Now that the cat was out of the bag, and the husband out of the closet, Sheila decided to produce Bret at the train the next morning. He was about to get a taste of   
the gipsying life known as “trouping” and he was to learn the significance of the one-night stand.
 
He had felt so shamefaced for his part in the deception of Reben that when he visited the play during the evening performance, and saw the much-discussed embrace 
 
restored, he had no heart to make a vigorous protest. And Sheila was too weary after the two performances to be hectored. It was heartbreaking to him to see her so 
 
exhausted.
 
“Where do we go from here?” he asked, helplessly.
 
“Petoskey,” she yawned.
 
“Petoskey!” he gasped. “That’s in Russia. In Heaven’s name, do we—”
 
He was ready to believe in almost anything imbecile. But she explained that their Petoskey was in Michigan. He did not approve of Michigan.
 
His hatred of his wife’s profession began to take deeper root. It flourished exceedingly when they had to get up for the train the next morning at six. It was hard 
 
enough for him to begin the new day. Sheila’s struggles to fight off sleep were desperate. Sleep was like an octopus whose many arms took new hold as fast as they 
 
were torn loose. Bret was so sorry for her that he begged her to let the company go without her. She could take a later train. But even her sad face was crinkled with 
 
a smile at the impossibility of this suggestion.
 
Breakfast was the sort of meal usually flung together by servants alarm-clocked earlier than their wont. For all their gulping and hurry, Bret and Sheila nearly missed 
 
the train. It was moving as they clambered aboard.
 
“Which is the parlor-car?” Bret asked the brakeman.
 
“Ain’t none.”
 
“Do you mean to say that we’ve got to ride all day in a day coach?”
 
“That’s about it, Cap.”
 
Bret was furious. Worse yet, the train was so crowded that it was impossible for them even to have a double space. Their suit-cases had to be distributed at odd points 
 
in racks, under seats, and at the end of the car.
 
Bret remembered that he had forgotten to get his ticket, but the business-manager, Mr. McNish, passed by and offered his congratulations and a free transportation, 
 
with Mr. Reben’s compliments. Bret did not want to be beholden to Mr. Reben, but Sheila prevailed on him not to be ungracious.
 
When the conductor came along the aisle she said, “Company.”
 
“Both?” said the conductor, and she smiled, “Yes,” and giggled, adding to Bret, “You’re one of the troupe now.”
 
Bret did not seem to be flattered.
 
Reben came down the aisle to meet the bridegroom. He was doing his best to take his defeat gracefully. Bret could not even take his triumph so.
 
Other members of the company drifted forward and offered their felicitations. They made themselves at home in the coach, sitting about on the arms of seats and 
 
exchanging family jokes.
 
The rest of the passengers craned their necks to stare at the bridegroom, crimson with shame and anger. Bret loathed being stared at. Sheila did not like it, but she 
 
was used to it. Both writhed at the well-meant humor and the good wishes of the actors and actresses. Their effusiveness offended Bret mortally. He could have 
 
proclaimed himself the luckiest man on earth, but he objected to being called so by these actors. If he had been similarly heckled by people of any sort—college 
 
friends, club friends, doctors, lawyers, merchants—he would have resented their manner, for everybody hazes bridal couples. But since he had fallen among actors, he 
 
blamed actors for his distress.
 
Eldon alone failed to come forward with good wishes, and Bret was unreasonable enough to take umbrage at that. Why did Eldon remain aloof? Was he jealous? What right 
 
had he to be jealous?
 
Altogether, the bridegroom was doing his best to make rough weather of his halcyon sea. Sheila was at her wits’ end to cheer him who should have been cheering her.
 
At noon a few sandwiches of the railroad sort were obtained by a dash to a station lunch-counter. Bret apologized to Sheila, but she assured him that he was not to 
 
blame and was not to mind such little troubles; they were part of the business. He minded them none the less and he hated the business.
 
The town of Petoskey, when they reached it, did not please him in any respect. The hotel pleased him less. When he asked for two rooms with bath the clerk snickered 
 
and gave him one without. He explained with contempt, “They’s a bath-room right handy down the hall and baths are a quarter extry.”
 
It was a riddle whether it were cleanlier to keep the grime one had or fly to a bath-room one knew not of. When Bret and Sheila appeared at the screen door which kept 
 
the flies in the dining-room they were beckoned down the line by an Amazonian head waitress. She planted them among a group of grangers who stared at Sheila and picked 
 
their teeth snappily.
 
The dinner was a small-hotel dinner—a little bit of a lot of things in a flotilla of small dishes.
 
The audience at the theater was sparse and indifferent. The play had begun to bore Winfield. It irritated him to see Sheila repeating the same love-scenes night after&nbs............