was morally pledged to keep her from harm.  That
responsibility has not ceased because she no longer--because she has
made up her mind to--to marry.  It's greater even.  If you ever told
that story--"

"And De Foligny?  You forget him--"

He came quickly over and took her hands in his.

"You can seal this secret, if you will, as in a tomb.  Do it, Olga.  It
will be magnificent of you.   Give me your word--your promise to keep
silent--to keep De Folligny silent--"

She had turned, her chin upon her shoulder, away from him.

"You ask a great deal," she said with reluctance.

"Not more than you can give--not more than you _will_  give.  Whatever
your--your differences she doesn't deserve this of you.  Will it give
you pleasure in after years to think of her life embittered--of _his_
life embittered, too, by a piece of gossip, woven out of a tissue of
half-truths--that will damn her--as half-truths do?"

"You love her so much as this?" she gasped.

He relinquished her hand--stood a moment looking dumbly at her and then
walked the length of the room away.  The little clock on the mantel
ticked gaily, the fire sparkled and the familiar sounds of the careless
city came faintly to their ears.  She stirred and he turned toward her.

"Will you promise?" he asked quietly.

"Promise what?"

"Not to speak--of what you saw at Alenon."

"Yes.  I promise that," she said slowly at last.

"Or let De Folligny speak?"

Another silence.  And then from thinned lips.

"I--I will use my influence--to keep him silent."

The firmness of her tone assured him.  He caught up her hands and
pressed them softly to his lips.

"I knew you would, Olga.  I knew you were bigger than that.  I thank
you--I will never forget--"

But before he could finish she had snatched her fingers away from him
and was laughing softly at the tea-caddy.

"Now, if you please," she said composedly, "we will speak of pleasanter
things."

She opened a long silver box on the table and took a cigarette,
offering him one.

"The pipe of peace?" he asked.

"If you like."

He drew in the smoke gratefully.

"Olga, you're a trump," he said with a genuine heartiness.

"Thanks," she said dryly.  "I know it.   And you're playing me quite
successfully--aren't you?  Hearts? and I'm the 'dummy.'  I never liked
playing the 'dummy.'"

He laughed.

"I wish I were quite sure in my mind what you _do_ like to play."

Her look questioned coolly.

"I mean, that, as well as I've thought I've know you, I find that I've
never known you at all.  You're a creature of bewildering transitions.
I hear that you're going to marry De Folligny."

"And what if I am?" she flashed at him.

"I'm sure I wish you every happiness.  Only--"

He paused.

"Please finish."

"Nothing--except that you will leave me with an unpleasant sense of
having been made a fool of."

She rose, flicked her cigarette into the fire and then turned as if
about to speak.  But thought better of it.  There was a long silence.

"Pierre de Folligny and I are friends of long standing," she said at
last.  "One marries some day.  Why not an old friend?  The age of
madness passes--I am almost thirty and I have lived--much.  It is
time--" she finished wearily, "time that I married again.  We
understand each other perfectly."  A smile slowly dawned and broke.
"What one wants in a husband is not so much a rhapsodist as a
rhymester, not so much a lover as a walking-gentleman--Pierre is that,
you know."

She sighed again and rose.

"It was very sweet of you to come in, John.  Don't misunderstand me
again.  _That_--" and she paused to give the word emphasis, "is all
over.  I'm quite safe as a _confidante_.  Hermia has treated you very
badly, I think.  I'd like to tell her so--No?  Well, good-bye.  Do come
in again.  I want you to know Pierre better.  He really is all that a
walking-gentleman should be."

He laughed and kissed her fingers, and in a moment had gone.

Olga Tcherny stood immovable where he had left her, one foot upon the
fender, her gaze upon the fire.  After a time she stretched forth her
fingers to the blaze.  All over!  She straightened slowly and caught a
glimpse of her face in the mirror.  The firelight gleamed under her
brows, brought out with unpleasant sharpness the angle of her jaw and
touched the bones of her cheek caressingly.  She looked again, the
truth compelling her, and then buried her face in her arm.  The
truth--middle age, had set its first mark upon her.  The sallow fingers
of Time had touched her lightly, more as a warning than as a prophecy,
painted with a reluctant brush a deeper tone into the shadows, a higher
note in the lights, had brushed in haltingly the false values that now
mocked at her.  Time!  She seemed to count it by her heart-throbs.

She walked across the room and stood before the portrait John Markham
had painted of her.  The face gazed out from its shadows, its eyes met
hers for a moment, then looked through her and beyond, eyes which
looked, yet saw not, eyes deep and inscrutable, seers of visions,
bathed in memories which would not sink into oblivion.  Her eyes he had
painted carefully.  For him it seemed the rest of the face had been a
blank.  The nose, the chin, were hers, and the mouth--the lips, a
scarlet smudge of illusiveness.  They were hers, too.  He had had
difficulty with her lips, painting and repainting them.  They had
puzzled him.  "The eyes we are born with," he had said--how well she
remembered it now!  "The lips are what we make ourselves."  At last he
had painted them in quickly--almost brutally and let them be.  They
seemed to mock at her now--to contradict the meaning of the eyes--which
would not, could not, smile.

Hermia had scoffed at this portrait because it was not "pretty."  There
was something bigger than mere prettiness here.  He had painted the
soul of her, reading with his art what had been hidden from the man, as
he had strayed through the labyrinth of her thoughts viewing the
blighted blossom of her girlhood and wifehood and the neglected garden
of her maturity.  As she viewed the portrait now in the light of time
and event, she saw, more clearly than ever, her soul and body as
Markham had seen it.  He had painted her as he would have painted
character--an old man or an old woman, searching for shadows rather
than lights, seeking the anatomy of sorrow rather than that of joy--had
made her the subject of a cool and not too flattering psychological
investigation.  Was this how he had always seen her?  This far-looking,
inscrutable, satiated woman of the world, who peered forth into the
future, from the dull embers of the past--a being whose physical beauty
was rather suggested than expressed--whose loveliness lay in what she
might have been rather than in what she was?  He had always thought of
her thus?

She rubbed her eyes and looked again.  Not, not always.  She remembered
now--he couldn't have painted her as he had painted others--as he had
painted a while ago the portrait of Phyllis Van Vorst--carelessly,
contemptuously.  He had probed deeply--painted form his own deeps.
They had been very close together in those hours, mentally,
spiritually, and only the barrier she herself had raised prevented
their physical nearness.  That, too, she could have had?

A mist fell across the canvas and Hermia's vision interposed, rosy and
careless, her braggart youth triumphant.

She turned, threw herself upon the couch and buried her head, her
fingers clenched, in the pillows.  She made no sound and lay so
immovable that one might have thought she was sleeping.  But her blood
was coursing madly and her pulses throbbed a wrist and neck.  She had
been true to her better self--with Markham--and her idealism had
brought her only this void of barren regret.  Whichever way she looked
into the past or into the future, the vista was empty; behind her only
the echoes of voices and a grim shape or two; before her--vacancy.  She
had bared her soul to Markham, there in the Square, torn away the veil
of her pride and let him know the truth.  Why, God knew.  She had been
mad.  She had believed the worst of Hermia and of him, and had offered
herself to him that he might judge between them--her heart and
Hermia's, her mind, her body and Hermia's.  Was her own face no longer
fair that he should have looked at her so curiously and turned away
with Hermia's name on his lips, Hermia's image in his heart?  A doubt
had crept into her mind and lingered insidiously.  Hermia innocent!
She was beginning to believe it now.  In spite of the damning facts she
had discovered, the evidence of Madam Bordier and Monsieur Duchanel, of
the peasant women at Tillires and of Pierre de Folligny, the
testimony of Hermia's pale face at the shooting lodge at Alenon and
of her confession which she had not thought of doubting, the belief had
slowly gained force in her mind that Markham had not lied to her.  She
found confirmation of it in Hermia Challoner's disappearance in France,
in her attitude toward Markham and in the announcement of her
engagement to another man.  Markham could not guess, as she did now,
that this was only a _ruse de femme_, born of the access of timidity at
the discovery of her indiscretion and the consciousness that she had
gone too far with Markham, who must be punished for his share in her
downfall.  It seemed pitifully clear now.

Olga's bitterness choked and whelmed her.  It seemed even worse that
Hermia should be innocent.  She dared not think of the picture she had
made in Markham's mind when she had thrown herself into the scales that
he might weigh their frailties and compare them.  Hermia innocent!  How
Olga hated her for it, and for her youth and beauty.  They mocked and
derided the tender flame that she had nourished, which now glowed
ineffectually as in another, a greater light.  She hated Hermia for all
the things that she herself was not.

Lucidity came to her slowly.  After a long while she raised a
disordered face and leaned her chin upon her hands, staring at the
dying log.  She had promised him not to speak.  She could not.  She had
even promised to persuade De Folligny to silence.  Had he mentioned the
incident already?  She did not know.  He was not by nature a gossip,
but Hermia had not been too tactful and it was a good story--the
sanctity of which, upon the mind of a man of De Folligny's temperament,
might not be impressive.  She would keep her promise to Markham and
persuade Pierre to silence.  No one should know by word of mouth--

Olga started up, her eyes wide open, staring at the opposite wall,
where there hung a colored print of a woodland scene by Morland, and a
smile slowly grew at one end of her lips, a crooked smile, that might
have been merely quizzical, had not the impression been unpleasantly
modified by the narrowing eyes and the tiny wrinkle that suddenly grew
between her brows.

"I will do it," she muttered.  "It may be amusing."


CHAPTER XXVI

MRS. BERKELEY HAMMOND ENTERTAINS

The heritage of the world comes at last to the pachyderms.  Fate is
never so unkind as to those who blindly resist her and into the lap of
stoic and unimpressionable she pours the horn of plenty.

Trevelyan Morehouse had gone through life on the low gear.  In fact he
had no change of gears and needed none.  He never "hit it up" on the
smooth places or burned out his tires on the rough ones, and was
therefore always to be found in perfect repair.  He was a good hill
climber and had a way of arriving at his destination no matter how
difficult the going.  When others passed him he let them go, and
plodded on after them with solemn assurance, his gait so leisurely that
rapid travelers had the habit of regarding his conservatism with
undisguised contempt.  And yet his perseverance, though inconspicuous,
was singularly effective.  He had won his way into the sanctorum of a
big corporation and his advice, though never brilliant, was always sane
and peculiarly reliable.  He did not mind rebuffs and was so
indifferent to indignities that people had ceased to offer them.
Socially he could always be trusted to do the usual thing in the usual
way and was therefore always much in demand by hostesses who required
conventional limitations.  In a word he was "the excellent Trevelyan."
and the adjective fitted him as snugly as it did the well-known
comestible with which it had come to be so comfortably and freely
associated.  His excellence lay largely in the fact that he did not
excel.  He was content with his subordinate capacity, wise in his
confidence that all things would come to him in the end, if he only
waited long enough.

The same rules which he found so successful in business he now applied
to his affair of the heart, and plodded off in the wake of the fast
flying Hermia, imperturbable and undismayed.  His flowers had been sent
to her with the regularity of the clock, his visits carefully timed,
and his proposals renewed with a well-bred ardor.  He had waited
patiently through Hermia's short and sportive attachment for "Reggie"
Armistead, and when their "trial" engagement reached its tempestuous
conclusion, had stepped softly into the breach, rosy with hope and a
definite sense that his time had come.  Hermia liked him--had liked him
for years.  She had gotten used to him as one does to a familiar chair
or an article of diet.  He was a habit with her like her bedroom
slippers or her afternoon tea.  He was comfortable, always safe and
quite sane, which she was not, and she accepted him in the guise of
counselor and friend with the same cheerful tolerance that she gave to
her Aunt Harriet Westfield or to Mr. Winthrop of the Pilgrim Trust
Company.

When Hermia departed suddenly for Europe, her sportive idyl so suddenly
shattered, Mr. Morehouse followed her in the next steamer.  She had
given him no definite encouragement, it was true, and yet he found
reasons to hope that the time was at hand when she must make some
definite decision.  In Europe her brief disappearance from the scene of
her usual activities had mystified him and her return to her hotel,
shabby and uncommunicative, had aroused a chagrin and an anxiety quite
unusual to him; but he had sat and waited her pleasure, survived her
turbulent moods and had found his patience at last rewarded by her
silent acquiescence in his presence, and by an invitation to accompany
her to Switzerland, where she was to join her Aunt Julia and the
children.

From the vantage point of his office window down town, where he now sat
and viewed the bleak perspective of the city, his memories of the
summer with Hermia seemed a strange compound of brief blisses and more
enduring pangs.  They had been much seen together and the announcement
of their engagement which had appeared in the newspapers had not been
surprising.  Aunt Julia had favored his suit and Mrs. Westfield had
given him to understand that it was time Hermia married.  But the fact
remained that Hermia had not accepted him.  His insistence had always
provoked and still provoked one of two moods--either resentment or
mockery.  She either dismissed him in a dudgeon or cajoled him with
elusive banter.  Why was he so impatient?  There was plenty of time?
Was he sure that he wanted to marry her?  What did her really know
about her heart of hearts?  Perhaps, if he knew her better he might not
want to marry her.  He pleaded in patient calm.  The world, it seemed,
thought them engaged.  Why shouldn't _he_ be permitted to think so.
She only laughed at him and her heart of hearts had come to be the most
profound enigma that it had ever been his fortune to study.  So the
prize, which he had thought most surely his own, still hung reluctantly
upon the lip of the horn of plenty.  It would not fall, and all the
traditions of his experience forbade that he should jostle it.  And so
he only watched with patient eyes and a physical restraint which could
only be described as "excellent."

What did she mean by saying that if he knew her better he might not
want to marry her?  Vague doubts assailed him.  Did he, after all, know
her?  What was this chapter of her life of which he knew nothing and to
which she had so frequently alluded?  Was it something which had
happened to her in America?  Or had it something to do with her
disappearance last summer from Paris, after which she had returned
sober and intolerant?  He gave it up.  He was always giving her up and
then putting his doubts of her in his pocket with his neat
handkerchief, plodding sedulously as before.  He must wait.  Everything
that he had got in life had come from waiting and Hermia, his
philosophy told him, must be no exception to the rule.

The winter drew on toward spring.  Lent arrived, and society, quite
bored and thoroughly exhausted, halted in the mad round of the
"one-step" and turned to calmer delights.  Country places in adjacent
counties were opened and guests flitted from one house to the other in
a continuous round of visits.

Mrs. Berkeley Hammond's invitations, whether to the big house near the
Park or to Rood's Knoll, her place in the country, were much in demand.
The Hammonds had unlimited means, the social instinct, worthy family
traditions, and a talent for entertainment, a combination of qualities
and circumstances which explained the importance of this family in the
social life of the city.  The mantle of an older leader who had passed
had fallen comfortably on Mrs. Hammond's capacious shoulders and she
wore it with a familiar grace which gave the impression that it had
always been there.  Conservative, the more radical called her, and
radical, the conservative; but her taste and her _chef_ were both above
reproach, and her dinners, whether large or small, had the distinction
which only comes of a rare order of tact and discrimination.  Nor were
her hospitalities confined to the entertainment of the indigenous.
Visitors to New York, foreign celebrities, literary, artistic or
political, found within her doors a welcome and a company exactly
suited to their social requirements.  She liked young people, too, and
contrived to let them know it, to the end that her dances, while
formal, were gay rather than "stodgy," juvenescent rather than
patriarchal.

The house at Rood's Knoll was a huge affair, of brick and timbered
plaster, set in the midst of its thousand acres of woodland in the
heart of the hills.  Lent found it full of people and its gayety was
reflected in other houses of the neighborhood whose owners, like the
Hammonds, kept open house.  There was much to do.  March went out like
a lion and the snow which kept the more timid indoors at the cards made
wonderful coasting and sledding, of which latter these wearied children
of fortune were not slow to take advantage.  The ponds were frozen,
too, and skating was added to the sum of their rural delights.

Hermia Challoner, who was visiting Caroline Anstell, joined feverishly
in these pursuits, glad of the opportunity they afforded her of relief
from her personal problems.  There were some of her intimates here in
the neighborhood, but she found greater security in the society of an
older set of whom she had seen little in town and in the pleasure of
picking up the loose ends of these acquaintanceships she managed to
forget, at least temporarily, her sword of Damocles.  Olga Tcherny was
one of Mrs. Berkeley Hammond's house guests, but she had not been in
evidence on either of the occasions when Hermia had called.  There was
some excitement over an evening which Mrs. Hammond was planning to take
place in the country during the latter days of Lent.  The invitations
were noncommittal and merely mentioned the date and hour, but it was
understood that "everyone" was to be there, and that an entertainment a
little out of the ordinary was to be provided.

It was, therefore, with a pleasurable anticipation that Hermia got down
from the Anstell's machine on the appointed evening, and followed her
party into the great house.  The rooms were comfortably filled, but not
crowded, and it seemed that the women had done their best to add their
share to the merely decorative requirements of the occasion.  The
ball-room lights shimmered softly on the rich tissues of their
costumes, and caught in the facets of the jewels on their bared
shoulders.  Society was at its best, upon its good behavior, patiently
eking out the few short days that remained to it of the penitential
season.  Hermia managed to elude the watchful Trevelyan and entered the
ball-room with Beatrice Coddington and Caroline Anstell.  Just inside
she found herself face to face with the Countess Tcherny.  She would
have passed on, but Olga was not to be denied.

"So glad to see you, Hermia, dear," she purred, her eyes lighting.
"It's really dreadfully unlucky how seldom we've met this winter.
You're a little thinner, aren't you?  But it becomes you awfully."

"Thanks," said Hermia.  "I'm quite well."

"I hope you'll like the play, you know I--" and she whispered.  "Nobody
knows--_I_ wrote it."

"Oh, really," Hermia smiled coolly.  "I hope it's quite moral."

"Oh, you must judge for yourself," said Olga, and disappeared.

The men, having searched the premises vainly for the bridge tables,
resigned themselves to the inevitable and drifted by twos and threes
into the ball-room, where they melted into the gay company which was
not seated, or stood along the back and side walls, making a somber
background for the splendid plumage of their dinner-partners.

"_Tableaux-vivants_, for a dollar!" said Archie Westcott in bored
desperation.

"Oh, rot!" blurted out Crosby Downs in contempt.  "What's the use?
They'll be havin' Mrs. Jarley's waxworks next--"

"Or the 'Dream of Fair Women'--"

"Or charades.  Not a card in sight--or a cigar!  Rotten taste--_I'd_
call it."

The music of the orchestra silenced these protests and a ripple of
expectation passed over the audience as the curtain rose, disclosing a
sylvan glade and a startled nymph in meager draperies hiding from a
faun.  The music trembled for a moment and then, as the nymph was
discovered, broke into wild concords through which the violins sang
tunefully as the chase began.  It was not for some moments that the
audience awoke to the fact that these must be the Austrian dancers
whose visit to New York had been so widely heralded.  Captured at last,
the nymph was submissive, and the dance which followed revealed
artistry of an order with which most of the spectators were unfamiliar.
Even Crosby Downs ceased to grumble and wedged himself down the side
wall where he could have a better view.  The dance ended amid applause
and the audience now really aroused from its lethargy eagerly awaited
the next rise of the curtain.

The first part of the program, it seemed, was to be a vaudeville.  A
famous tenor sang folk songs of sunny Italy; two French pantomimists
did a graceful and amusing _Pierrot_ and _Pierrette_; a comedian did a
black-face monologue; and the first part of the program concluded with
the performances of a young violinist, the son of a Russian tobacconist
down town, whom Mrs. Berkeley Hammond had "discovered" and was now
sending to Europe to complete his musical education.  A budding genius,
was the verdict, almost ready to blossom.  The brief period of disquiet
which had followed Hermia's meeting with Olga, had been forgotten in
her enjoyment of the performance and in the gay chatter of her
companions and of her neighbors back and front.  When the curtain had
fallen upon the violinist, there was a rustle of programs.

"'The Lady Orchestra,' some on back of her read aloud. 'Comedy with a
Sting--'  What's coming now?  What's a 'Lady Orchestra'?  Does anyone
know?"

"A 'Lady Orchestra,' my dear Phyllis," said Reggie Armistead, "is an
orchestra lady."

"An orchestra lady!  I wonder what she plays--"

"The devil probably--he's your most familiar instrument."

"Reggie!  I'm surprised at you.  You know--"

The remainder of Miss Van Vorst's speech was lost to Hermia, who sat
staring speechless at the stage curtain, her body suddenly ice-cold,
all its blood throbbing in her temples.  "The Lady Orchestra!"  The
words had fallen so lightly that their significance had dawned upon her
slowly.  This play--this "comedy with a sting" was about
_her_--Hermia--and John Markham.  Olga had written it, and was even now
watching her face for some sign of weakness.  Olga, De Folligny--and
how many others?  Terror gripped her--blind terror, every instinct
urging flight.  But this, she knew, was impossible.  She stared hard at
the red curtain, and swallowed nervously, sure now that, whatever the
play revealed, she must sit until its end, giving no sign of the tumult
that raged within her.  The eyes of the audience burned into the back
of her head, and she seemed to read a knowledge of her secret in every
careless glance thrown in her direction.  This was a vengeance worth of
Olga--the refinement of cruelty.

"What is it, Hermia," she heard Caroline Anstell whispering.  "Are you
ill, dear?"

"Oh, no, not at all.  Why do you ask?" coolly.

"I thought you looked a little tired."

"I--I think it's the heat," said Hermia.  "Sh--Carrie, there goes the
curtain."

If Hermia had been startled a moment ago, she now learned that she
would have need of all her courage.  The curtain revealed the
market-place of a French town on a fte day.  To the left a row
of penny shows, a "man hedgehog," an "_homme sauvage_" and an Albino
lady who told fortunes; to the right a platform backed by a canvas
wall, surmounted by a sign in huge letters "ThŽ‰tre Tony
Ricardo" flanked by rudely painted representations of the acts which
were to be seen within.  The setting was admirable and brought forth
immediate applause form the audience, under which Hermia hid her gasp
of dismay.  There were even pictures like those which Philidor had
painted, of Cleofonte breaking chains and of the child Stella flying
in mid-air, and at one side the legend "Artistide Bruant, painter of
portraits at two francs fifty--soldiers ten sous."  Sure now of the
scene which was to follow, but outwardly quite composed, Hermia
listened carelessly to the dialogue, saw the acrobat appear, and the
"Lady Orchestra," who was the guilty heroine of the piece, take her
place upon the platform beside him.  Here the resemblance to reality
ceased, for the heroine was dark and _Aristide_ blonde and beardless,
and yet this very discrimination on Olga's part seemed to point more
definitely to Hermia even than if the characterization had been
truthfully followed.  The actors were professionals who had been well
drilled in their parts and the plot developed quickly in the dialogue
between _Madeleine_, the erring wife, and _Aristide_, the recreant
husband, who had fled from fashionable Paris, met upon the road and
joined this troupe of Caravaners that they might taste life together
in rural simplicity and security.  The dialogue was clever, if
_dŽcadent_, the situations amusing, the action rapid, the first
act ending with the appearance of the irate wife of _Aristide_, and
the disappearance of the guilty couple, just in time to avoid
discovery.

During the _entr'acte_, though the restless guests moved about, Hermia
sat rooted to her chair, fascinated with horror.  Her body seemed
nerveless and she feared that if she rose her limbs would not support
her, or, if they did support her, she must fly like a mad thing from
the house.  And so she sat, a fixed smile frozen on her lips, greeting
those who approached her.  Beatrice Coddington left her seat, and
Trevvy Morehouse made haste to fill it.  He had never seemed so welcome
to Hermia as at the present moment, and his patient mien and quiet
commonplaces did much to restore her composure; so that when the bell
rang for the curtain of the second act, she was laughing with a brave
show of enjoyment at Reggie and Phyllis, who seemed at the point of
severing their amatory relations.  Hermia was prepared for anything
now.  If her breach of conventions had found her out, there was no one,
not even Olga, who would look at her and say that she was showing the
white feather.

She could see the play to its end now, for from Reggie's program she
had learned that the setting for the second act was the interior of a
shooting lodge in the forest, and when the curtain rose she was not
surprised at the setting of the stage, which represented, as accurately
as possible, the house of the Comte de Cahors, in the forest of
ƒcouves.  The approach of the injured wife, discovered in time by the
refugees through the half-opened shutter, gives _Aristide_ time to help
the fictitious orchestra lady up a stair to the garret, where she is in
concealment during the dramatic interview between husband and wife,
which ends in the woman seizing a loaded rifle with the intention of
killing both herself and her husband.  In the struggle which ensues for
the possession of the weapon, the gun is discharged, there is a cry
overhead and the figure of _Madeleine_ is seen to rise, opening the
trap-door, and then to fall the length of the stairs, at the feet of
the woman who has been wronged.

The scene was admirably done and carried the audience to its conclusion
in breathless silence.  The lights of the ball-room, fortunately
lowered, had hidden the pallor of Hermia's face but she realized, when