“No, not that.  It’s—­it’s a new glory, Kate.”

“A new glory, is it?  Since last night?  Tell me, then.”

Kate flung her long body into a Morris chair and prepared to listen.  Marna looked about her as if seeking a chair to satisfy her whim, and, finding none, sank upon the floor before the blaze.  She leaned back, resting on one slight arm, and turned her dream-haunted face glowing amid its dark maze of hair, till her eyes could hold those of her friend.

“Oh, Kate!” she breathed, and made her great confession in those two words.

“A man!” cried Kate, alarmed.  “Now!”

“Now!  Last night.  And to-day.  It was like lightning out of a clear sky.  I’ve seen him often, and now I remember it always warmed me to see him, and made me feel that I wasn’t alone.  For a long time, I believe, I’ve been counting him in, and being happier because he was near.  But I didn’t realize it at all—­till last night.”

“You saw him after the opera?”

“Only for half a minute, at the door of my house.  We only said a word or two.  He whispered he had lost me—­that I had killed him.  Oh, I don’t remember what he said.  But we looked straight at each other.  I didn’t sleep all night, and when I lay awake I tried to think of the wonderful fact that I had made my debut, and that it wasn’t a failure, at any rate.  But I couldn’t think about that, or about my career.  I couldn’t hold to anything but the look in his eyes and the fact that I was to see him to-day.  Not that he said so.  But we both knew.  Why, we couldn’t have lived if we hadn’t seen each other to-day.”

“And you did?”

“Oh, we did.  He called me up on the telephone about two o’clock, and said he had waited as long as he could, and that he’d been walking the floor, not daring to ring till he was sure that I’d rested enough after last night.  So I told him to come, and he must have been just around the corner, for he was there in a minute.  I wanted him to come in and sit down, but he said he didn’t believe a house could hold such audacity as his.  So we went out on the street.  It was cold and bleak.  The Midway was a long, gray blankness.  I felt afraid of it, actually.  All the world looked forbidding to me—­except just the little place where I walked with him.  It was as if there were a little warm beautiful radius in which we could keep together, and live for each other, and comfort each other, and keep harm away.”

“Oh, Marna!  And you, with a career before you!  What do you mean to do?”

“I don’t know what to do.  We don’t either of us know what to do.  He says he’ll go mad with me on the stage, wearing myself out, the object of the jealousy of other women and of love-making from the men.  He—­says it’s a profanation.  I tried to tell him it couldn’t be a profanation to serve art; but, Kate, he didn’t seem to know what I meant.  He has such different standards.  He wanted to know what I was going