Selma Cross had not bathed, nor dressed her hair. She darted in noiselessly in furry slippers--a yellow silk robe over her night-dress. Very silken and sensuous, the huge, laughing creature appeared as she sank upon the lounge and shaded her yellow eyes from the light. So perfect was her health, and so fresh her happiness, that an hour or two of sleep had not left her eyes heavy nor her skin pallid. There was an odor of sweet clover about her silks that Paula never sensed afterward without becoming violently ill. She knew she was wrong--that every fault was hers--but she could not bear the way her neighbor cuddled this morning in the fur of the couch-covering. Selma had brought in every morning newspaper issued and a thick bundle of telegrams besides. Paula told her, literally forcing the sentences, how splendidly the play and her own work had appealed to her. This task, which would have been a pure delight at another time, was adequately accomplished only after much effort now. It appeared that the actress scarcely heard what she was saying. The room was brightening and there was a grateful piping of steam in the heaters of the apartment. "So glad you liked it, dear," Selma said briefly. "And isn't it great the way the papers treated it? Not one of them panned the play nor my work.... I say, it's queer when a thing you've dreamed of for years comes true at last--it's different from the way you've seen it come to others. I mean there's something unique and a fullness you never imagined. Oh, I don't know nor care what I'm drowning to say.... Please do look over these telegrams--_from everybody_! There's over a hundred! I had to come in here. I'd have roused you out of bed--if you hadn't been up. The telephone will be seething a little later--and I wanted this talk with you." Big theatrical names were attached to the yellow messages. It is a custom for stages-folk to speed a new star through the first performance with a line of courage--wired. You are supposed to count your real friends in those who remember the formality. It is not well to be a day late.... "And did you notice how Felix Larch uncoiled?" Paula looked up from the telegrams to explain how this critic had been the object of her contemplation the night before. "He hasn't turned loose in that sort of praise this season," Selma Cross added. "His notice alone, dear, is enough to keep us running at the _Herriot_ until June--and we'll open there again in the fall, past doubt." Paula felt wicked in that she must enthuse artificially. She forced herself to remember that ordinarily she could have sprung with a merry heart into the very centre of the other's happiness. "Listen, love," Selma resumed, ecstactically hugging her pillow, "I want to tell you things. I wanted to yesterday, but I had to hurry off. You've got so much, that you must have the rest. Besides, it's in my mind this morning, because it was the beginning of last night----"