“Barbara!” she said, and stopped dead.  “Is it any one I know?”

“He is an Actor.”

“Ye gods!” said Jane, in a tence voice.  “What a tradgedy!”

“Tradgedy indeed,” I was compeled to admit.  “Jane, my Heart is breaking.  I am not alowed to see him.  It is all off, forever.”

“Darling!” said Jane.  “You are trembling all over.  Hold on to me.  Do they disaprove?”

“I am never to see him again.  Never.”

The bitterness of it all overcame me.  My eyes sufused with tears.

But I told her, in broken accents, of my determination to stick to him, no matter what.  “I might never be Mrs. Adrian Egleston, but——­”

“Adrian Egleston!” she cried, in amazement.  “Why Barbara, you lucky Thing!”

So, finding her fuller of simpathy than usual, I violated my Vow of Silence and told her all.

And, to prove the truth of what I said, I showed her the sachet over my heart containing his rose.

“It’s perfectly wonderfull,” Jane said, in an awed tone.  “You beat anything I’ve ever known for Adventures.  You are the tipe men like, for one thing.  But there is one thing I could not stand, in your place—­having to know that he is making love to the heroine every evening and twice on Wednesdays and—­Bab, this is Wednesday!”

I glansed at my wrist watch.  It was but to o’clock.  Instantly, dear Dairy, I became conscious of a dual going on within me, between love and duty.  Should I do as instructed and see him no more, thus crushing my inclination under the iron heal of Resolution?  Or should I cast my Parents to the winds, and go?

Which?

At last I desided to leave it to Jane.  I observed:  “I’m forbiden to try to see him.  But I darsay, if you bought some theater tickets and did not say what the play was, and we went and it happened to be his, it would not be my fault, would it?”

I cannot recall her reply, or much more, except that I waited in a Pharmasy, and Jane went out, and came back and took me by the arm.

“We’re going to the matinee, Bab,” she said.  “I’ll not tell you which one, because it’s to be a surprize.”  She squeazed my arm.  “First row,” she whispered.

I shall draw a Veil over my feelings.  Jane bought some chocolates to take along, but I could eat none.  I was thirsty, but not hungry.  And my cold was pretty bad, to.

So we went in, and the curtain went up.  When Adrian saw me, in the front row, he smiled although in the midst of a serious speach about the world oweing him a living.  And Jane was terrably excited.

“Isn’t he the handsomest Thing!” she said.  “And oh, Bab, I can see that he adores you.  He is acting for you.  All the rest of the people mean nothing to him.  He sees but you.”

Well, I had not told her that we had not yet met, and she said I could do nothing less than send him a note.

“You ought to tell him that you are true, in spite of everything,” she said.