Baron thought, grotesquely enough, of a little fish fallen from a hook into the grass for a breathless moment, and then getting back into its proper element and rushing away with a mighty flicking of tail and fins.
Bonnie May had been of the theatre once, and Baron realized, as he watched her, that somehow, sometime, she would return to it again.
When, at the end, the report of a pistol was heard, and the stepdaughter of Mrs. Tanqueray came screaming upon the stage, Mrs. Baron set her lips in a hard line.
“Nobody to blame but herself!” was her comment. She, too, had been deeply impressed by the play.
But the larger faith of the little girl asserted itself. “Oh, don’t say that!” she begged. “She’d have been all right, if they’d really loved her in spite of all!”
It was the reality of it that held her, Baron perceived—or her ability to see it as something real.
The puppets, the make-believe—these were off the stage, for Bonnie May. The truth and beauty and reality were on it.
He smiled thoughtfully as they all filed up the aisle, amid a babble of voices. The child might be wrong; but was it strange that so glorious an ignis fatuus should have power to lead her on to the end?
As they left the theatre they passed Thornburg, standing near the entrance alone. For an instant there was a peculiar, inscrutable expression in his eyes; then he pulled himself together and smiled and lifted his hat. But after this perfunctory greeting was over, the manager steadily regarded Mrs. Baron, who did not look at him.
That quiet, masked glance made Baron uncomfortable, and instinctively he stooped and took Bonnie May firmly by the hand.