She glanced at him swiftly.  “Of course,” she replied.  “Is it—­about my late hours?”

He shook his head, smiling rather sadly.

“That is only one phase of your rather feverish life, little girl,” he said.  “I don’t mean that I want to lecture you or reproach you.  I only want to ask you if you are satisfied?”

“Satisfied?” echoed Rita, twirling a tassel that hung from a cushion beside her.

“Yes.  You have achieved success in your profession.”  He strove in vain to banish bitterness from his voice.  “You are a ‘star,’ and your photograph is to be seen frequently in the smartest illustrated papers.  You are clever and beautiful and have hosts of admirers.  But—­ are you satisfied?”

She stared absently at the silk tassel, twirling it about her white fingers more and more rapidly.  Then: 

“No,” she answered softly.

Monte Irvin hesitated for a moment ere bending forward and grasping her hands.

“I am glad you are not satisfied,” he whispered.  “I always knew you had a soul for something higher—­better.”

She avoided his ardent gaze, but he moved to the settee beside her and looked into the bewitching face.

“Would it be a great sacrifice to give it all up?” he whispered in a yet lower tone.

Rita shook her head, persistently staring at the tassel.

“For me?”

She gave him a swift, half-frightened glance, pressing her hands against his breast and leaning, back.

“Oh, you don’t know me—­you don’t know me!” she said, the good that was in her touched to life by the man’s sincerity.  “I—­don’t deserve it.”

“Rita!” he murmured.  “I won’t hear you say that!”

“You know nothing about my friends—­about my life—­”

“I know that I want you for my wife, so that I can protect you from those ‘friends.’” He took her in his arms, and she surrendered her lips to him.

“My sweet little girl,” he whispered.  “I cannot believe it—­yet.”

But the die was cast, and when Rita went to the theatre to dress for the afternoon performance she was pledged to sever her connection with the stage on the termination of her contract.  She had luncheon with Monte Irvin, and had listened almost dazedly to his plans for the future.  His wealth was even greater than her mother had estimated it to be, and Rita’s most cherished dreams were dwarfed by the prospects which Monte Irvin opened up before her.  It almost seemed as though he knew and shared her dearest ambitions.  She was to winter beneath real Southern palms and to possess a cruising yacht, not one of boards and canvas like that which figured in The Maid of the Masque.

Real Southern palms, she mused guiltily, not those conjured up by opium.  That he was solicitous for her health the nature of his schemes revealed.  They were to visit Switzerland, and proceed thence to a villa which he owned in Italy.  Christmas they would spend in Cairo, explore the Nile to Assouan in a private dahabiyeh, and return home via the Riviera in time to greet the English spring.  Rita’s delicate, swiftly changing color, her almost ethereal figure, her intense nervous energy he ascribed to a delicate constitution.