The last days of Sheila’s presence with the company were full of annoyances. There was little opportunity for communion with Floyd. Mrs. Vining was invincibly tenacious. All day long, too, Floyd was rehearsing his new r?le. This proved intensely difficult to him. With a heart full of devotion to Sheila, it was worse than awkward to be making love to the parvenue who took her place, mimicked her intonations, made the same steps and gestures, said the same words, and yet was so radically different.  
She was a forward thing—Miss Dulcie Ormerod. She patronized Eldon and tried to flirt with him at the same time. She forced conversation on him when he was morose. She happened to meet him with extraordinary coincidence when he was outside the theater. And almost every time the two of them happened to be together they happened to meet Sheila.
 
Dulcie was one of those women who seem unable to address one without pawing or clinging—as if the arms were telephone cables, and there were no communicating without contact.
 
Sheila was of the wireless type. A touch from her was as important as a caress. To put a hand familiarly or carelessly on her arm was not to be thought of, at least by Eldon. Others who attempted it found that she flinched aside or moved to a distance almost unconsciously. She kept herself precious in every way.
 
Eldon loathed the touch of Dulcie’s claws, especially as he could not seem to convince Sheila that he did not enjoy her incessant contiguity. And the prehensive Dulcie was calling him “Floyd” before the third rehearsal.
 
Batterson was calling him all sorts of names of the familiarity that implies contempt, for Eldon was not rehearsing well. He realized the confusing inconveniences that love can weave into the actor’s trade. If it had not been for Sheila he could have made a straight matter of art or business out of the love-scenes with Dulcie, or he could have thrown the hungry thing an occasional kind word to keep her quiet, or have fallen temporarily in love with her, for Dulcie was one of those actresses who insist that they “must feel a part to play it.” She was forever alluding to one of her r?les in which “she knew she was great because she wept real tears in it.”
 
Sheila belonged to the other school. Her father would say of a scene, “I knew I was great in that because I could guy it.” For then he was like the juggler who can chat with the audience without dropping a prop—a Cyrano who can fight for his life and compose a poem at the same time.
 
Sheila felt the emotions of her r?le when she first took it up, but she conquered them as soon as she could by studying and registering their manifestations, so that her resources were like an instrument to play on. Thereafter her emotions were those of the concert violinist who plays upon his audience as well as his instrument.
 
Sheila watched a few rehearsals. She hated the exaggerated sentimentalisms of Dulcie and her splay-footed comedy. Dulcie underscored every important word like a school-girl writing a letter. Sheila credited the audience with a sense of humor and kept its intelligence alert. Sheila made no bones of criticizing her successor. But when Eldon agreed with her, she was not convinced. She was far more jealous of him than she was of her r?le. But Eldon was not wise enough to take comfort from these proofs of her affection. They narrowly escaped quarreling during their last few meetings.
 
When Sheila went away Eldon could not even go to the train with her. Batterson held him to rehearsal.
 
Sheila said, “Don’t worry; Mr. Folwell will take care of me.” She could hardly have been ignorant of the torment this meant to Eldon, but her heart was aching, too, because he permitted a little thing like his business to keep him from paying the last tributes of tenderness.
 
Folwell was one of those affable leading men who always proffer their leading women as much gallantry as they care to accept. He had been a devoted suitor to Zelma Griffen and had graciously pretended to suffer agonies of jealousy over her humming-bird flirtations. He had done the same with the women stars of his last three engagements. He was Scotc............