“I may as well be honest about it, Herby,” she said, changing her position to meet his perplexed gaze with one that was absolutely free from guile. “I came back because they were through with me over there. I was getting passé—in fact, I was quite passé. They were beginning to cast me for old women and character parts. Two or three years ago they started my funeral services by seeing what I could do with Shakespeare. I played Rosalind and Viola with considerable success. The next season they had me do Lady Macbeth, and last season there was talk of reviving Camille with me in the title rôle. I was through. My musical comedy days were over. The stage was crowded with young women who could dance without wheezing like a horse with the heaves and whose voices didn’t crack in the middle register. People didn’t want to see me in musical comedy any longer and they _wouldn’t_ see me in anything else. I’m fifty-three, Herbert—between you and me, mind you—and just the right age to be a preacher’s wife. So I made up my mind to retire. I used to have a hundred pounds a week. Good pay over there. I was offered twenty pounds a week for this season to tour the provinces in a revival of Peter Pan—and that was the last straw. Peter Pan! When an actress gets so old that she can’t stand on one leg without expecting people to applaud her for a feat of daring, they send her out into the woods to revive poor Peter, the boy who isn’t allowed to grow old. You notice, Herby, I didn’t cable to ask if I could come home—I cabled that I was on the way. Now, you know the secret of my home-coming. The time has come when I must submit to being buried alive, and I’d sooner be buried alive in Rumley than in London. It’s greener here. Besides you are a human Rock of Ages, Herby. I’m going to cling to you like a barnacle. I haven’t forgotten what lovers and sweethearts we were in the old days. I’ve been faithful to you, old dear. If I hadn’t been faithful to you I would never have come back. By the way, I’ve put by a little money—quite a sum, in fact—so you mustn’t regard me as a charity patient. We’ll pool our resources. And when the time comes for you to step down and out of the pulpit for the same reason that I chucked the stage—you see, Herby, audiences and congregations are a good deal alike—why, we’ll have enough to live on for the rest of our days. You won’t have to write sermons and preach ’em, and I sha’n’t have to listen to them. It’s an awful thing to say, but we’ll both have to mend our ways if we want our grandchildren to love us.” He laid his arm over her shoulder and gently caressed her cheek. “You are still pretty much of a pagan, Jo,” was all that he said, but he was smiling. “But you are jolly well pleased to have me back, aren’t you?” “More overjoyed than I can tell you.” “No doubts, no misgivings, no uneasiness over what I may do or say to shock the worshipers?”