In a similar tempest of infinitely much ado about next to nothing the distant Bret Winfield was browbeating himself silently, pleading with himself not to disgrace   
himself by running away from his loathsome factory. His father needed his presence, and Sheila needed his absence.
 
But gusts of desire for the sight of her swept through him like manias. He would try to reach her on the long-distance telephone. At the theater, where there was as 
 
yet no one in the box-office, it was usually impossible to get an answer or to get a message delivered. The attendants would as soon have called a priest from mass as 
 
an actor from rehearsal. Sometimes, after hours of search with the long-distance probe, he would find Sheila at the hotel and they would pour out their longings across 
 
the distance till strange voices broke in and mocked their sentimentalities or begged them to get off the wire. It was strange to be eavesdropped by ghosts whose names 
 
or even whereabouts one could never know.
 
Winfield’s mother observed her son’s distress and insisted that he was ill. She demanded that he see a doctor; it might be some lingering fever or something 
 
infectious. It was both, but there is no inoculation, no antitoxin, yet discovered to prevent the attack on a normal being. The mumps, scarlet fever, malaria, typhoid 
 
and other ailments have their serums, but love has none. Light attacks of those affections procure immunity, but not of this.
 
Winfield finally told his mother what his malady was. “Mother, I’m in love—mad crazy about a girl.”
 
Mrs. Winfield smiled. “You always are.”
 
“It’s real this time—”
 
“It always was.”
 
“It means marriage.”
 
This was not so amusing.
 
“Who is she?”
 
“Nobody you ever saw.”
 
This was reassuring. Mrs. Winfield had never seen any girl in town quite good enough for her daughter-in-law.
 
Mrs. Winfield was very strict, and very religious in so far as religion is concerned with trying one’s neighbors as well as oneself by very lofty and very inelastic 
 
laws of conduct.
 
Bret dreaded to tell his mother who Sheila was or what she was. He knew her opinion of the stage and its people. She had not expressed it often because she winced even 
 
at the mention of hopelessly improper subjects like French literature, the theater, classic art, playing cards, the works of Herbert Spencer, Ouida, Huxley, and people 
 
like that.
 
She knew so little of the theater that when she made him tell her the girl’s name, “Sheila Kemble” meant nothing to her.
 
Mrs. Winfield demanded full information on the vital subject of her son’s fiancée. Bret dodged her cross-examination in vain. He dilated on Sheila’s beauty, her 
 
culture, her fascination, her devotion to him. But those were details; Mrs. Winfield wanted to know the important things:
 
“What church does she belong to?”
 
“I never thought to ask her.”
 
“Are her people in good circumstances?”
 
“Very!”
 
“What is her father’s business?”
 
“Er—he’s a professional man.”
 
“Oh! A lawyer?”
 
“No.”
 
“Doctor?”
 
“No.”
 
“What then?”
 
“Er—well—you see—he’s very successful. He’s famous in his line—makes a heap of money. He stands very high in his profession.”
 
“That’s good, but what is it?”
 
“Why—he— If you knew him—you’d be proud to have him for a father-in-law or—a—whatever relative he’d be to you.”
 
“No doubt; but what does this wonderful man do for a living?”
 
“He’s an actor.”
 
Mrs. Winfield would have screamed the word in echo, but she was too weak. When she got her breath she hardly knew which of the myriad objections to mention first.
 
“An actor! You are engaged to the daughter of an actor! Why, that’s nearly as bad as if she were an actress herself!”
 
Bret mumbled, “Sheila is an actress.”
 
Then he ran for a glass of water.
 
At length his mother rallied sufficiently to flutter tenderly, with a mother’s infinite capacity for forgiving her children—and nobody else:
 
“Oh, Bret! Bret! has my poor boy gone and fallen into the snare of some adventuress—some bad, bad woman?”
 
“Hush, mother; you mustn’t speak so. Sheila is a good girl, the best in the world.”
 
“I thought you said she was an actress.”
 
This seemed to end the argument, but he amazed her by proceeding: “She is! and a fine one, the best actress in the country—in the world.”
 
When Mrs. Winfield tried to prove from the profundity of her ignorance and her prejudice that an actress must be doomed he put his hand over his ears till she stopped. 
 
Then she began again:
 
“And are you going to follow this angel about, or is she going to reform?”
 
“She can’t quit just now. She has a contract, but after this season she’ll stop, and then we’ll get married.”
 
Mrs. Winfield caught at this eagerly. “You’re not going to marry her at once then?”
 
“No. I wish I could, but she can’t break her contract.”
 
Mrs. Winfield smiled and settled back with relief. She felt as if an earthquake had passed by, leaving her alive and the house still on its foundations. She knew Bret 
 
and she was sure that any marriage scheduled for next year was as good as canceled already.
 
She wanted nothing more said about it. Her son’s relations with an actress might be deplorable, but, fortunately, they were only transient and need not be discussed.
 
But Bret would not permit his love to be dismissed with scorn. He insisted that he adored Sheila and that she was adorable. He produced photographs of her, and the 
 
mother could not deny the girl’s beauty. But she regarded it with an eye of such hostility that she found all the guiles and wiles that she wanted to find in it.
 
Bret insisted on his mother’s meeting Sheila, which she refused to do. She announced that she would not meet her if she became his wife. She would not permit the 
 
creature to sully her home. She warned Bret not to mention it to his father, for the old man’s heart was weak and he was discouraged enough over the conflict with the 
 
scales trust. The shock of a stage scandal might kill him.
 
The elder Winfield wandered into the dispute at its height. He insisted on knowing what it was. His wife tried to break it to him gently and nearly drove him mad with 
 
her delay. When she finally reached the horrible disclosure he did not swoon; he just laughed.
 
“Is that all! Mother, where’s your common sense of humor? The young cub has been sowing some wild oats and he’s trying to spare your feelings. Think noth............