Winfield did not leave Clinton till the week was gone and Sheila with it. They were together constantly, making little efforts at concealment that attracted all manner of attention in the whole jealous town.
Vickery and Eldon were not the least alive to Winfield’s incursion into Sheila’s thoughts. Both regarded it as nothing less than a barbaric danger. Both felt that Winfield, for all his good qualities, was a Philistine. They knew that he had little interest in the stage as an institution, and no reverence for it. It was to him an amusement at best, and a scandal at worst.
But to Vickery the theater was the loftiest form of literary publication, and to Eldon it was the noblest forum of human debate. To both of them Sheila was as a high priestess at an altar. They felt that Winfield wanted to lure her or drag her away from the temple to an old-fashioned home where her individuality would be merged in her husband’s manufacturing interests, and her histrionism would be confined to an audience of one, or to the entertainment of her own children.
This feeling was entirely apart from the love that both of them felt for Sheila the woman. Each was sure in his heart that his own love for Sheila was far the greatest of the three loves.
Vickery forgot even his own vain struggles to make the heroine of his play behave, in his eagerness to save Sheila from ruining the dramatic unity of her life by interpolating a commercial marriage as the third act. He found a chance to speak to her one afternoon just before the second curtain rose. He was as excited as if he had been making a curtain speech and nearly as awkward:
“Sheila,” he hemmed and hawed, “I want to speak to you very frankly about Bret. Of course, he’s a splendid fellow and a friend I’m very fond of, but if he goes and makes you fall in love with him I’ll break his head.”
“He’s bigger than you are,” Sheila laughed.
“Yes,” Vickery admitted, “but there are clubs that are harder than even his hard head. If he takes you off the stage I’ll never forgive myself for introducing him to you. I’ll never forgive him, either—or you. In Heaven’s name, Sheila, don’t let him take you off the stage. I’ve heard of hitching your wagon to a star, but this would be hitching a star to a wagon. I can’t ask you to marry me for the Lord knows how long; even assuming that you would consider me if I had a million instead of being a penniless playwright; but I at least would try to help you on in your career. I’d rather you wouldn’t marry either of us than marry him.”
Sheila chuckled luxuriously: “Don’t you lose any sleep over me, Vick. In the first place, Mr. Winfield has never even suggested that I should marry him.”
Which was fact.