At the end of the fourth or fifth rehearsal Julia noticed that pretty Barbara Toland was trying to manage a moment's speech with her alone. She amused herself with an attempt to avoid Miss Toland just from pure mischief, but eventually the two came face to face, in a garishly lighted bit of passage, Barbara, for all her advantage in years and in position, seeming the younger of the two. "Oh, Miss Page," said Barbara nervously, "I wanted to--but were you going somewhere?" "Don't matter if I was!" said Julia, airily gracious, but watching shrewdly. "Well, I--I hope you won't think this is funny, but, well, I'll tell you," stammered Barbara, very red. "I know you don't know us all very well, you know--it's different with us--we've all been brought up together--but I didn't know whether you knew--perhaps you did--that Carter Hazzard is married?" Julia felt stunned, and a little sick. She got only the meaning of the words, their value would come later. But with a desperate effort she pulled herself together, and smiled with dry lips. "Yes, I knew that," she said, pleasantly, not meeting Barbara's eye. "Oh, well, then it's all _right_," Barbara said hastily, relieved. "But he--he has a teasing sort of way, you know. His wife is in San Diego now, with her own people." "Yes, he told me that," Julia said, only longing to escape before a maddening impulse to cry overpowered her. Barbara saw the truth, and laid a friendly hand on Julia's arm. "I just wanted you to know," she said in her kindliest tone. Suddenly Julia burst out crying, childishly blubbering with her wrists in her eyes. Barbara, very much distressed, shielded her as well as she could from the eyes of possible passers-by, and patted her shoulder with a gloved hand. "I don't know why--perfectly _crazy_--" gulped Julia, desperately fighting the sobs that shook her. "And I've had a dreadful headache all day," she broke out, pitifully, beginning to mop her eyes with a folded handkerchief, her face still turned away from Barbara. "Oh, poor thing!" said Barbara. "And the rehearsal must have made it worse!" "It's splitting," Julia said sombrely. She gave Barbara one grave, almost resentful, look, straightened her hat and fluffed up her hair, and went away. Barbara looked after her, and thought that Carter was a beast, and that there was something very pitiful about common little ignorant Miss Page, and that she wouldn't tell the girls about this, and give them one more cause to laugh at the little actress. For Barbara Toland was a conscientious girl, and very seriously impressed with the gravity of her own responsibility toward other people.