She went hurriedly up the stoop and in. Suddenly she had the feeling that she used to have when she had left the tense concentrated glare of the footlights and passed into the relief of the shadowy wings. The smiles fled from her lips, the nervous provocative mask dropped away. She felt a mortal heaviness of accomplishment. She had lasted through the afternoon; she had not betrayed herself. Half-way up the second flight, she sat down abruptly, exhausted; then, straining every nerve in her body, she reached the haven of her room, as a spent swimmer battling for the shore. Then a new trial. From behind her door came the sound of voices. Again she took up her mask. The next moment Winona had sprung to her, embracing her feverishly, crying: "I've got it! I've got it, you darling!" "Ah--Blainey," she said, suffering her embrace. But Winona, not to be prevented, continued hugging her frantically, babbling everything, all in a breath, frantic with joy and relief--Winona, whom the night before she had held sobbing in her arms, who to-day was the deliriously happy one! Then she saw Snyder standing apart, and at her skirts a little girl, half child, half baby, clinging, shyly revolted. As soon as Doré saw her, she went forward impulsively, kneeling and holding out her arms. The child, with the divining instinct of childhood toward suffering, to the amazement of the others, ran swiftly into her embrace. Doré carried her to a chair, holding her head from her, looking into the starry eyes. "What's your name?" "Betty." From that moment she forgot the others. The room seemed narrowed to their embrace, each clinging to the other. These arms, so warm against her neck, this soft weight against her breast, filled her with immeasurable awakening sadness, but a sadness that deadened the consciousness of self, as if this innocence were the only affection that could understand, the only one that could minister to her pain! This helplessness pressing against her breast recalled her poignant childhood, unmothered yet often in passionate grief groping for maternal arms. If only now she could go in weakness, somewhere to confide her crushed body weakly as a wounded child! If only the others would go and leave her thus-- How long she remained thus she did not know. Winona went, returned and departed. All at once Snyder was standing above them, saying: "Sorry--time's up! Young one must be getting home to roost!" She took her convulsively to her breast. She did not know whether it soothed or hurt her more; only that it started within her a passionate hunger for this innocence that responded, this incomprehension that understood! She rose abruptly. "Bring her often--often!" she said, turning away her face. A knock at the door, and the black hand of Josephus extending a letter.