“Oh, of course I’ll try, Miss Gray,” replied an extremely feminine voice from beneath Petruchio’s fierce mustachios.  “But Richard Kendrick really is awfully sort of upsetting, don’t you know?”

“Of course I don’t know,” denied Roberta promptly.  “As long as Miss Copeland herself is pleased with us, nobody else matters.  And Miss Copeland is delighted—­she sent me special word just now.  So stiffen your backbone, Petruchio, and make this next dialogue with me as rapid as you know.  Come back at me like flash-fire—­don’t lag a breath—­we’ll stir the house to laughter, or know the reason why.  Ready?”

Her firm hand on Olivia’s arm, her bracing words in Olivia’s ear, put courage back into her temporarily stage-struck “leading man,” and Olivia returned to the charge determined to play up to her teacher without lagging.  In truth, Roberta’s actual presence on the stage was proving a distinct advantage to those of the players who had parts with her.  She warmed and held them to their tasks with the flash of her own eyes, not to mention an occasional almost imperceptible but pregnant gesture, and they found themselves somehow able to “forget the audience,” as she had so many times advised them to do, the better that she herself seemed so completely to have forgotten it.

The work of the young actors grew better with each act, and at the end of the fourth, when the curtain went down upon a scene which had been all storm on the part of the players and all laughter on the part of the audience, the applause was long and hearty.  There were calls for the entire cast, and when they had several times responded there was a special and persistent demand for Katherine herself, in the character of the producer of the play.  She refused it until she could no longer do so without discourtesy; then she came before the curtain and said a few winsome words of gratitude on behalf of her “company.”

Ruth, staring up at her sister’s face brilliant with the mingled exertion and emotion of the hour, and thinking her the prettiest picture there against the great dull-blue silk curtain of the stage she had ever seen, had no notion that just behind her somebody was thinking the same thing with a degree of fervour far beyond her own.  Richard Kendrick’s heart was thumping vigorously away in his breast as he looked his fill at the figure before the curtain, secure in the darkness of the house from observation at the moment.

When he had first met this girl he had told himself that he would soon know her well, would soon call her by her name.  He wondered at himself that he could possibly have fancied conquest of her so easy.  He was not a whit nearer knowing her, he was obliged to acknowledge, than on that first day, nor did he see any prospect of getting to know her—­beyond a certain point.  Her chosen occupation seemed to place her beyond his reach; she was not to be got at by the ordinary methods of approach.  Twice