“I should think any investment in Magsie would be perfectly safe,” said Rachael’s delightful voice.  And boldly she added:  “Do you know who is backing this, Warren?”

“To a certain extent—­I am,” Warren said, after an imperceptible pause.  To Peter he added, in a lower voice, the voice in which men discuss business matters:  “It was a question of the whole deal falling through—­I think she’ll make good—­this fellow Barrett—­”

Rachael began to chat with Elinor, but there was bitterness in her soul.  She had leaped into the breach, she had saved the situation, at least before Elinor and Peter.  But it was not fair—­not fair for Warren to have been deep in this affair with Magsie, with never a word to his wife!  She—­Rachael—­would have been all interest, all sympathy.  There was no reason between civilized human beings why this eternal question of sex should debar men and women from common ambitions and common interests!  Let Warren admire Magsie if he wanted to do so, let him buy her her play, and stand between her and financial responsibility, jet him admire her—­yes, even love her, in his generous, big-brotherly way!  But why shut out of this new interest the kindly cooperation of his devoted wife, who had never failed him, who had borne him sons, who had given him the whole of her passionate heart in the full glory of youth, and in health, and in sickness, when it came, had turned to him for all the happiness of her life!

The play began, and presently the house was applauding the entrance of Miss Margaret Clay.  She came down a wide, light-flooded stairway, and in her childish white gown and flower-wreathed shepherdess hat looked about sixteen.  “How young she is!” Rachael thought with a pang.  Her voice was young, too, the fact being that Magsie was frightened, and that Nature was helping her play her first big ingenue part.

Rachael glanced in the darkness at Warren.  He had not joined in the applause, nor did his handsome face express any pleasure.  He was leaning forward, his hands locked and hanging between his knees, his eyes riveted on the little white figure that was moving and talking down there in the bright bath of light beyond the footlights.

Despite all reason, despite her desperate effort at self-control, Rachael felt an agony of pure jealousy seize her.  In an absolute passion of envy she looked down at Magsie Clay.  The young, flower-crowned head, the slender, slippered feet, the youthful and appealing voice—­what weapons had she against these?  And beyond these was the additional lure—­as old as the theatre itself—­of the fascinating profession:  the work that is like play, the rouge and curls, the loves and rages so openly assumed yet so strangely and stirringly effective!  Rachael had gowns a thousand times handsomer than these youthful muslins and embroideries; Rachael’s own home was a setting far more beautiful than any that could be simulated within the limits of a stage; if Magsie was a successful ingenue, Rachael might have been called a natural queen of tragedy and of comedy!  And yet—­