That night Sheila went to bed to sleep out sleep. When Pennock asked, on leaving her arranged for slumber, “Will you be called at the usual hour, please?” Sheila   
answered, “I won’t be called at all, please!”
 
This privilege alone was like a title of gentility to a tired laundress. There would be no rehearsal on the morrow for her.
 
The other galley-slaves in the company must still bend to the oar, but she had shore leave of mornings, and after Saturday she was free altogether.
 
Now that she had time to be tired, old aches and fatigues whose consideration had had to be postponed came thronging upon her, till she wondered how she had endured 
 
the toil. Still more she wondered why.
 
Then she wondered nothing at all for a good many hours, until the old habit of being called awakened her. She glanced at her watch, saw that it was half past ten, and 
 
flung out of bed, gasping, “They’ll be rehearsing and I’m not there!”
 
Then she remembered her liberty, and stood feeling pleasantly foolish. The joy of toppling back to bed was more than payment for the fright she had suffered. It was 
 
glorious to float like a basking swimmer on the surface of sleep, with little ripples of unconsciousness washing over her face and little sunbeams of dream between.
 
In the half-awake moods she reviewed her ambitions with an indolent contempt. That man Winfield’s words came back to her. After all, she had no home except her father
 
’s summer cottage. And she had been planning no home except possibly another such place whither she would retire in the late spring until the early fall, to rest from 
 
last season’s hotels and recuperate for next season’s. Yes, that was just about the home life she had sketched out!
 
It occurred to her now that her plans had been unhuman and unwomanly. “A woman’s place is the home,” she said. It was not an original thought, but it came to her 
 
with a sudden originality as sometimes lines she had heard or had spoken dozens of times abruptly became real.
 
She wanted a pretty little house where she could busy herself with pretty little tasks while her big, handsome husband was away earning a pretty little provender for 
 
both of them. She would be a young mother-bird haunting the nest, leaving the male bird to forage and fight. That was the life desirable and appropriate. Women were 
 
not made to work. An actress was an abnormal creature.
 
Sheila did not realize that the vast majority of home-keeping women must work quite as hard as the actress, with no vacations, little income, and less applause. The 
 
picture of the husband returning laughing to his eager spouse was a decidedly idealized view of a condition more unfailing in literature than in life. Some of those 
 
housewives who had grown tired of their lot, as she of hers, would have told her that most husbands return home weary and discontented, to listen with small interest 
 
to their weary and discontented wives. And many husbands go out again soon after they have come home again.
 
Sheila was doing what the average person does in criticizing the stage life—magnifying its faults and contrasting it, not with the average home, but with an ideal 
 
condition not often to be found, and less often lasting when found.
 
Sheila had known so little of the average family existence that she imagined it according to the romantic formula, “And so they were married and lived happily ever 
 
afterward.” She thought that that would be very nice. And she lolled at her ease, weltering in visions of cozy domesticity with peace and a hearth and a noble 
 
American citizen and the right number of perfectly fascinating children painlessly borne and painlessly borne with.
 
Anything, anything would be better than this business of rehearsing and rehearsing and squabbling and squabbling, and then settling down into a dismal repetition of 
 
the same old nonsense in the same old theater or in a succession of same old theaters.
 
How good it was, just not to have to learn a new play for next week! It was good that there was no opportunity to rehearse any further revisions even of poor Vickery’
 
s play. There was almost a consolation in the thought that it had not succeeded with Reben. Perhaps Reben would be a long while discovering a substitute. Sheila hoped 
 
he would not find one till the new year. She almost hoped he would never find one.
 
She was awfully sorry for poor Vickery. He had suffered so cruelly, and she had suffered with him. Perhaps he would give up play-writing now and take up some less 
 
inhuman trade. To think that she had once dallied with the thought of marrying him! To play plays was bad enough, but to be the wife of a playwright—no, thank you! 
 
Better be the gambler’s wife of a less laborious gambler or the nurse to a moody lunatic under more restraint.
 
Worse yet, Sheila had narrowly escaped falling in love with an actor! They would have been Mr. and Mrs. Traveling Forever! Mr. and Mrs. Never Rest! To live in hotels 
 
and railroad stations, sleeping-car berths, and dressing-rooms of about the same size; to put on a lot of sticky stuff and go out and parrot a few lines, then to 
 
retire and grease out the paint, and stroll to a supper-room, and so to bed. To make an ambition of that! No, thank you! Not on your jamais de la vie, never!
 
And thus having with a drowsy royalty effaced all her plans from her books, she burned her books. Desdemona’s occupation was gone. She might as well get up. She 
 
bathed and dressed and breakfasted with splendid deliberation, and then, the day proving to be fine and sunny and cool when she raised her tardy curtains, she decided 
 
to go forth for a walk, the dignified saunter of a lady, and not the mad rush of a belated actress. It wanted yet an hour before she must make up for the matinée.
 
She had not walked long when she heard her name called from a motor-car checked at the curb. She turned to see Eugene Vickery waving his cap at her. Bret Winfield, at 
 
the wheel, was bowing bareheaded. They invited her to go with them for a ride. It struck her as a providential provision of just what she would have wished for if she 
 
had thought of it.
 
Vickery stepped down to open the door for her, and, helping her in, stepped in after her. Winfield reached back his hand to clasp hers, and Vickery said:
 
“Drive us about a bit, chauffeur.”
 
“Yes, sir!” said Winfield, touching his cap. And he lifted the car to a lively gait.
 
“Where did you get the machine?” said Sheila.
 
“It’s his—Bret’s—Mr. Winfield’s,” said Vickery. “He came down in it—to see that infernal play of mine. Do you know, I think I’ve discovered one thing that’s 
 
the matter with it. In that scene in the first act, you know, where—”
 
He rambled on with intense enthusiasm, but Sheila was thinking of the man at the wheel. He was rich enough to own a car and clever enough to run it. As she watched he 
 
guided it through a swarm of traffic with skill and coolness.
 
Now and then Winfield threw a few words over his left shoulder. They had nothing to do with things theatrical—just commonplace high spirits on a fine day. Sheila did 
 
like him ever so much.
 
By and by he drew up to the curb and got down, motioning to Vickery with the thumb of authority. “I’m tired of letting you monopolize Miss Kemble, ’Gene. I’m going 
 
to ask her to sit up with me.”
 
“But I’m telling her about my play,” said Vickery. “Now, in the middle of the last act—............