"I have always wanted a home. The stage never really fascinated me; it was bread and butter."
"Is it necessary to marry in order to have a home?" he asked quietly, letting the hand gently slide from his. "You are wealthy, after a fashion; could you not build a home of your own?"
"Always to be identified as the actress? To be looked at curiously, to be annoyed by those who are not my equals, and only tolerated by those who are? No! I want a man who will protect me from all these things, who will help me to forget some needless follies and the memory that a hundred different men have made play-love to me on the other side of the footlights."
"Some men marry actresses to gratify their vanity; does this man love you?"
"Yes; and he will make me what Heaven intended I should be—a woman. Oh, I have uttered no deceit. This man will take me for what I am."
"And you have come here to-night to ask me to forget, too?" There was no bitterness in his tone, but there was a strong leaven of regret. "Well, I promise to forget."
"It was not necessary to ask you that," generously. "But I thought I would come to you and tell you everything. I did not wish you to misjudge me. For the world will say that I am marrying this good man for his money; whereas, if he was a man of the most moderate circumstances, I should still marry him."
"And who might this lucky man be? To win a woman, such as I know you to be, this man must have some extraordinary attributes." And all at once a sense of infinite relief entered into his heart: if she were indeed married, there would no longer be that tantalizing doubt on his part, that peculiar attraction which at one time resembled love and at another time was simply fascination. She would pass out of his life definitely. He perfectly recognized the fact that he admired her above all other women he knew; but it was also apparent that to see her day by day, year by year, his partner in the commonplaces as well as in the heights, romance would become threadbare quickly enough. "Who is he?" he repeated.
"That I prefer not to disclose to you just yet. What are you going to call your new play?" with a wave of her hand toward the manuscript.
"I had intended to call it Love and Money, but the very name presages failure."