mingled with the odour of the violets pinned on her sables.

“Just look who’s here,” she said, holding a small, plump, frizzled, blond woman of about forty in front of her. “Billie Irwin—she came over from London with the unfortunate ‘Love at First Sight’ company, and here she is with no more engagement than a trapeze performer with a broken leg—you know her, don’t you, Terry?—well, anyway you know her now, and this is Ruth Mayfield—not in the profession, an artist of a different kind.”

“How interesting!” murmured Billie Irwin.

“Tea? Take it away, George—we don’t want tea. I want dinner just as soon as Amy can get it. We’re all going to see the opening of ‘Three Merry Men.’ You thought I was going to fail you, didn’t you, Terry? But we’re not, we’ll all be there. And, 38George, do get a room ready for Miss Irwin. She’s going to stay for a few days with me.”

38

“She means a few months,” whispered Terry to Ruth, thereby establishing between them a secret confidence.

That night Ruth got a new impression of Terry Riordan. He did not stay to dinner, though Gloria asked him, but he met them at the theatre. Every one seemed to know him and treated him as quite an important person. It was her first experience of a first night, and she got the impression that these people were waiting through the acts for the intermissions instead of waiting through the intermissions for the acts. Terry wasn’t in their box, he had a seat in the back of the theatre with Philip Noel, who had written the music, but he slipped in and out during the evening to chat and to hear words of praise.

“How do you think it’s going to go?” Gloria asked him when he returned to their box after the first intermission.

“Badly, I’m afraid; I met several of the newspaper men out there, and they seemed to like it. If the critics like it, it’s almost sure to close in three weeks,” said Terry.

“I won’t believe it. It is sure to have a long run,” said Gloria.

“God knows I did my best to lower the moral tone of the thing and make it successful,” said Terry. “If it will only run long enough to give me some royalties, just long enough to keep me 39going until my comedy is finished, I won’t care.”

39

They chatted on, commenting on the 

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