"I struck him . . . two or three times . . . in the face."
"And they discharged you?"
"He was bleeding. They don't allow fighting on the stage. They discharged us both."
"I don't care!" she cried defiantly. "I'm glad! It was no place for you, either. You're too good to be among such—such people. I'm glad it happened. It'll do them good." She added, in another spirit: "You'll be able to find something else to do, won't you?"
"Yes! Yes! Of course! Kidder will find me something. And Miss Morris, before she left, told me she would get something better for me in Polk's theatre—Peter Polk, the dramatist. She has some influence with him. She has known him a long time. I'll be all right. It's not that. It's you."
"Oh me! I can go home and teach deportment. I don't seem to have sense enough for anything better."
"We must start out to-morrow morning and find you something, some way—not on the stage, I mean."
"Why do you bother with me? Always—always—I've disappointed you. It was my fault that you left college. Now I've made trouble for you here."
He caught her hand up against his side, pressing it with the arm on which she had been leaning. "You're—you're all that made life worth living."
The voice silenced her, shamed her, oppressed her with her unworthiness and exalted her with the sincerity of his belief in her. It was the voice of a determined loyalty, at once so proud of her and so humble
