The song was a lyric of merit.  The words were non-sense, as befitted the play, but the music was worthy of something better.  Delmars struck into it in a rich tenor that owned a quality that shamed the flippant words.

During one verse of the song the wood nymph performed the grotesque evolutions designed for the scene.  At the middle of the second verse she stood still, with a strange look on her face, seeming to gaze dreamily into the depths of the scenic forest.  The gorilla’s last leap had brought him to her feet, and there he knelt, holding her hand, until he had finished the haunting-lyric that was set in the absurd comedy like a diamond in a piece of putty.

When Delmars ceased Miss Carroll started, and covered a sudden flow of tears with both hands.

“There!” cried the playwright, gesticulating with violence; “there you have it, sergeant.  For two weeks she has spoiled that scene in just that manner at every performance.  I have begged her to consider that it is not Ophelia or Juliet that she is playing.  Do you wonder now at our impatience?  Tears for the gorilla song!  The play is lost!”

Out of her bewitchment, whatever it was, the wood nymph flared suddenly, and pointed a desperate finger at Delmars.

“It is you—­you who have done this,” she cried wildly.  “You never sang that song that way until lately.  It is your doing.”

“I give it up,” said the sergeant.

And then the gray-haired matron of the police station came forward from behind the sergeant’s chair.

“Must an old woman teach you all?” she said.  She went up to Miss Carroll and took her hand.

“The man’s wearing his heart out for you, my dear.  Couldn’t you tell it the first note you heard him sing?  All of his monkey flip-flops wouldn’t have kept it from me.  Must you be deaf as well as blind?  That’s why you couldn’t act your part, child.  Do you love him or must he be a gorilla for the rest of his days?”

Miss Carroll whirled around and caught Delmars with a lightning glance of her eye.  He came toward her, melancholy.

“Did you hear, Mr. Delmars?” she asked, with a catching breath.

“I did,” said the comedian.  “It is true.  I didn’t think there was any use.  I tried to let you know with the song.”

“Silly!” said the matron; “why didn’t you speak?”

“No, no,” cried the wood nymph, “his way was the best.  I didn’t know, but—­it was just what I wanted, Bobby.”

She sprang like a green grasshopper; and the comedian opened his arms, and—­smiled.

“Get out of this,” roared the desk sergeant to the waiting waiter from the restaurant.  “There’s nothing doing here for you.”

XVII

ONE DOLLAR’S WORTH

The judge of the United States court of the district lying along the Rio Grande border found the following letter one morning in his mail: