Millicent looked grand. Every man in the room was in love with her. Greensmith ate her with his eyes, and forgot all about prompting until I stuck almost immediately after my first appearance. Then he allowed himself to swear at me in a voice which could be heard to the back of the hall; and I told him out loud that it would be all the same a hundred years hence; which got the best laugh in the piece. I gave the letter to Millicent and went off, while she read it in face of the audience. Then she turned over and read my own little piece to herself. “There is a postscript,” she remarked, but did not turn a hair or show anything excepting the deep sorrow she was supposed to feel at having to reject me. Millicent did this part so jolly well that I felt uncomfortable. She avoided me like poison after the first scene, but kept it up hot with Greensmith; and once I half thought she might have told him the truth. That decided me to destroy Greensmith if my own affair fell through, and I went on in the next scene feeling about as little like acting as you can possibly imagine. It was the aching heart and the green-eyed monster, and all that, hidden beneath the jester’s motley. Then I remembered that in the course of this scene she had to send me a letter, and for the first time in my life I felt what it is to have nerves. Could she? Would she? Was there any chance? I felt that there was not. Why, the brilliant and exquisite Millicent might have captivated the noblest in the land that night. I did not act well. I know it, and admit it frankly. Everything was in a haze until I sat alone on the stage. Millicent had taken the letter from her pocket, regarded me with a look of divine pity, dropped the communication at my elbow, and departed. I just saw Greensmith through a sort of mist. He was looking venomous, I thought. One eye dashed malignant hatred, the other scintillated triumph. I heard him say, “Read it, you fool!” Then I opened the letter and I shook. It wasn’t acting, though it must have looked jolly real and pathetic, don’t you know, from the front. Well, I have said a thousand times since that I was very sorry. I have apologised to everybody concerned, even Greensmith. These things will happen. I forgot all about his precious charade in the excitement of opening the letter; and when I saw at the bottom of a lot of typewritten rot the three letters P.T.O., just as I had set them down myself, I forgot everything in the world excepting Millicent. I am a man who can usually keep his nerves in a crisis; but I didn’t then. I just sat down in a chair and read to myself: “_Yes! I think it is quite good enough._ “_Your loving Milly._”