"But you've never failed," Miss Adair exclaimed, with a dart of fear in her eyes.
"My last show, 'Miss Cut-up,' was a flivver all right, though we just saved our faces. But I've got a show now that will put me in electric light for two years hand-running and—" Mr. Vandeford was in a panic as he realized that he was going so far in that curious thinking out loud to Miss Adair that he had been about to launch forth on "The Rosie Posie Girl" to her. It would have been like telling a friend the plans of his own funeral with enthusiasm, as it would be obvious to her that Hawtry would have to fail in and drop "The Purple Slipper" before becoming the triumphant "Rosie Posie Girl."
"I'm willing to—to let them cut my play all up if—if it will really run two years and make your reputation more brilliant than it is," Miss Adair said, interrupting his pause of consternation at his near betrayal of his plans. She spoke with the worshipful uplift of her gray eyes to his that had betrayed him in the first place to such a confusion of schemes. "If it added anything to it, I would even be willing to let you put the Adair name to the vulgar thing they read here to-day, but it wouldn't help it anywhere except in Louisville and Cincinnati and Nashville and Atlanta and New Orleans and Richmond. People don't know us in New York, and any name will do here; so mine won't—won't have to be disgraced."
"Please don't say that!" pleaded Mr. Vandeford with consternation in his soul as he thought of the development of the Howard "pep" Hawtry would make as the rehearsals of "The Purple Slipper" progressed. "It is the same thing with Miss Hawtry as it is with Mr. Rooney; she has a—a kind of gutter drag that gets across to the multitude, and of course your play had to be—be fitted to her. Hawtry, to be Hawtry, has to do and say things that you couldn't write at all, that you couldn't very well understand; but they'll get the crowd going and coming. Please give me your promise again to sit tight and see it through—or go home and leave it all to me." Mr. Vandeford was surprised to feel how hard his heart beat, and he was afraid that it sounded like the echo of an anvil chorus in the big empty theater.
"I never have to give promises a second time, and this is the last time I am ever going to cry out," Miss Adair answered him, with a lift to her proud little head. "I am going to stay right here and help if I can, and learn. But I won't in any way distress or—or trouble you. Please don't get me on your mind!"
"I won't get you on my mind," Mr. Vandeford answered out loud—"because I've got you in my heart, poor kiddie," he continued to himself, in a kind of desperation.
Mr. Dennis Farraday burst in upon the dusk of the theater and the tragedy of the situation. He was vastly excited and he waved a letter in his hand.
"Oh, you Patricia Adair, why didn't you tell me that you are old Roger Adair's sister?" he demanded.
"Why, what do you mean about Roger? Do you know—"
"Do I know him? Just listen to this, will you, and here I've not been handing you around on a silver salver for two weeks!" He then read the following letter aloud to Miss Adair and Mr. Vandeford: