A honeymoon is like a blue lagoon divinely beautiful, with a mimicry of all heaven in its deeps; blinding sweet in the sun, and almost intolerably comfortable in the   
moon.
 
But by and by the atoll that circles it like a wedding-ring proves to be a bit narrow and interferes with the view of the big sea pounding at its outer edges. The calm 
 
becomes monotonous, and at the least puff of wind the boat is on the reefs. They are coral reefs, but they cut like knives and hurt the worse for being jewelry.
 
To Bret and Sheila the newspaper storm over her departure from the theater, her elopement from success, was like the surf on the shut-out sea.
 
The Winfield influence had suppressed most of the newspaper comment in the home papers, but the people of Blithevale read the metropolitan journals, and Sheila’s name 
 
flared through those for many days.
 
When the news element had been exhausted there were crumbs enough left for several symposiums on the subject of “Stage Marriages,” “Actresses as Wives,” 
 
“Actresses as Mothers,” “The Home vs. the Theater,” and all the twists an ingenious press can give to a whimsy of public interest.
 
Bret and Sheila suffered woefully from the appalling pandemonium their secret wedding had raised, and Winfield began to be convinced that the policy of the mailed 
 
fist, the blow and the word, had not brought him dignity. But it had brought him his wife, and she was at home; and when they could not escape the articles on “Why 
 
Actresses Go Back to the Stage,” she laughed at the prophecies that she would return, as so many others had done.
 
“They haven’t all gone back,” she smiled. “And I am one of those who never will, for I’ve found peace and bliss and contentment. I’ve found my home.”
 
They were relieved of all that had been unusual in their marriage, and they shared and inspired the usual raptures, which were no less poignant for being immemorially 
 
usual. This year’s June was the most beautiful June that ever was, while it was the newest June.
 
Their honeymoon was usual in being sublime. It was also usual in running into frequent shoals and reefs.
 
The first reef was Bret’s mother. Bret had always been amazed at the professional jealousy of actors and their contests for the largest type and the center of the 
 
stage. Suddenly he was himself the center of the stage and his attention was the large type. He was dismayed to behold with what immediate instinct his mother and his 
 
wife proceeded to take mutual umbrage at each other’s interest in him, and to take astonishing pain from his efforts to divide his heart into equal portions.
 
Sheila recognized that poor Mrs. Winfield had a right to her son’s support in a time of such grief, but she felt that she herself had a right to some sort of 
 
honeymoon. And being a stranger in the town and all, she had especial claim to consideration.
 
Sheila told Bret one day: “Of course, honey, your mother is a perfect dear and I don’t wonder you love her, but she’d like to poison me— Now wait, dearie. Of 
 
course I don’t mean just that, but—well, she’s like an understudy. An understudy doesn’t exactly want the star to break her neck or anything, but if a train ran 
 
over her she’d bear up bravely.”
 
Another reef was the factory. Of course Sheila expected her husband to pay the proper attention to his business and she wanted him to be ambitious, but she had not 
 
anticipated how little time was left in a day after the necessary office hours, meal hours, and sleep hours were deducted.
 
She wrote her mother:
 
Bret is an ideal husband and I’m ideally happy, of course, but women off the stage are terrible loafers. They just sit in the window and watch the procession go by.
 
When I chucked Reben I said, “Thank Heaven, I don’t have to go on playing that same old part for two or three years night after night, matinée after matinée.” But 
 
that’s nothing to the record of the household drama. This is the scene plot of my daily performance:
 
 
 
Scene: Home of the Winfields. Time: Yesterday, to-day, and forever.
 
ACT I. Scene: Dining-room. Time: 8 a.m. Husband and wife at breakfast. Soliloquy by wife while hubby reads paper and eats eggs and says, “Yes, honey,” at intervals.
 
Exit husband. Curtain.
 
Five hours elapse.
 
ACT II. Scene: Same as ACT I. Luncheon on table. Husband enters hurriedly, apologizes for coming home late and dashing away early. Tells of trouble at factory.
 
Exit hastily. Curtain.
 
Five hours elapse.
 
ACT III. Scene: Same as ACT II. Dinner on table. Husband discusses trouble at factory. Wife tells of troubles with servants. Neither understands the other. Curtain. 
 
Two hours elapse.
 
ACT IV. Scene: Living-room. Husband reads evening papers; wife reads stupid magazines. Business of making love. Return to reading-matter. Husband falls asleep in 
 
chair. Curtain.
 
That’s the scenario, and the play has settled down for an indefinite run at this house.
 
Roger and Polly read the letter and shook their heads over it. Roger sighed.
 
“How long do you think it’s really booked for, Polly?”
 
“Knowing Sheila—” Polly began, then shook her head. “Well, really I don’t know. There are so many Sheilas, and I haven’t met the last three or four of them.”
 
For many months Sheila was royally entertained by what she called “the merry villagers.” She was the audience and they the spectacle. She took a childish delight in 
 
mimicking odd types, to Bret’s amusement and his mother’s distress. She took a daughter-in-law’s delight in shocking her mother-in-law by pretending to be shocked 
 
at the Blithevale vices.
 
Hitherto Sheila had gone to church regularly............