The play that Sheila was surrendered to, “A Friend in Need,” proved a success and raised its young author to such heights of pride and elation that when his next work, an ambitious drama, was produced, he had a long distance to fall. And fell hard.  
Young Trivett had tossed off “A Friend in Need” and had won from it the highest praise as a craftsman. He had worked five years on his drama, only to be accused of being “so spoiled by success as to think that the public would endure anything he tossed off.”
 
But the miserable collapse of his chef-d’?uvre did not even check the triumph of his hors-d’?uvre. “A Friend in Need” ran on “to capacity” until the summer weather turned the theater into a chafing-dish. Then the company was disbanded.
 
In the early autumn following it was reorganized for a road tour. Of the original company only four or five members were re-engaged—Sheila, Mrs. Vining, Miss Griffen, and Tuell.
 
During the rehearsals Sheila had paid little attention to the new people. She was doomed to be in their company for thirty or forty weeks and she was in no hurry to know them. She was gracious enough to those she met, but she made no advances to the others, nor they to her. She had noticed that a new man played the taxicab-driver, but she neither knew nor cared about his name, his aim, or his previous condition of servitude.
 
The Freshmen of Leroy University brought him to her attention with a spectacular suddenness in the guise of a hero. The blow he struck in her supposed defense served as an ideal letter of introduction.
 
As soon as the curtain had fallen on the riot, cutting off the view of the battle between the police and the students, Sheila looked about for the hero who had rescued her from Heaven alone knew what outrage.
 
The neglected member of the troupe had leaped into the star r?le, the superstar r?le of a man who wages a battle in a woman’s defense. She ran to him and, seizing his hands, cried:
 
“How can I ever, ever, ever thank you, Mr.—Mr.—I’m so excited I can’t remember your name.”
 
“Eldon—Floyd Eldon, Miss Kemble.”
 
“You were wonderful, wonderful!”
 
“Why, thank you, Miss Kemble. I’m glad if you—if—To have been of service to you is—is—”
 
The stage-manager broke up the exchange of compliments with a “Clear! clear! Damn it, the curtain’s going up.” They ran for opposite wings.
 
When the play was over Eldon was not to be found, and Sheila went with her aunt to the train. At the hour when Winfield was being released from his cell the special sleeping-car that carried the “Friend in Need” company was three hundred miles or more away and fleeing farther.
 
When Sheila raised the curtain of her berth and looked out upon the reeling landscape the morning was nearly noon. Yet when she hobbled down the aisle in unbuttoned shoes and the costume of a woman making a hasty exit from a burning building, there were not many of the troupe awake to observe her. Her aunt, however, was among these, for old age was robbing Mrs. Vining of her lifelong habit of forenoon slumber. Like many another of her age, she berated as weak or shiftless what she could no longer enjoy.
 
But Sheila was used to her and her rubber-stamp approval of the past and rubber-stamp reproval of the present. They went into the dining-car together, Sheila making the usual theatrical combination of breakfast and lunch. As she took her place at a table she caught sight of her rescuer of the night before.
 
He was gouging an orange when Sheila surprised him with one of her best smiles. His startled spoon shot a geyser of juice into his eye, but he smiled back in spite of that, and made a desperate effort not to wink. Sheila noted the stoicism and thought to herself, “A hero, on and off.”
 
Later in the afternoon when she had read such morning papers as were brought aboard the train, and found them deadly dull since there was nothing about her in them, and when she had read into her novel till she discovered the familiar framework of it, and when from sheer boredom she was wishing that it were a matinée day so that she might be at her work, she saw Floyd Eldon coming down the aisle of the car.
 
He had sat in the smoking-room until he had wearied of the amusing reminiscences of old Jaffer, who was always reminiscent, and of the grim silence of Crumb, who was always taciturn, and of the half-smothered groans of Tuell, who was always aching somewhere. At length Eldon had resolved to be alone, that he might ride herd about the drove of his own thoughts. He made his face ready for a restrained smile that should not betray to Sheila in one passing glance all that she meant to him.
 
To his ecstatic horror she stopped him with a gesture and overwhelmed him by the delightful observation that it was a beautiful day. He freely admitted that it was and would have moved on, but she checked him again to present him to Mrs. Vining.
 
Mrs. Vining was pleased with the distinguished bow he gave her. It was a sort of old-comedy bow. She studied him freely as he turned in response to Sheila’s next confusing words:
 
“I want to thank you again for coming to my rescue from that horrible brute.”
 
Eldon looked as guilty as if she had accused him of being himself the brute he had saved her from. He threw off his disgusting embarrassment with an effort at a careless shrug:
 
“It was nothing—nothing at all, I am sure.”
 
“It was wonderful,” Sheila insisted. “How powerful you must be to have lifted that monster clear over the apron of the stage into the lap of the orchestra!”
 
A man never likes to deny his infinite strength, but Eldon was honest enough to protest: “I caught him off his balance, I am afraid. And, besides, it comes rather natural to me to slug a man from Leroy.”
 
“Yes? Why?”
 
“I am a Grantham man myself. I was on our ’varsity eleven a couple of years.”
 
“Oh!” said Sheila. “Sit down, won’t you?”
 
She felt that she had managed this rather crassly. It would have been more delicate to express less surprise and to delay the invitation to a later point. But it was too late now. He had already dropped into the place beside her, not noticing until too late that he sat upon a novel and a magazine or two and an embroidery hoop on which she had intended to work. But he was on so many pins and needles that he hardly heeded one more.
 
College men are increasingly frequent on the stage, but not yet frequent enough to escape a little prestige or a little prejudice, according to the point of view. In Sheila’s case Eldon gained prestige and a touch of majesty that put her wits to some embarrassment for conversation. It was one thing to be gracious to a starveling actor with a two-line r?le; it was quite another to be gracious to a football hero full of fame and learning.
 
Mrs. Vining, however, had played grandes dames too long to look up to anybody. She felt at ease even in the presence of this big third-baseman, or coxswain, or whatever he had been on his football nine. She said, “Been on the stage long, Mr. Eldon?”
 
Eldon grinned meekly, looked up and down the aisle with mock anxiety, and answered: “The stage-manager isn’t listening? This is my first engagement.”
 
“Really?” was the only comment Sheila could think of.
 
After his long silence in the company, and under the warming influence of Sheila’s presence, the snows of pent-up reminiscence came down in a flood of confession:
 
“I don’t really belong on the stage, you know. I haven’t a big enough part to show how bad an actor I really could be if I had the chance. But I set my mind on going on the stage, and go I went.”
 
“Did you find it hard to get a position?”
 
“Well, when I left college and the question of my profession came up, dad and I had several hot-and-heavies. Finally he swore that if I didn’t accept a job in his office I need never darken his door again. Business of turning out of house. Father shaking fist. Son exit center, swearing he will never come back again. Sound of door slamming heard off.”
 
Sheila still loved life in theatrical terms. “But what did your poor mother do?” she said.
 
A film seemed to veil Eldon’s eyes as he mumbled: “She wasn’t there. She was spared that.” Then he gulped down his private grief and went on with his more congenial self-derision: “I left home, feeling like Columbus going to discover America. I didn’t expect to star the first year, but I thought I could get some kind of a job. I went to New York and called on all the managers. I was such an ignoramus that I hadn’t heard of the agencies. I got to know several office-boys very well before one of them told me about the employment bureaus. Well, you know all about that agency game.”
 
Sheila had been spared the passage through this Inferno on her way to the Purgatory of apprenticeship. But she had heard enough about it to feel sad for him, and she spared him any allusions to her superior luck. Still, she encouraged him to describe his own adventures.
 
He told of the hardships he encountered and the siege he laid to the theater before he found a breach in its walls to crawl through. Constantly he paused to apologize for his garrulity, but Sheila urged him on. She had been born within the walls and she knew almost nothing of the struggles that others met except from hearsay. And she had never heard say from just such a man with just such a determination. So she coaxed him on and on with his history, as Desdemona persuaded Othello to talk. With a greedy ear she devoured up his discourse and made him dilate all his pilgrimage. Only, Eldon was not a Blackmoor, and it was of his defeats and not his victories that he told. Which made him perhaps all the more attractive, seeing that he was well born and well made.
 
He laughed at his own ignorance, and felt none of the pity for himself that Sheila felt for him. When she praised his determination, he sneered at himself:
 
“It was just bull-headed stubbornness. I was ashamed to go back to my dad and eat veal, and so I didn’t eat much of anything for a long while. The only jobs I could get were off the stage, and I held them just long enough to save up for another try. How these actors keep alive I can’t imagine. I nearly starved to death. It wouldn’t have been much of a loss to the stage if I had, but it wasn’t much fun for me. I wore out my clothes and wore out my shoes and my overcoat and my hat. I wore out everything but my common sense. If I’d had any of that I’d............