Sheila found that Reben was not so easily let down as stirred up. An answer to the telegram arrived a few hours later, just in time to spoil the day:
You gave me word of honor as gentleman you would keep your contract better look it over again you will report for rehearsal Monday ten a.m. Odeon Theater.
Reben.
Winfield stormed at Reben’s language as much as at the situation:
“How dares he use such a tone to you? Are you his servant or are you my wife?”
“I’m neither, honey,” Sheila said, very meekly. “I’m just the darned old public’s little white slave.”
“But you don’t belong to the public. You belong to me.”
“But I gave him my word first, honey,” Sheila pleaded. “If it were just an ordinary contract, I could break it, but we shook hands on it and I gave him my word as a gentleman. If I broke that I couldn’t be trusted to keep my word to you, could I, dear?”
It was a puzzling situation for Winfield. How could he demand that the woman in whose hands he was to put his honor should begin their compact by a breach of honor? How could he counsel her to be false to one solemn obligation and expect her to be true to another assumed later?