He was a splendid-looking creature behind the footlights. Barrison had been obliged to admit it at dress rehearsal; he admitted it once more unreservedly now. Whatever there was in his composition of coarseness or ugliness, of cruelty, unscrupulousness, or violence, was somehow softened—no, softened was not quite the word, since his stage presence was consistently and notably virile; but certainly uplifted and tinged with glamour and colorful charm. Every one else in the company paled and thinned before him. “A great performance, is it not?” Jim spoke the words very gently into her ear, and then waited for the inevitable start. Strangely enough, in spite of the suddenness of the remark, she barely stirred from the still pose she had adopted. Dreamily she answered him, though without pause: “There is no one like him.” Then all at once she seemed to wake, to grow alive again, and to realize that she was actually talking to a real person and not to a visionary companion. She turned, with a startled face. “Mr. Barrison! I thought I was quite alone, and—what did I say, I wonder? I felt as though I were half asleep!” “You voiced my thoughts; Mortimer is in splendid form, isn’t he?” She nodded. “I never saw him to better advantage,” she said, speaking slowly and evidently weighing each word. “Watch him now, Mr. Barrison, in his scene with _Lucille_. So much restraint, yet so much feeling! Yes, a superb impersonation!” Barrison looked curiously at the woman who spoke with so much discrimination. Was she really capable of being impersonal, disinterested? Yes, he believed that she was. A certain glow of returning confidence swept his heart; it was surely not she whom he had to fear—if, indeed, there were any one. He made up his mind to take a look at what was taking place behind the scenes, and rose to his feet, resting his hand lightly, almost caressingly, on the back of Miss Templeton’s chair. “Good-by, until later,” he murmured. “I am going back to pay my respects to Dukane.” And as he spoke, his fingers closed upon the beaded satin bag which she had hung upon the back of her chair. Something uncompromisingly hard met his sensitive and intelligent touch. Instantly he withdrew his hand as though it had met with fire. There was a pistol in that pretty reticule; so much he was sure of. A moment later he tapped lightly on the communicating door, and, meeting the eyes of the suspicious young giant on guard there, and speedily satisfying him as to his reliability, passed through into the strange, bizarre world of scenery and grease paint and spotlights with which he had lately become so familiar. “Remember,” he said to the blue-capped lad with the six inches of muscle and the truculent tendency, who stood as sentinel at that most critical passageway, “no one—no one, Lynch—is to go through this door to-night. Understand?” “Right, sir!”