Then Marcia opened the door and as he made his way along the four-foot hall to the small living-room he discovered that she, too, was pale and distraite.

“What is it?” he demanded with that sympathy which always lay close to the surface of his nature.  To his astonishment, the girl whose courage and composure had become the reliance of his own weakness dropped on the disguised cot and buried her face in her hands while her slim figure shook to her sobbing, among the cushions.

Paul stood embarrassed and perplexed.  Then, moved by impulse, he crossed to the lounge and his hand fell with a gently caressing touch upon her arm.  “Why, little girl,” he remonstrated softly, “where is your gay bravery—­what has happened?”

She sat up then and almost impatiently shook his hand away.  After that she rose to her feet.

“That’s just it,” she declared, and for the first time in their acquaintanceship her eyes shone with an angry gleam, which quickly faded again into distress.  Her tear-stained face confronted him accusingly “Everybody talks about my intelligence—­and my courage.  That’s not what I want.  I’m just human and I want a human chance.”

“What sort of chance?” he asked in that vague distress which confuses a man and makes him stupid, at sight of a woman’s tears.

She lifted her head defiantly.  “A chance to work and live and be happy,” she told him vehemently.  “A chance to support my child and myself.  They all praise me, but no one will hire me.  I’m tired of fighting—­unspeakably tired.”  Once more her face went into the support of the two small hands and her body shook.

“But your part in the new piece—­don’t you get it?” he questioned.

“They gave it to another woman,” she told him faintly between her fingers.  “A woman who—­who is the friend of the author.”

Heretofore Paul had always felt a half-submerged diffidence with Marcia, such a partially acknowledged deference as one accords to another who has drunk deeper of life and more extensively built wisdom from experience.  With her his easy pose of acknowledged genius that passed current in the drawing-rooms lost its assurance, and with her he was at his best because most natural.  But this was a new Marcia, a Marcia whose delicate, childlike face was stamped with grief; a child in distress and a child who needed comforting.  Just as once before, when there was no escape, Paul had fought the Marquess kid and had been astonished at the ease of battle, so now an impulse seized him and he found himself acting without premeditation.  He was the man looking on at the tears of a woman, and a woman whose laughter had often been his comfort.  Instinctively he folded her in his arms and kissed the soft hair which was all that showed itself of the bowed head and hidden face.

Now when for the first time he held her close to him he felt a tremor of sobs run through the slender figure.  His pulses heightened their tempo as he became conscious of the soft palpitation of her shoulders and bosom.