Chapter XIX

As Mrs. Lennox had foretold, the great manager was deeply incensed at Joan’s defection, and ordered ‘The Combine’ tour to be indefinitely postponed. But the grandmother did not find herself out of a job as she had feared. Mr. Hobson had now realized her value as a business asset, and, as he himself put it, he “wasn’t going to chuck away Miss West because her girl was a crazy fool.” Indeed there was a part in one of his New York autumn productions in which he exactly saw her, and he had already contemplated her withdrawal from ‘The Combine’ if that shaky piece could possibly be made to run without her. He now wrote definitely, offering Miss West the new rôle at her last year’s salary.

So tranquillity again reigned at Wood Haven, a tranquillity that was much enhanced for Mrs. Lennox by the absence of Adam Fletcher. He had expected to be away a month, but after the Labour Conference there had sprung up an epidemic of labour unrest, and, as he seemed to think his presence necessary to every strike, it kept him away almost all the rest of the summer. Indeed, Mrs. Lennox began to wonder whether the young man’s devotion towards her granddaughter was as intense as she had imagined. His absence was quite voluntary, she gathered, and her lack of sympathy with labour made her feel the cause of it trifling. Her sense of guilt as to Joan’s treatment of Mr. Fletcher grew proportionately less. In any case, she felt, with a pleasant relief, that her granddaughter could no longer be encouraging her suitor if he was not there to be encouraged.

Thus the grandmother and granddaughter passed the time in the little woodland home alone together--or rather with Shakespeare as a dominant third. The girl had, with much difficulty, got from Mrs. Vincent-Dawe a list of the ten plays that they were to produce. After that, she went off to the forest each morning with her lunch and her cherished volume in a basket and did not re-appear until teatime, looking rather worn, but strangely happy. It had been impossible to find out the parts in which she would be cast, and so, instead of studying any particular rôles, she steeped herself in the whole. Mrs. Lennox declared laughingly that Joan had memorized the entire works of the Immortal Bard from cover to cover! “Prick her anywhere and she spouts Shakespeare,” the grandmother told Adam Fletcher on one of his rare visits.

For on two occasions the harassed young labour leader did manage to slip in a long week-end at Wood Haven. He looked very tired each time, and was quite hoarse from open-air speaking. Joan was more concerned on this last point than her grandmother had ever seen her. “There’s no earthly reason why you should get hoarse,” she told her friend severely. “It’s just because you don’t produce your voice properly. Pitch it lower--get it rounder, more resonant. It makes my throat ache to hear you. And do, do take breath oftener--you gasp like a fish. You must make the best of your voice, you know,” she went on with brutal candour, “when you have so little.”

“Yes, and I have to make the little go a very long way at mass meetings,” Adam Fletcher croaked. “But we can’t all be great artistes like you!”

“Now that is hateful of you!” The girl flushed. “Why, I think it is much greater to stand up and say things out of your own head--however badly you say them! I can’t imagine how you do it at all! It would scare me stiff.”

“Scare you!” Mr. Fletcher mocked. “I’d like to see you scared! A poor, little, trembling violet by the wayside--yes, that’s just my conception of you!”

For during these brief visits the old, laughing raillery was resumed, but only in the intervals of hard work. Joan insisted on giving the young man lessons in elocution--to the immense improvement of his voice--alternated by the discussion of various knotty points in Shakespeare’s plays. Here Mr. Fletcher was the teacher, for he was able to elucidate several of the difficulties, about which, probably rightly, Joan had felt it useless to consult her grandmother. The two of them always seemed so absorbed in abstract discussion during these few days they had together that it even occurred to Mrs. Lennox to wonder whether she had been altogether wrong about Mr. Fletcher’s attitude. Could the friendship be platonic on both sides?

Could Mrs. Lennox--unseen--have accompanied Adam Fletcher and Joan on their long rambles, she would soon have been undeceived. For the friendship was far from platonic on either side. Still the grandmother was right in thinking that impersonal topics did form a large part of the young people’s conversation. Adam Fletcher could hardly be in the thick of a labour struggle and not be full of it during these short holidays. Indeed, one day as they walked along the deserted shore, he inveighed so vehemently against capitalists that even Joan was moved to protest. “After all capitalism isn’t a crime,” she suggested.

“Yes, it is. It is a crime against the commonwealth--and that is the only unpardonable one. To think of men owning millions and not even ashamed of it! They are like the officers of a shipwrecked crew, gorging themselves on a ten course dinner while the rest starve.--There isn’t much chance of a millionaire cropping out in my family history, but if one did, I’d be almost too ashamed to live!”

The exaggerated words were half in jest, but Joan did not find them funny. A horrible feeling of apprehension had gripped her. What would Adam think about her father? Of course, she had often heard him rail against capitalism in the abstract, but he had never narrowed his tirades to individuals before. Somehow she had not connected the question with herself. “But some millionaires are all right--quite good men in private life,” she urged.

“Well, they may be. Though mostly they don’t seem even capable of that, judging by what one hears of the Newport crowd. Look at that Vandeleur woman”--Joan almost jumped--“I mean ‘old John Van’s’ wife, who has been cropping up in all the papers of late. I don’t hold a brief against divorce, but it does strike one that after she’d been married to the old man for twenty years and enjoyed his millions, she might have had the decency to stick to him to the end. And I’ve always heard the great Vandeleur is a white man--for a millionaire! Of course, personally, I don’t feel anyone can make that sort of pile and keep his hands absolutely clean!”

They had been skirting a little rocky promontory. Now they found themselves in one of the tiny inlets of this irregular coast. “Shall we stop a little?” Joan said rather breathlessly, and sat down on one of the great boulders. “No, you go over there,” she ordered, pointing to another rock, as her companion prepared to take his seat beside her. Adam smiled a little, and wondered what was coming. He did not absolutely obey, for he stretched himself luxuriously on the warm sand at his companion’s feet, tipping his straw hat over his eyes. There was a pause.

Joan’s heart was beating fast. Adam Fletcher’s words, and particularly his startling reference to her mother, made her feel that she must tell him who she was at once. She had not done so before because she felt, to a certain extent, under a pledge of secrecy to her father. Besides it had seemed so unimportant. The old life was done with for ever. “There is something I want to tell you--a sort of confession,” she began with a most unusual nervousness.

Adam pushed back his hat very slightly, so that he could see the girl’s face. “Revelations as to your lurid past?” he suggested.

Joan laughed, but with constraint. “Yes,” she said. Her tone was sober.

Something in her voice rather startled the young man. Of course, he did not credit a lurid past, but he did think she was going to tell him that at some time she had been engaged to another man. After all, she had been on the stage for two seasons; she must have come into contact with better looking men than himself. Well, he didn’t like the idea, but it couldn’t be helped. After all, he ought to be thankful that she wasn’t still engaged to the other fellow. The idea that she might be, flashed across his mind, but he dismissed it at once. Joan was too honest to have allowed things to be on their present footing if there were still complications with someone else. But who would have imagined she could look so nervous? He didn’t like to see it. “Who is he?” he asked to put an end to her embarrassment.

The girl started. “How did you know?” she exclaimed.

“Oh, just intuition. Well, tell me about the ‘hated rival.’” For the life of him he couldn’t make his voice quite as unconcerned as he intended.

“‘Hated rival’?” The bewilderment on Joan’s face was obvious. “Oh, then you don’t know--I believe you thought I was going to tell you I was engaged or something silly like that.”

“Some such idea did cross my mind,” Adam Fletcher admitted. He was rather abashed by Joan’s scorn, but absurdly relieved.

“It was an idiotic idea!” Joan paused. Then, partly to delay the dreaded revelation, she observed casually: “Once a man did try to kiss me, but I knocked him down. There _was_ a crash.”

“My dear!” Adam had known Joan over a year, but he felt there was little danger of her conversation becoming monotonous. He began to laugh softly. “I didn’t realize how I had been taking my life in my hands!”

“Oh, of course, you are different. You and I--that’s ‘keeps,’” she said childishly. Then she broke off, for Adam Fletcher had, not unnaturally, again taken his life in his hands. “No, sit down right over there,” she insisted. “That wasn’t what I wanted to tell you. It is something serious.”

“Fire away.” Adam this time obediently took up his position on the adjacent rock. Whatever else it might be that she had to say, he felt he could bear it with equanimity. “Which of the ten commandments is it that you have broken?”

It gave Joan an unexpected opening. “I suppose it is the fifth,” she said seriously. “‘Honour thy father and thy mother.’ You have never asked me about my parents, and I have never told you.”

Poor darling, Adam thought complacently; so this was what she was worrying over. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve guessed all about that. At least I imagined your mother must have died when you were a baby, as Mrs. Lennox told me once she had looked after you then. But I don’t care a hang if your mother is dead or not, or what she is, or your father either. So now you can go ahead and tell me he is a street sweeper or in Sing-Sing. I shan’t turn a hair.”

“Father does not sweep streets, and he isn’t in gaol.” In spite of herself Joan could not help smiling. “He is something you would disapprove of much more. And Mother isn’t dead. You were speaking about her just now. My mother is Mrs. Vandeleur.”

“Good Lord! Do you mean John P. Vandeleur is your father?” As Joan nodded, Adam Fletcher turned white. For a moment he seemed unable to speak. “Your parentage is certainly rather startling,” he said at last.

Joan had thought that he would dislike her news, but she had never imagined that he would be so utterly overwhelmed--and dismayed. Yes, there had been no mistaking the look on his face when he heard it. “But Adam,” she almost pleaded, “if you didn’t mind my father being a criminal, why should you mind his being a capitalist? I am myself all the same. Millions aren’t a disease that might break out in me!”

The young man tried to smile. “Well, I don’t know--they often are inherited,” he said.

“Oh, but these millions won’t be. Because Father cut me off when I went on the stage. And I have heard from him since that his decision is irrevocable, unless I give up my work, and, of course, I shall never do that.” She went into fuller particulars. “So you see I am entirely distinct from the millions, and I can’t think why you should mind them so much.”

There was a pause. Adam Fletcher felt he could not tell Joan that her parentage raised a barrier to their marriage, when he had never yet formally asked her to marry him. He wished now that he had done so; they could then have discussed the situation more freely. But a proposal had struck him as an unnecessary and commonplace proceeding: he had not known how to set about it. And Joan was always so taken up with her work; he had been quite sure she would not contemplate marriage at present. Besides she was barely nineteen--ten years his junior. It was too young, he had felt chivalrously, for a girl to take such an irrevocable step. But although he had not spoken of marriage, he certainly had never had the remotest idea of going on always in their present relation. And now this bombshell had fallen between them; it turned him cold with fear. For he, as well as Joan, had work to do in the world. How could he, a labour man, marry John Vandeleur’s daughter? What sort of confidence would the masses retain in him? He would lose all the influence he knew he possessed. His position would be ruined, his power of serving the Cause.--But, of course, if Joan’s father had finally disowned her, that would make a difference. Well, one day he would thresh out the subject with her, when the position between them was on a more definite footing. “I suppose if it really can be kept secret, it doesn’t make any difference,” he now contented himself with saying doubtfully.

“Of course it can be kept secret.” Joan’s tone was quite cheerful. “Why, there is no secret to keep. I am not Miss Vandeleur at all; she died eighteen months ago. I am Joan North!”

This was Adam Fletcher’s last visit to Wood Haven, for soon after Joan and her grandmother migrated to New York. Mrs. Lennox’s rehearsals were beginning. Fortunately, Joan’s season opened considerably later, and so, to her joy, she was first able to establish her grandmother in New York. They took a little furnished apartment on Riverside Drive, right up at 122nd Street. It was a long way from the theatre, but also it was comfortably removed from the millionaire district to the north-east of Central Park. Mrs. Lennox could go out without the fear of running into her old acquaintances. The fact that some new friends they had made at Wood Haven were living near was an additional reason for the choice. But Joan’s anxiety as to her grandmother feeling lonely had been much lessened by finding that Mr. Montgomery was playing in the same production. That kind little man had, at last, achieved the dream of his life in appearing on Broadway. If the play was a success he intended to send for his ‘Missis’ and ‘the kids.’ “I guess I’ll fix them up in your part of the world,” he told Mrs. Lennox. “It’s mighty pretty up by Riverside, and not so scandalously dear. My! they’ll be tickled to death at having a season in New York.”

There was a week’s ‘try-out’ at Philadelphia, and then came the New York opening. This time the play was a success; there seemed little doubt of its running in the metropolis for the whole season. Two days later Joan departed for Boston. “I hate to leave you, Granny darling,” she said. “But you will be ever so careful of yourself, won’t you, and not get ill? It is most handy Adam Fletcher living in New York. Of course, he will often be coming in to see you, and I shall tell him to let me know just exactly how you are looking. So prevarication will avail you nothing!”

Mrs. Lennox was almost amused. Did Joan really think that Mr. Fletcher would spend long hours journeying up town on crowded cars or in the stuffy subway to call on an old woman? Well, if he did come, she would be able to enjoy his visits with a clear conscience in her granddaughter’s absence.

And now, here was ‘Frances West’ established in New York for the first time in her life, and ‘Joan North’ miles away at Boston. Truly the theatrical life was a strange one, Mrs. Lennox felt. To her immense surprise, Mr. Fletcher did call on her, as her granddaughter had foretold, and continued to do so once a week with praiseworthy regularity. Nor could it be that he came to hear about Joan, for Mrs. Lennox made a point of not referring to her. Occasionally, of course, the girl’s name was mentioned--the grandmother was too devoted for entire abstention. On these occasions it did strike her that the young man showed a singularly detailed knowledge of Joan’s proceedings. Well, they wrote to each other, Mrs. Lennox supposed. Indeed, Joan had said as much. But the grandmother genuinely thought that the unsatisfactory friendship was dying down. She would have been much surprised, had she known that the letters were of daily occurrence, and still more at the phraseology in which they were couched.

Meanwhile, Joan, in Boston, was not merely writing love letters; she was working harder at her profession than she had ever worked before. Indeed, after producing two or three plays, she began to find herself hankering after the much despised star system. It really was rather exasperating at the end of each fortnight, just when the play was beginning to get ‘pointed up,’ just when she felt her own part acquiring a certain roundness and polish, to have to lay it aside. It worried her, too, to be rehearsing another play, while the one they were performing was so very far from perfect. Still it could not be helped, and she was certainly getting an extraordinary range of experience. Duplicating parts was in itself a liberal education, with the quick changes of make up, both mental and physical, that it involved. Indeed, it was rather too ‘acrobatic,’ Joan complained, for her taste. All the same, she gave some magnificent renderings of the minor characters, whether duplicated or single. The more intellectual of the Boston critics began to watch for her performances and to devote to them a disconcertingly large portion of their notices. Perhaps her most finished bit of work was the mother in ‘Hamlet.’ This the girl had studied carefully at Wood Haven, feeling sure that it would fall to her. The subtlety and strength of her playing quite wiped out Cyril Mallock, the leading man, and also the unfortunate Mrs. Vincent-Dawe’s Ophelia. After the performance Joan became conscious of her artistic mistake. She had no right to eclipse the chief characters, however poorly they were played. If she did so, it showed that her work, too, was poor; for the Queen was intended to form more or less of a background. In order to play her rôle as well as she was able, she must not play it as well as she was able. The part could not be given for all it was worth.

So a very much more subdued Queen appeared on the stage the following evening. Still the girl had the approbation of her artistic conscience and also incidentally of Mrs. Vincent-Dawe. “I did think perhaps you overplayed it just a little last night, dear,” that lady told her. She was a pleasant, kind-hearted woman, although not so great an actress as she imagined herself; a delusion fostered by her husband’s dollars. However, Joan liked her; indeed, she liked all this enthusiastic, if rather amateurish, little company.

The next play to be produced was ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ with Joan as the Nurse. It almost seemed as though Providence meant to reward the girl for her previous self-denial. For on the Sunday morning--the day before the opening--Mrs. Vincent-Dawe was pronounced to have influenza. Possibly a certain nervousness, resulting from their last opening, made the malady less resistible. It would not do if Juliet’s Nurse somehow emerged as the heroine in the same unexpected way. She sent for Joan at once. “The doctor says I mustn’t appear, dear,” she told her feebly. “Have you ever studied Juliet?”

Joan looked startled. She had, in the past, worked at some of the big speeches, and at the end of the fortnight’s rehearsals, she always knew a good deal of the whole play. Still, Juliet was a big undertaking! However, she had nearly two days and a night. “I’m a very quick study. I guess I can do it,” she said.

The next afternoon an agitated reply-paid telegram arrived from Adam Fletcher. It was the first time he had not received his daily letter. “Are you ill?” he asked.

“Playing Juliet to-night,” was the laconic reply. When Joan arrived at the theatre, another wire was handed her. “You won’t be able to avoid big success however hard you try.” The message referred to the struggles over Hamlet’s mother, about which she had told him. It amused and heartened the girl, a stimulus badly needed. For the sense of hurried preparation had given Joan over to stage fright for the first time in her life. Her teeth had been chattering with terror as she walked down to the theatre.

If Juliet showed a certain ‘raggedness,’ the audience did not seem to notice it. Certainly, despite the obvious shortcomings, it was far better than anything Mrs. Vincent-Dawe could have given them. The scene in Juliet’s chamber was really fine. Possibly yet another telegram from Adam Fletcher had helped in this result. “Am coming to see you Saturday, dearest,” Joan had read, brazenly typed on the strip.

The excuse Adam Fletcher had made to himself, and subsequently to Mrs. Lennox, for going to Boston, was that he was speaking in Albany on Friday night. Or rather he did not mention to Mrs. Lennox where he was speaking. He merely told her vaguely, and a trifle unveraciously, that he had a meeting ‘up Boston way.’ “So I thought I would pay Miss North a visit,” he said.

Mrs. Lennox looked disturbed. Then she resolved to unburden herself. “But it is rather awkward, Mr. Fletcher,” she began agitatedly. “I mean as I am not there and Joan is so young. And that horrid, cheap boarding house where she insists on living--she _will_ be self-supporting, although I tell her it is absurd when I am getting a good salary--but in places like that people gossip so and your name being well known----” The poor grandmother’s voice was quite tremulous.

Adam Fletcher was touched by the solicitude, although, with the arrogance of a younger generation, he considered all these conventions as ridiculous nonsense. “Oh, I will be very discreet, Mrs. Lennox,” he assured her. “Mrs. Vincent-Dawe is quite a friend of mine, so Miss North and I can meet at her house. And, in any case, there will be very little time for gossip, for I have to be back here by Monday.”

He was unable to reach Boston until Saturday evening, just in time to go down to the theatre. Knowing the house was so small, he had already asked Joan to have a seat reserved. Now he took it and waited with growing impatience. Presently the curtain went up. What a lot there was before Juliet came on! At last the old Nurse called out the familiar “what, Juliet!” She appeared.

Good heavens, how beautiful she was! Adam Fletcher sat staring in absolute bewilderment. The fact was, he had never seen Joan at one of her ‘moments.’ The everyday Joan was sometimes pretty, sometimes almost plain, but always just a simple girl, simply dressed. In ‘The Combine’ she had been a poor garment-worker, rather handsome, rather rough. Vivi was a made-up society woman, good-looking but past her first youth. But now, now in her clinging, rich white gown--it was her coming-out dress, had he known it--with her dark hair falling on her shoulders, her great, starry, dark eyes, why, she was superb, wonderful! It took away his breath. It almost frightened him. The house broke into its usual burst of applause.

As Joan came forward, she glanced once or twice across the footlights. Darling, she must be looking for him! The colour came to Adam Fletcher’s face; he could hardly keep still in his seat. But their eyes did not meet, and then she obviously forgot everything but her part. Well, that was all right, he told himself. At any rate he could see her and hear her beautiful voice. But as the play went on, he found to his genuine surprise, that it was not giving him as much satisfaction as he had anticipated. The only words in the balcony scene with which he felt in complete accord were, “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” But it was when they came to Juliet’s chamber that a sudden rush of primitive jealousy almost overmastered him. It was absurd, he told himself angrily. If Joan were playing Lady Macbeth, he would not want to shout for the police, nor try and clap her into the crazy-house at Bloomingdale as Ophelia. “If I am going to get worked up every time she has a love scene on the stage, I had better cut my throat and have done with it,” he reflected.

After that he kept himself better in hand. Joan was playing so very well, that, for a time, he almost forgot it was Joan. He even almost began to sympathise in the lovers’ classic tragedy. A storm of applause at the end of the play, surprisingly loud in such a miniature house, showed that he was not alone in his admiration.

Yes, there was no doubt about it, Joan was a great actress, Adam Fletcher told himself. He felt humble and extraordinarily proud of her. Yet he could not but realize that personally his evening’s pleasure had been somewhat doubtful. It was anxiety to escape from Juliet, as much as desire to see Joan, that made him hurry round to the back as soon as the curtain was finally down. She was standing on the stage in her white robe. Her face lit up radiantly as she saw him--yes, _him_, not that blamed Romeo!

Other people stood round, so the greeting could only be conventional. “Now I must introduce you to some of the company,” she told him. “They are quite excited to meet the author of ‘The Under Dog.’ Oh, Mr. Mallock”--the hated Romeo came forward. “Let me present you to Mr. Fletcher.” Joan then turned to a plump, fair-haired girl, who was standing near. “Mr. Fletcher, Miss Rachel--my Nurse, you know, and Mrs. Mallock in private life.”

Adam Fletcher pressed the hand of the blushing little Mrs. Mallock with unaccustomed fervour. Why, she must be almost a bride, he thought. Well, if she could stand that Romeo and Juliet business every night, he certainly ought not to grumble. Aloud he only murmured that he was delighted to meet her.

The Mallocks lived in the same boarding house as Joan. Presently they were all four walking up together. Partly out of gratitude for her existence, and partly out of deference to Mrs. Lennox’s instructions, Adam Fletcher devoted himself largely to Mrs. Mallock. Indeed, he was so attentive that she privately told her husband, Mr. Fletcher might be homely, but he was one of the loveliest men she had ever met. By the end of the evening the initial position was reversed, for Cyril Mallock had begun to feel distinctly jealous of the well-known dramatist, who was thus absorbing his wife.

In spite of his attentions to Mrs. Mallock, Adam Fletcher had managed to secure a few minutes’ talk with Joan. Remembering his promise to Mrs. Lennox, he suggested a discreet meeting the next morning at Mrs. Vincent-Dawe’s.

Joan was obviously surprised. “Oh, but we can’t go there, because she’s got ‘the grip,’” she explained. “Didn’t I tell you that is why I am playing Juliet? And my boarding house is too horrid. Why can’t we go into the country for a walk like at Wood Haven?”

It is but fair to say that Adam Fletcher hesitated. He hesitated so long that Joan looked still more surprised and even hurt. This decided him. “I don’t care. I must see you,” he said passionately.

“Well, isn’t that what I am suggesting?” Joan asked, with puzzled impatience.

The next morning they took a street car vaguely to its termination. Fortunately it landed them at the beginning of quite pretty country. It was a perfect winter’s day--frosty and with dazzling sunshine. Joan’s cheeks glowed like the rose that peeped out of her fur; she almost danced as she walked beside him. “Well, did you like Juliet?” she demanded eagerly. “Of course it needs a heap more work, especially the balcony part. But I’ve got the bedchamber scene pretty right.”

“Horribly right,” Adam groaned. “I wanted to kill Romeo.”

Once more Joan looked surprised; then she laughed, but a little tremulously. “How absurd! Why, of course, I was feeling it was you.”

Adam glanced round. There was no one in sight along the little country road. “There’s a lot more satisfaction in not doing it vicariously,” he presently observed.

They walked on again, talking hard. The young man’s eyes caught sight of the roses that Joan was wearing. “Are those part of that bumper bouquet I was made to struggle along with last night?” he asked.

“Yes, aren’t they beautiful? And do you know a bunch like that has come for me every evening this week? I have been giving them to every solitary soul I know in Boston, and yet my room is a perfect bower. There is never any card--the donor is anonymous.”

“I guess he won’t be anonymous long,” her companion assured her a trifle glumly.

They had lunch at a little inn they found; it was not a good lunch, but they thought it delicious. Afterwards Adam Fletcher observed that they would not see each other for some time. He had to go West--a labour leader’s life was not a restful one. It would be two or three months before he could be back.

“Oh, but that is too long,” Joan almost faltered. “I thought you would be coming to Boston again sooner than that.”

“Joan, when are we going to get married?” Adam Fletcher suddenly felt that the present position was intolerable. “I suppose you do mean to marry me some day?”

“Why, of course; you must have known that. But not for ages and ages.”

It was much the answer he had expected; indeed, it was because he had expected it, that he had never before asked the question. But her obvious dismay at his going away, had broken through his restraint. “When should I possibly have time to get married?” Joan went on.

“Oh, I don’t know; getting married doesn’t take such a lot of time,” her companion urged cheerfully. “Ten minutes off the dinner hour one day would do it.”

In spite of herself, Joan laughed. “No, I can’t get married,” she repeated. “I always told you that my work had to come first. ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not drama more.’ After all, Adam, there are plenty of people to get married and there aren’t plenty of me. Anyway, I am not going even to think about it until I am a star.” Her voice was decided--almost irritated. “Yes, I have got to be a ‘head-liner’ first and have ‘Joan North’ written up on Broadway in electric lights.”

“Why, I thought you didn’t care about the star business?” This Adam had not expected; he was surprised, even pained. “You always told me it was art for art’s sake and so forth.”

“So it is really.” Joan dropped her lighter tone. “But you see, dearest, I feel somehow that I must have the outward sign too, the hall mark of success. I expect it is the dreadful Vandeleur secret that weighs on me. It makes me always afraid of slipping down into something wealthy and amateur. But if my dramatic position is settled beyond any possibility of doubt, then I shall be safer. So, before anything else, I must be a star--a fixed star.”

“If that is the case, I guess I was the biggest kind of fool to encourage you to leave the Hobson management.” Adam Fletcher felt suddenly that he had more to be jealous of than he had realized. It was not any individual Romeo that stood between him and Joan, but Shakespeare himself, the whole dramatic art. Well, he must make up his mind to it. As a playwright himself, he should be the last to complain. Whenever she did come to him, it would mean more than the uninterrupted love of the ordinary girl. Presently he kissed her again--at any rate she allowed that. “The desire of the moth for the star,” he quoted half humorously, half sadly.