“Of course, Wub, I have always known that you never cared for me as I do for you.  So it was bound to end some time.”  She caught his hand to her heart for a second, and then, dropping it, ran from his side.

CHAPTER III

MARIO ESCOBAR

Late in the autumn of the following year a new play, written by Martin Hillyard and named “The Dark Tower,” was produced at the Rubicon Theatre in Panton Street, London.  It was Hillyard’s second play.  His first, produced in April of the same year, had just managed to limp into July; and that small world which concerns itself with the individualities of playwrights was speculating with its usual divergencies upon Hillyard’s future development.

“The Dark Tower” was a play of modern days, built upon the ancient passions.  The first act was played to a hushed house, and while the applause which greeted the fall of the curtain was still rattling about the walls of the theatre, Sir Charles Hardiman hoisted himself heavily out of his stall and made his way to a box on the first tier, which he entered without knocking.

There was but one person in the box, a young man hidden behind a side curtain.  Hardiman let himself collapse into a chair by the side of the young man.

“Seems all right,” he said.  “You have a story to tell.  It’s clear in every word, too, that you know where you are going.  That makes people comfortable and inclined to go along with you.”

Hillyard turned with a smile.

“We haven’t come to the water jump yet,” he said.

Hardiman remained in the box during the second act.  He watched the stage for a while, took note of the laughter which welcomed this or that line, and of the silence which suddenly enclosed this or that scene from the rest of the play; and finally, with a certain surprise, and a certain amusement he fixed his attention upon the play’s author.  The act ended in laughter and Hillyard leaned back, and himself laughed, without pose or affectation, as heartily as any one in the theatre.

“You beat me altogether, my young friend,” said Hardiman.  “You ought to be walking up and down the pavement outside in the classical state of agitation.  But you appear to be enjoying the play, as if you never had seen it before.”

“And I haven’t,” Hillyard returned.  “This isn’t quite the play which we have been learning and rehearsing during the last month.  Here’s the audience at work, adding a point there, discovering an interpretation—­yes, actually an interpretation—­there, bringing into importance one scene, slipping over the next which we thought more important—­altering it, in fact.  Of course,” and he returned to his earlier metaphor, “I know the big fences over which we may come a cropper.  I can see them ahead before we come up to them and know the danger.  We are over two of them, by the way.  But on the whole I am more interested than nervous.  It’s the first time I have ever been to a first night, you see.”