"Now tell me all about everything!" she urged. "You are the first human being I've seen from home for four mortal months. How's everybody at grandmother's? Has Aunt Enid come home? How are Rose and the children?" "One at a time!" protested Quin. "Tell me first about yourself. What sort of a place is this you are living in?" "You mustn't criticize our suite!" she said gaily. "This is a combination bedroom, dining-room, and kitchen. I am the cook and housemaid, and Papa Claude is the butler. You ought to see the way I've learned to cook on the chafing-dish!" Quin was not in the least interested in her culinary accomplishments. It offended his sense of the proprieties to see his divinity reduced to such necessities, and he did not at all approve of her surroundings. "When are you coming home?" he asked abruptly. Eleanor's eyes dropped. "That depends. I may be here all summer. I've had an engagement offered me." Quin's hands grew cold. "You don't mean that you're going to act for _pay_?" "Of course. Why not? That's what I've been working for." "But I thought when you tried it out that you would change your mind--that you wouldn't like it as much as you thought you would." "But I _do_. I adore it! Nothing on earth can ever make me give it up!" Quin's heart sank. "But I thought you'd had enough," he said. "I thought you were homesick and lonesome." "Who wouldn't have been? Look at the way they have treated me at home? Do you know, none of them ever write to me any more?" Quin tried not to look guilty, but the fact that he had counseled this course of discipline weighed upon him. "Haven't I written enough for the family?" he asked. But she was not to be put off. "They treat me as if I had done something disgraceful!" she said indignantly. "My allowance is just half what it used to be, and yet I have to pay all my own expenses. As for clothes, I never was so shabby in my life. But I can stand that. It's grandmother's silence that I resent. How can she pretend to care for me when she ignores my letters and treats me with perfect indifference?" Hurt pride quivered through the anger in her voice, and she looked at Quin appealingly. Stung by his silence, she burst out afresh: "Doesn't she ever ask about me? Has she let me go for good and all?" "Wasn't that what you wanted?" "You _know_ it wasn't! I did everything to get her consent. I'd--I'd give anything now if she would look at things differently. Do you think, when she finds out that I am actually on the stage, that she will ever forgive me--that she will ever want me to come home again?" That was the moment when Quin should have delivered Madam's ultimatum; but, before he had the chance, a key was turned in the lock, and the next instant Claude Martel's effulgent presence filled the room.