When they were alone Bret explained his decision and the heartbreaking time he had had arriving at it. He would not debate it again. He permitted Sheila the   
consolation of feeling herself an outcast, and she reveled in misery. But the first rehearsal was like a bugle-call to a cavalry horse hitched to a milk-wagon.
 
She entered the Odeon Theater again by the back door and bowed to the same old man, who smiled her in with bleary welcome. And Pennock was at her post looking as 
 
untheatrical as ever. She embraced Sheila and said, “It’s good to see you workin’ again.”
 
The next person she met was Mrs. Vining, looking as time-proof as ever.
 
“What on earth are you doing here?” Sheila cried.
 
And Mrs. Vining sighed. “Oh, there’s an old catty mother-in-law in the play, and Reben dragged me out of the Old Ladies’ Home to play it.”
 
Sheila’s presence at the Odeon was due to the fact that when Eldon asked Reben to release him so that he might play in “Clipped Wings,” with Sheila as star and Bret 
 
Winfield as the angel, Reben declined with violence.
 
When Eldon told him of the play he demanded the privilege of producing it. He ridiculed Bret as a theatrical manager and easily persuaded him to retire to his 
 
weighing-machines. Reben dug out the yellowed contract with Sheila, had it freshly typed, and sent it to her, and she signed it with all the woman’s terror at putting 
 
her signature to a mortgage.
 
One matinée day, as Sheila left the stage door, she met Dulcie coming in to make ready for the afternoon’s performance.
 
Dulcie clutched her with overacted enthusiasm and said: “Oh, my dear, it’s so nice that you’re coming back on the stage, after all these years. Too bad you can’t 
 
have your old theater, isn’t it? We’re doomed to stay here forever, it seems. But—oh, my dear!—you mustn’t work so hard. You look all worn out. Are you ill?”
 
Sheila retreated in as good order as possible, breathing resolutions to oust Dulcie from the star dressing-room and quench her name in the electric lights. That vow 
 
sustained her through many a weak hour.
 
But at times she was not sure of even that success. At times she was sure of failure and the odious humiliation of returning to Blithevale like a prodigal wife fed on 
 
husks of criticism.
 
Bret was called back to his factory by his business and by his request. He did not want to impede Sheila in any way. He had gone through rehearsals and try-outs with 
 
her once, and, as he said, once was plenty.
 
Sheila wept at his desertion and called herself names. She wept for her children and called herself worse names. She wept on Mrs. Vining at various opportunities when 
 
she was not rehearsing.
 
At length the old lady’s patience gave out and she stormed, “I warned you not to marry.”
 
“You warned me not to marry in the profession, and I didn’t.”
 
“Well,” sniffed Mrs. Vining, “I supposed you had sense enough of your own not to marry outside of it.”
 
“But—”
 
“And now that you did, take your medicine. You’re crying because you want to be with your man and your children. But when you had them you cried just the same. All 
 
the women I know on the stage and off, married and single, childless or not, are always crying about something. Good Lord! it’s time women learned to get along 
 
without tears. Men used to cry and faint, and they outgrew it. Women don’t faint any more. Why can’t they quit crying? The whole kit and caboodle of you make me 
 
sick.”
 
“Thank you!” said Sheila, and walked away. But she was mad enough to rehearse her big scene more vigorously than ever. Without a slip of memory she delivered her 
 
long tirade so fiercely that the company and Vickery and Batterson broke into applause. From the auditorium Reben shouted, “Bully!”
 
As Sheila walked aside, Mrs. Vining threw her arms around her and called her an angel and proved that even she had not lost the gift of tears.
 
Bret was not without his own torments. The village people drove him frantic with their questions and their rapturous horror and the gossip they bandied about.
 
His mother, who hurried to the “rescue” of his home and his “abandoned children,” strengthened him more by her bitterness against Sheila than she could have done 
 
by any praise of her. A man always discounts a woman’s criticism of another woman. It always outrages his male sense of fairness and good sportsmanship.
&nbs............