Peter himself, like most of us, disliked actuality. His plays were all of duty and self-sacrifice and brooding tenderness and that curious structure that is known throughout the theatrical district as Honor. Honor with a very large H--accompanied, usually, with a declamatory gesture and a protruding chest. Sue, at her first meeting with Peter, when she talked out so impulsively, really said the last word about his plays. Peter's thoughts of himself (and these never flagged) often took the form of recollecting occasions when he had been kind to newsboys or when he had lent a helping hand to needy young women without exacting a quid pro quo. The occasions when he had not been kind took the memory-shape of proper indignation aroused by bitter injustice to himself. He had suffered greatly from injustice as from misunderstanding. Few, indeed, understood him; which fact added incalculably to the difficulties of life. Now just a word of recent history and we shall get on with our story. When Sue broke her engagement to Peter he took his broken heart away to Atlantic City, where he had before now found diversion and the impulse to work. He had suffered deeply, these nearly two weeks. His food had not set well. The thought of solitary outdoor exercise, even ocean swimming, had been repellent. And until the last two or three nights, his sleeplessness had been so marked as really to worry him. Night after night he had caught himself sitting straight up in bed saying, aloud, harsh things to the penitent weeping Sue of his dreams. Usually after these experiences his thoughts and nerves had proved to be in such a tangle that his only recourse had been to switch on the lights and, with a trembling hand and an ache at the back of his head, plunge into his work. The work, therefore (it was a new play), had gone rather well--so well that when the expensiveness of the life began to appear really alarming he was ready to come back to the old haunts and make the effort to hold up his head. He had got into New York at four-ten and come down to the shop of Marius by taxi. His suit-case and grip were over in the corner by the coat rack.