That night with the holiday spirit of a lad let out of a cheerless school Paul Burton walked along the principal street of a small New England town where old-fashioned houses sprawled between stark elms.  When he reached the Palace Theater, the performance had begun, so he hurriedly bought a ticket and found himself sitting near the front with many empty seats about him.  It was a cheap “follow up” company with an old piece that had once been a Broadway hit.  He had never seen Marcia act.  Now he was seeing her under the most inauspicious circumstances—­and he knew that only want of opportunity and the uncompromising plane on which she had pitched her dealings in managerial offices had balked her ambitions.  She could act and was acting with a force, intelligence and finesse that were wasted here, and as he watched her suddenly their eyes met and across the blazing separation of the “foots” she recognized him.  For just an instant her pupils dilated and she missed a cue.  It looked as though she would “go up” in her lines, but before the prompter could come to her aid she had recovered herself and her performance went on unbroken.  But during the following intermission the women who dressed near by could hear her humming a gay tune, and as she came out at her call they saw in her eyes a sparkle that had not been there before.

As Marcia sat in her dressing-room before the mirror which was fastened against a brick wall, the squalidness of the cubbyhole ceased to depress her.  On the slab before her lay scattered the details of make-up, and crowded into one corner stood her open wardrobe trunk.  A placard near a light-bulb read, “Please remember that YOU are here for a few days, but we are here all the time.  Do not deface our home,” and under that notice, probably tempted by it into irony, a former occupant had scrawled in huge letters “Oh, you home!”

But now the chilly little dressing-room was no longer a dingy cell.  She had recognized Paul Burton’s face out in front, and, as she changed for the next act, little snatches of song broke from her lips, and she smiled at herself in the glass until the small, glistening teeth flashed like those of a pleased child.

Fate gives no guarantee of responsibility for the targeting of the Love-God’s darts.  This whimsical deity seems to owe no duty to fitness or consistency.  He may choose to make a strong and excellent character love one too weak to be worthy its thought and no higher power intervenes.  After all, Marcia had met Paul when she was lonely and they had for a while comforted each other’s unhappiness.  When she had ordered him to stay away the damage was already done, and since then she had been infinitely more lonely—­had craved more desperately companionship with someone of the world from which her poverty had so long exiled her, though its memories remained.  Now he had disobeyed her and come to her.  He had sought her out contrary to command and that must mean that he had found a new strength