Though there was a telephone in their rooms, Bret went down to the public booths. He remembered Eugene Vickery’s tirade about the crime of Sheila’s idleness. He   
telephoned to Vickery’s apartments and told Vickery that he must see him at once. Vickery answered:
 
“Sorry I can’t ask you up or come to where you are this morning, but the fact is I’m at the last revision of my new play and I can’t leave it while it’s on the 
 
fire. Meet me at the Vagabonds Club and we’ll have lunch, eh?—say, at half past twelve.”
 
Bret reached the club a little before the hour. Vickery had not come. The hall captain ushered Bret into the waiting-room. He sat there feeling a hopeless outsider. “
 
The Vagabonds” was made up chiefly of actors. From where he sat he could see them coming and going. He studied them as one looking down into a pool to see how curious 
 
fish behave or misbehave. They hailed each other with a simple cordiality that amazed him. The spirit was rather that of a fraternity chapter-house than of a city 
 
club, where every man’s chair is his castle. Everything was without pose; nearly everybody called nearly everybody by his first name. There were evidences of 
 
prosperity among them. Through the window he could see actors, whose faces were familiar even to him, roll up in their own automobiles.
 
At one o’clock Vickery had not come, and a friend of Bret’s, named Crashaw, who had grown wealthy in the steel business, caught sight of Bret and took him under his 
 
wing, registered him in the guest-book and led him to the cocktail desk. Then Crashaw urged him to wait for the uncertain Vickery no longer, but to lunch with him. 
 
Bret declined, but sat with him while he ate.
 
Bret, still looking for proof that actors were not like other people, asked Crashaw what the devil he was doing in that galley.
 
“It’s my pet club,” said Crashaw, “and I belong to a dozen of the best. It’s the most prosperous and the most densely populated club in town, and the only one 
 
where a man can always find somebody in a cheerful humor at any hour of the day or night, and I like it best because it’s the only club where people aren’t always 
 
acting.”
 
“What!” Bret exclaimed.
 
“I mean it,” said Crashaw. “In the other clubs the millionaire is always playing rich, the society man always at his lah-de-dah, the engineer or the painter or the 
 
athlete is always posing. But these fellows know all about acting and they don’t permit it here. So that forces them to be natural. It’s the warmest-hearted, 
 
gayest-hearted, most human, clubbiest club in town, and you ought to belong.”
 
Bret gasped at the thought and rather suspected Crashaw than absolved the club.
 
Bret was introduced to various members, and even his suspicious mind could not tell which were actors and which business men, for there are as many types of actor as 
 
there are types of mankind, and as many grades of prosperity, industry, and virtue.
 
Some of the clubmen joined Bret’s group, and he was finally persuaded to give Vickery up for lost and eat his luncheon with an eminent tragedian who told uproarious 
 
stories, and the very buffoon who had conquered him at the benefit in the Metropolitan Opera House. The buffoon had an attack of the blues, but it yielded to the 
 
hilarity of the tragedian, and he departed recharged with electricity for his matinée, where he would coerce another mob into a state of rapture.
 
It suddenly came over Bret that this club of actors was as benevolent an institution in its own way as any monastery. Even the triumphs of players, which they were not 
 
encouraged to recount in this sanctuary, were triumphs of humanity. When an actor boasts how he “killed ’em in Waco” it does not mean that he shot anybody, took 
 
anybody’s money away, or robbed any one of his pride or health; it means that he made a lot of people laugh or thrilled them or persuaded them to salubrious tears. It 
 
is the conceit of a benefactor bragging of his philanthropies. Surely as amiable an egotism as could be!
 
Bret was now in the frame of mind that Sheila was born in. He felt that the stage did a noble work and therefore conferred a nobility upon its people.
 
All this he was mulling over in the back of his head while he was listening to anecdotes that brought the tears of laughter to his eyes. He needed the laughter; it 
 
washed his bitter heart clean as a sheep’s. Most of the stories were strictly men’s stories, but those abound wherever men gather together. The difference was that 
 
these were better told.
 
Gradually the clatter decreased; the crowd thinned out. It was Wednesday and many of the actors had matinées; the business men went back to their offices. Still no 
 
Vickery.
 
By and by only a few members were left in the grill-room.
 
Bret had laughed himself solemn; now he was about to be deserted. Vickery had failed him, and he must return to that doleful, heartbroken Sheila with no word of help 
 
for her.
 
He had come forth to seek a way to compel her to return to the stage as a refuge from the creeping paralysis that was extinguishing her life. He hated the cure, but 
 
preferred it to Sheila’s destruction. Now he was persuaded that the cure was honorable, but beyond his reach. He had heard many stories of the hard times upon the 
 
stage, and of the unusual army of idle actors and actresses, and he was afraid that there would be no place for Sheila even though he was himself ready to release her.
 
Crashaw rose at length and said: “Sorry, old man, but I’ve got to run. Before I go, though, I’d like to show you the club. You can choose your own spot and wait for 
 
Vickery.”
 
He led Bret from place to place, pointing out the portraits of famous actors and authors, the landscapes contributed by artist members, the trophies of war presented 
 
by members from the army and navy, the cups put up for fearless combatants about the pool-tables. He gave him a glimpse of the theater, where, as in a laboratory, 
 
experiments in drama and farce and musical comedy were made under ideal conditions before an expert audience.
 
Last he took him to the library. It was deserted save by somebody in a great chair which hid all but his feet and the hand that held a big volume of old plays. Crashaw 
 
went forward to see who it was. He exclaimed:
 
“What are you doing here, you loafer? Haven’t you a matinée to-day?”
 
A voice that sounded familiar to Bret answered, “Ours is Thursday.”
 
“Fine. Then you can take care of a friend of mine who’s waiting for Vickery.”
 
The voice answered as the man rose: “Certainly. Any friend of Vickery’s—” Crashaw said:
 
“Mr. Winfield, you ought to know Mr. Floyd Eldon. Famous weighing-machine, shake hands with famous talking-machine.”
 
The two men shook hands because Crashaw ask............