Meanwhile Sheila was immured with her husband. She sent Pennock away and locked the door, pressed Bret into a chair, and knelt against his knee and stretched her arms   
up.
 
“What is it, honey? What’s happened? I didn’t know you were within a thousand miles of here.”
 
He was still ugly enough to growl, “Evidently not!”
 
She seemed to understand and recoiled from him, sank back on her heels as if his fist had struck her down. “What do you mean?” she whispered. “That I—I—You can’t 
 
mean you distrust me?”
 
“That dog loves you and you—”
 
“Don’t say it!” She rose to her knees again and put up her hands. “I could never forgive you if you said that now—and our honeymoon just begun.”
 
“Honeymoon!” he laughed. “Look at this.” He held up his right hand. Grease-paint from Eldon’s jaw was on his knuckles. He put his finger on her cheek and it was 
 
covered with the same unction. Then he rubbed the odious ointment from his hands. She blushed under her rouge.
 
“I know it’s been a pitiful honeymoon. But I couldn’t help it, Bret. I did what I could. It has been harder for me than for you, and I’m just worn out. There’s no 
 
joy in the world for me. The success is nothing.”
 
“He loves you, I tell you, and you let him make love to you.”
 
“Of course, honey; it’s in the play; it’s in the play!”
 
“Not love like that. Why, everybody in the audience was saying it was real. All the people round me were saying you two were in love with each other.”
 
“That’s what we were working for, isn’t it?”
 
“Oh, not the characters, but you two; you and Eldon. Couldn’t I see how he looked at you, how you looked at him, how you—you crushed him in your arms?”
 
“How else could we show that the characters were madly in love with each other, dear?”
 
“But you didn’t have to play it so earnestly.”
 
“It wouldn’t be honest not to do our best, would it? Can’t you understand?”
 
“I can understand that my wife was in the arms of a man that loves her, and that even if you don’t love him, you pretended to, and he took advantage of it to—to—to 
 
kiss you!”
 
“Why, he didn’t kiss me, honey.”
 
“I saw him.”
 
“No, you didn’t. We just pretended to kiss each other. Not that a stage kiss makes any difference with rouge pressing on grease-paint—but, anyway, he didn’t.”
 
“You’ll be telling me he didn’t make love to you next.”
 
“Of course he didn’t, honey. We’d be fined for it if Reben or Batterson had noticed it; but the fact is we were trying to break each other up. Actors are always 
 
doing that when they’re sure of a success. We’ve been under a heavy strain, you know, and now we let down a little.”
 
Bret could hardly believe what he wanted so to believe—that while the audience was sobbing the actors were juggling with emotions, the mere properties of their trade. 
 
He asked, grimly, “If he wasn’t making love to you, what was he saying?”
 
“It was nothing very clever. He’s not witty, Eldon; he’s rather heavy when he tries to write his own stuff. He accused me of letting the scene lag, and he was 
 
whispering to me that I was ‘asleep at the switch, and the switch was falling off,’ and I answered him back that Dulcie Ormerod would please him better.”
 
“Dulcie Ormerod? Who’s Dulcie Ormerod?”
 
“Oh, she’s a little tike of an actress that took my place in the ‘Friend in Need’ company a long while ago. And she’s come on here to be my understudy. Eldon 
 
hates her because she makes love to him all the time.”
 
Bret’s gaze pierced her eyes, trying to find a lie behind their defense. “And you dare to tell me that you and Eldon were joking?”
 
“Of course we were, honey. If I’d been in love with him I wouldn’t choose the theater to display it in, with a packed house watching, would I? If we’d been carried 
 
away with our own emotion we’d have played the scene badly.
 
“Another thing happened. Batterson noticed that something was wrong with our work, and he stood in the wings close to me and began to whip us up. He was snarling at 
 
us: ‘Get to work, you two. Put some ginger in it.’ And he swore at us. That made us work harder.”
 
Bret was dumfounded. “You mean to tell me that you played a love-scene better because the stage-manager was swearing at you?”
 
Sheila frowned at his ignorance. “Of course, you dear old stupid. Acting is like horse-racing. Sometimes we need the spur and the whip; sometimes we need a kind word 
 
or a pat on the head. Acting is a business, honey. Can’t you understand? We played it well because it’s a business and we know our business. If you can’t understand 
 
the first thing about my profession I might as well give it up.”
 
“That’s one thing we agree on, thank God.”
 
“Oh, I’d be glad to quit any time. I’m worn out. I don’t like this play. It hasn’t a new idea in it. I’m tired of it already and I dread the thought of going on 
 
with it for a year—two years, maybe. I wish I could quit to-night.”
 
“You’re going to.”
 
She was startled by the quiet conviction of his tone. Again she sighed: “If I only could!”
 
“I mean it, Sheila,” he declared. “This is your last night on the stage or your last night as my wife.”
 
She studied him narrowly. He really meant it! He went on:
 
“Joking or no joking, you were in another man’s arms and you had no idea when you were coming home. We have no home. I have no wife. It can’t go on. You come back 
 
with me to-morrow or I go back alone for good and all.”
 
“But Reben—” she interposed, helpless between the millstones of her two destinies as woman and artist.
 
“I’ll settle with Reben.”
 
She hardly pondered the decision. Suddenly it was made for her. She looked at her husband and felt that she belonged to him first, last, and forever. She was at the 
 
period when all her inheritances and all nature commanded her to be woman, to be wife to her man. It was good to have him decide for her.
 
She dropped to the floor again and breathed a little final, comfortable, “All right.”
 
Bret bent over and caught her up into his arms with a strength that ass............