“By Jove! she doesn’t do it!”

“What—­push those matches this way—­what doesn’t she do?” asked the angel.

“Eternally damn the man and claim her sex privilege of unwarranted righteousness!”

“Does she damn herself—­like an idiot?” The angel was interested.

“She does not!  She plays her own little role by the music of the experience she lived through.  It’s not bad, by the lord Harry!  It’s got to be tinkered—­and painted up—­but it’s original.  Just look it over.”

Truedale’s play was pushed across the table and the angel-woman seized upon it.  The taste Camden had given her—­like caviar—­sharpened her appetite.  She read on in the swift, skipping fashion that would have crushed an author’s hopes, but which grasped the high lights and caught the deep tones.  Then the woman looked up and there were genuine tears in her eyes.

“The little brick!” said the voice of loveliness and thrills, “the splendid little trump!  Why, Camden, she had her ideals—­real, fresh, woman-ideals—­not the ideals plastered on us women by men, who would loathe them for themselves!  She just picked up the scraps of her damaged little affairs and went, without a whimper, to the doing of the only job she could ever hope to succeed in.  And she let the man-who-learned go!  Gee! but that was a big decision.  She might so easily have muddled the whole scheme of things, but she didn’t!  The dear, little, scrimpy, patched darling.

“Oh!  Camden, I want to be that girl for as long a run as you can force.  After the first few weeks you won’t have to bribe folks to come—­it’ll take hold, after they have got rid of bad tastes in their mouths and have found out what we’re up to!  Don’t count the cost, Camden.  This is a chance for civic virtue.”

“Do you want more cigarettes, my dear?”

“No.  I’ve smoked enough.”

Camden drew the manuscript toward him.  “It’s a damned rough diamond,” he murmured.

“But you and I know it is a diamond, don’t we, Camby?”

“Well, it sparkles—­here and there.”

“And it mustn’t be ruined in the cutting and setting, must it?” The angel was wearing her most devout and flattering expression.  She was handling her man with inspired touch.

“Umph!  Well, no.  The thing needs a master hand; no doubt of that.  But good Lord! think of the cost.  This out-of-door stuff costs like all creation.  Your gowns will let you out easy—­you can economize on this engagement—­but have a heart and think of me!”

“I—­I do think of you, Camby.  You know as well as I that New York is at your beck and call.  What you say—­goes!  Call them now to see something that will make them sure the world isn’t going to the devil, Camden.  In this scene”—­and here the woman pulled the manuscript back—­“when that little queen totes her heavy but sanctified heart up the trail, men and women will shed tears that will do them good—­tears that will make them see plain duty clearer.  Men and—­yes, women, too, Camby—­want to be decent, only they’ve lost the way.  This will help them to find it!”