She had to study hard, and she did not enjoy traveling all day, or even half a day, and then appearing on the boards at night. Sometimes the hotel accommodations of country towns where they stopped over were wretchedly indifferent. Sometimes her head ached miserably, but she must appear on the boards, all the same. And the free-and-easy ways of some of the company did not please the fastidious taste of the girl. Now and then she found her thoughts returning to the old days behind the counter at O'Neill's with Cissy and the other girls, with an almost pathetic yearning. Secretly she longed to be back again. How she wished that Cissy would write to her now, and beg her to return, so that she might have an excuse for following the dictates of her heart. At last, believing that Cissy was too proud and stubborn to write first, she penned her a long, affectionate letter, through which breathed an underline of repentance and regret that her chum would be sure to answer it by writing: "Come home, dear. I told you that you would get sick of being an actress." But Geraldine was too weary and heart-sick to care for a hundred "I-told-you-so's" from the triumphant Cissy. What did it matter so that she got back to her dear old chum again and their cozy little rooms, and even to what she had once called her slavery behind the counter. She recalled what Harry Hawthorne had told her about it being a slavery of the stage, too; then put the thought from her with an impatient sigh. "What do I care what he said about it?" indignantly, then sighing, "even though I have found it to be, alas, too true!" She wrote her letter to Cissy, and after that her heart felt lighter. She knew her chum would be glad to get the letter--glad to have her back. "Dear, I tried to write you such a letter As would tell you all my heart to-day. Written Love is poor; one word were better! Easier, too, a thousand times to say. "I can tell you all; fears, doubts unheeding, While I can be near you, hold your hand, Looking right into your eyes and reading Reassurance that you understand. "Yet I wrote it through, then lingered, thinking Of its reaching you what hour, what day, Till I felt my heart and courage sinking With a strange, new, wondering dismay. "'Will my letter fall,' I wondered, sadly, 'On her mood like some discordant tone, Or be welcomed tenderly and gladly? Will she be with others, or alone? "It may find her too absorbed to read it, Save with hurried glance and careless air; Sad and weary, she may scarcely heed it; Gay and happy, she may hardly care. "If perhaps now, while my tears are falling, She is dreaming quietly alone, She will hear my love's far echo calling, Feel my spirit drawing near her own.