"A spring night in Kentucky--hot, damp, starlit--shall I ever forget that terrible night of _A Tribute to Art_? All Danube somebodies were out to see the younger generation perpetuate the lofty culture of the place. Grandmothers were there, who played _East Lynne_ on the same stage--before the raids of Wolfert and Morgan; and daddies who sat like deans, eyes dim, but artistic, you know--watched the young idea progress upon familiar paths.... The heroine did the best she could. I was a camel beside her--strode about her raging and caressing. You see how I could have spoiled _The Thing_ last night--if I had let the passion flood through me like a torrent through a broken dam? That's what I did in Danube--and some full-throated baying as well. Oh, it is horrible to remember. "The town felt itself brutalized, and justly. I had left a rampant thing upon every brain, and very naturally the impulse followed to squelch the perpetrator for all time. I don't blame Danube now. I had been bad; my lack of self-repression, scandalous. The part, as I had evolved it, was out of all proportion to the piece, to Danube, to amateur theatricals. I don't know if I struck a false note, but certainly I piled on the feeling. "Can you imagine, Paula, that it was an instant of singular glory to me--that climax?... Poor Danube couldn't see that I was combustible fuel, freshly lit; that I was bound to burn with a steady flame when the pockets of gas were exploded.... My dazed people did not leave the hall at once. It was as if they had taken strong medicine and wanted to study the effect upon each other. I came out from behind at last, up the aisle, sensing disorder where I had expected praise, and was joined by my old champion, Calhoun Knox, who had whipped the scoffer at the child's party. He pressed my hand. We had always been friends. Passing around the edge of the crowd, I heard this sentence: "'Some one--the police, if necessary--must prevent Selma Cross from making another such shocking display of herself!' "It was a woman who spoke, and the man at her side laughed. I had no time nor thought to check Calhoun. He stepped up to the man beside the woman. 'Laugh like that again,' he said coldly, 'and I'll kill you!' "It seemed to me that all Danube turned upon us. My face must have been mist-gray. I know I felt like falling. The woman's words had knifed me. "'_Oh, you cat-minds!_' I flung at them. Calhoun Knox drew me out into the dark. I don't know how far out on the Lone Ridge Pike we walked, before it occurred to either of us to halt or speak," Selma Cross went on very slowly. "I think we walked nearly to the Knobs. The night had cleared. It was wonderfully still out there among the hemp-fields. I knew how he was pitying me, and told him I must go away. "'I can't stand for you to go away, Selma,' Calhoun said. 'I want you to stay and be mine always. We always got along together. You are beautiful enough to me!'