There was reason for it.  A child of Chicago, daughter in a family of standing and exclusiveness, after winning notable successes in San Francisco, in London, in New York, had, at last, consented to return home, and appear for the first time in her native city.  Endowed with rare gifts of interpretation, earnest, sincere, forceful, loving her work fervently, possessing an attractive presence and natural capacity for study, she had long since won the appreciation of the critics and the warm admiration of those who care for the highest in dramatic art.  The reward was assured.  Already her home-coming had been heralded broadcast as an event of consequence to the great city.  Her name was upon the lips of the multitude, and upon the hearts of those who really care for such things, the devotees of art, of high endeavor, of a stage worthy the traditions of its past.  And in her case, in addition to all these helpful elements, Society grew suddenly interested and enthralled.  The actress became a fashion, a fad, about which revolved the courtier and the butterfly.  Once, it was remembered, she had been one of them, one of their own set, and out of the depths of their little pool they rose clamorously to the surface, imagining, as ever, that they were the rightful leaders of it all.  Thus it came about, that first night—­the stage brilliant, the house a dense mass of mad enthusiasts, jewelled heads nodding from boxes to parquet in recognition of friends, opera glasses insolently staring, voices humming in ceaseless conversation, and, over all, the frantic efforts of the orchestra to attract attention to itself amid the glitter and display.

Utterly indifferent to all of it, Ned Winston leaned his elbow on the brass rail of the first box, and gazed idly about over that sea of unknown faces.  He would have much preferred not being there.  To him, the theatre served merely as a stimulant to unpleasant memory.  It was in this atmosphere that the ghost walked, and those hidden things of life came back to mock him.  He might forget, sometimes, bending above his desk, or struggling against the perplexing problems of his profession in the field, but not here; not in the glare of the footlights, amid the hum of the crowd.  He crushed the unread programme within his hand, striving to converse carelessly with the lady sitting next to him, whom he was expected to entertain.  But his thoughts were afar off, his eyes seeing a gray, misty, silent expanse of desert, growing constantly clearer in its hideous desolation before the advancing dawn.

The vast steel curtain arose with apparent reluctance to the top of the proscenium arch, the chatter of voices ceased, somewhat permitting the struggling orchestra to make itself felt and heard.  Winston shut his teeth, and waited uneasily, the hand upon the rail clenched.  Even more than he had ever expected, awakened memory tortured.  He would have gone out into the solitude of the street, except