She abandons naturally her scheme of joining a touring company. For a few months, indeed, she forgets her ambition in her happiness, and by the time she has begun again to feel the lure of grease-paint and the footlights, the influence and affluence of her protector has found her a leading part in a forthcoming West-end production. Marvellously grateful she is, marvellously happy. The days of excitement as the first night draws near are almost more than she can bear, and it means much to her to have at such a time a strong arm about her shoulders, and in her ears the sound of a firm voice. She need, though, have had no fears of failure. It is a good play, and she has talent. But it is at the very moment of her triumph that her lover is, for the first time, frightened. He stands in the shadow of the box and watches her in the front of the stage bending, over a bank of bouquets, to an audience hoarse with shouting. He sees suddenly into the heart of their relationship. He sees her a young woman at the start of her career--fresh, radiant, intoxicated with the sensation of a first success. And he is an ageing man, with the best of life behind him. How can he hope to keep her? She will find herself now the centre of a circle of brilliant and charming persons. She will be invited to houses where, for his good name’s sake, he can hardly accompany her. Now that she is a public figure he must be careful of her reputation and of his. He will not be able to go about with her so much. She will make her own friends. She will forget him. He will have been a stepping-stone in her life; nothing more. For him there is in their love-making no longer a solid, satisfying comfort, only an occasional moment in which he may forget. Life catches her up. She has luncheon engagements and week-end parties. And, as soon as the curtain falls, she is being rushed away to dances at Murray’s or at Ciro’s. The names of her new friends, Christian names for the most part, trip from her tongue at every turn of her conversation. He knows none of them; they are strangers to him. And he realises that now she has found her feet in the world he has lost his hold over her. She needs his help no longer. He cannot exert the dominating influence of experience and success. Probably she has begun to think of him already as an old man.