"By Jove, you _have_ been busy!" he conceded. "Between manufacturing a frame-up for me, and winning a wife, you must have put in a fairly full week even for you." His arm tightened round his chum's shoulders. "I'm delighted, old man," he ended, seriously. "Sonya is the salt of the earth. Tell her she has my blessing." When he reentered the room he found Doris standing in its center, waiting for him. Something in her pose reminded him of their first moments together in that familiar setting. She had carried off the original scene very well. Indeed, she had carried off very well most of the scenes she had been given. "You'll be a big hit in the new play," he cheerfully remarked, as he came toward her. "Laurie--" Her voice trembled. "You have forgiven the others. Can't you forgive me?" "There's nothing to forgive," he quietly told her. "You saw a chance and you took it. In the same conditions, I suppose any other girl would have done the same thing. It's quite all right, and I wish you the best luck in the world. We'll try to make the new play worthy of you." He held out his hand, but she shrank away from it. "You're _not_ going to forgive me!" she cried. "And--I don't blame you!" She walked away from him, and, sinking into the chair Epstein had so recently vacated, sat bending forward, her elbow resting on its broad arm, her chin in her hand. It was the pose he knew so well and had loved so much. "I don't blame you," she repeated. "What I was doing was--horrible. I knew it all the time, and I tried to get out of it the second day. But they wouldn't let me." She waited, but he did not speak. "Can't you understand?" she went on. "I've hated it from the start. I've hated deceiving you. You see--I--I didn't know you when I began. I thought it was just a good joke and awfully interesting. Then, when I met you, and you were so stunning, always, I felt like a beast. I told them I simply couldn't go on, but they coaxed and begged, and told me what it would mean to you as well as to me-- They made a big point of that." He took his favorite position by the mantel and watched her as she talked. "Don't feel that way," he said at last. "You were playing for big stakes. You were justified in everything you said and did." "I hated it," she repeated, ignoring the interruption. "And to-day, this afternoon, I tried to tell you everything. Don't you remember?" "Yes, I remember." He spoke as he would to a child, kindly and soothingly. "Don't worry about it any more," he said. "You'll forget all this when we begin rehearsing." She sprang to her feet. "I don't want the play!" she cried passionately. "I wouldn't appear in it now under any conditions. I don't want to go on the stage. It was just a notion, an impulse. I've lost it, all of it, forever. I'm going back home, to my own people and my--own Virginia, to--to try to forget all this. I'm going to-morrow."