“From a--a friend of mine,” he said. “It is the first piece of news that he has ever given to me and it is wrong. Goodnight, Miss Ardfern.” His hand gripped hers and she winced. “I’m sorry!” He was all apologies and confusion. “You’re very strong!” she smiled, rubbing her hand, “and you aren’t very well acquainted with us fragile women--didn’t you say your name is Holland? Are you ‘Tab’ Holland?” Tab coloured. It wasn’t like Tab to feel, much less display, embarrassment. “Why ‘Tab’?” she asked, her blue eyes dancing. “It is an office nick-name,” he explained awkwardly, “the boys say that I’ve a passion for making my exit on a good line. Really, I believe it is the line on which a curtain falls. You’ll understand that, Miss Ardfern, it is one of the conventions of the drama.” “A tab-line?” she said. “I have heard about you. I remember now. It was a man who was in the company I played with--Milton Braid.” “He was a reporter before he fell--before he went on to the stage,” said Tab. He was not a theatre man and knew none of its disciples. This was the second actress he had met in his twenty-six years of life, and she was unexpectedly human. That she was also remarkably pretty he accepted without surprise. Actresses ought to be beautiful, even Ursula Ardfern, who was a great actress, if he accepted the general verdict of the press and the ecstatic and prejudiced opinion of Rex Lander. But she had a sense of humour; a curious possession in an emotional actress, if he could believe all that he had read on the subject. She had grace and youth and naturalness. He would willingly have stayed, but she was unmistakably ending the interview. “Goodnight, Mr. Holland.” He took her hand again, this time more gingerly and she laughed outright at his caution. On the dressing-table was the small brown jewel-case and a glimpse of it reminded him: “If there is anything you’d like to go in the ‘Megaphone’,” he floundered, “there was a paragraph in the paper about your having more wonderful jewels than any other woman on the stage.” He was being unaccountably gauche; he knew this and hated himself. It did not need her quick smile to tell him that she did not wish for that kind of publicity. And then the smile vanished, leaving her young face strangely hard. “No. I don’t think that my jewels and their value are very interesting. In the part I am playing now it is necessary to wear a great deal of jewelry--I wish it weren’t. Goodnight. I’m glad to upset the rumor.” “I’m sorry for the bridegroom,” said Tab gallantly. She watched him out of the room and her mind was still intent upon this broad-shouldered, towering young man when her dresser came in. “I do wish, Miss, you hadn’t to carry those diamonds about with you,” said the sad-faced dresser. “Mr. Stark, the treasurer, said he would put them in the theatre safe for you, and there’s a night watchman.”