eager to join her so that she might have no difficulty in finding the little table at which they were to sit together. As he crossed behind the back-drop, to gain that side of the stage to which she would enter from the women's dressing-rooms, he passed "Delicate Pete" coming in the opposite direction. Don nodded. There was a sort of defiant impudence in the smile Cousin gave him in response, but he thought nothing of it until he turned into the wings and came suddenly on Margaret standing to meet him in an attitude of being still at bay. The deadly paleness of her face flooded with blood at sight of him. She gasped: "He—he" She blinked dry eyes, staring, outraged. "He said something awful to me."
"The same one? Cousin? That same man?" He scarcely waited for her feeble "Yes." All the accumulated disappointments of the evening rose together in him in a rage. He hurried back after the super, his hands clenched. He saw Cousin standing among his fellows, his back turned. The others parted instinctively, staring at the wrath in Don's eyes. He caught Cousin by the collar, jerked him around, and struck him a blow in the face; the super threw up his arms blindly; and Don struck him three times, with his closed fist, on the mouth, placing the blows in a white heat of anger that made him as clear-sighted and apparently as deliberate as if the whole thing were done in cold blood. Then he threw Cousin off, and stepped back—into the grasp of the stage manager.
"Get out!" He was swung around. "Get out!" He was thrust into the arms of a scene shifter who
