"She would not. She's got a taste of it and she'll thirst for more. And, for all that unsophistication, she is a clever kid. She'll get Height into a costume play before luncheon is over and that'll go a long way to cinch a hit for 'The Purple Slipper.' He's made a fad of not playing costume, and all the women in New York will flock to see him in velvet and lace. She bargained that fish Corbett out of four hundred dollars in the preliminary costume deal, and if anybody has to send her home it will have to be you. I can't do it." "Well, just gently warn her about Height and things of that kind, can't you?" "I cannot! Would you tell a woman who is walking a tight rope that the ground sixty feet below her is covered with broken champagne bottles?" "Then she's got to go home," decided Mr. Dennis Farraday, positively. "How'll you make her?" "You've got to do it. She's got awe of you planted six feet deep in her soul. Anybody could see that. You've got to send her." "Can't be done," growled Mr. Vandeford in desperation. "Wish I were married to six respectable women and then I could make 'em all chaperon her in turns, while I feed her fool play to the public." "You'd only have to strike out the syllable 'un' before 'married' by a little trip to the City Hall to have one mighty fine wife," Mr. Farraday said with a straight look into Mr. Vandeford's eyes, which was so deeply affectionate that it gave him the privilege of opening the door to any holy of holies. "Violet and I are all off, Denny, and it ought never to have been on," was the straight-out answer he got to his venture, an answer that Miss Hawtry would have felt smoothed greatly the path of her present adventures in life. "Poor girl! I knew she was hurt somehow, but I thought--forgive me, old man." With a tenderness in his voice that both alarmed and puzzled Mr. Vandeford his big Jonathan closed the subject and snapped a lock on it. "Come over to the Astor with me for a cold bite." "Goes!" The cool, green-leafed Orangery at the Hotel Astor is the oasis in the desert days of rehearsal for all early fall plays, and beside its tinkling fountain and under its tinkling music can be found at luncheon all of the theatrical profession who are not around the corners at the equally cool, white-tiled Childs restaurants. Beside and around the green wicker tables careers of managers, artists, actors, playwrights, electricians, and scenic artists are made and unmade in the twinkling of some bright or heavy-lidded eye. Each and every feaster watches each and every other feaster with the quick, wary eye of a jungle being consuming its food before it is snatched from him or her; and gossip reigns over all. "Gee, look at the swell dame Gerald Height has got cornered over there!" exclaimed Mazie Villines, as she looked up from a frapped melon, which a "heavy" moving picture man was "buying" for her consumption. "The way them society queens do fall fer him!"