The voice of the call-boy warning them of the half-hour sent them scurrying to their cells with their plight unsolved. They had a few chances to exchange regrets during the performance, but other members of the company who had heard of the good luck of both of them kept breaking in with felicitations that sounded like irony. They were so desperate for talk that Eldon waited for Sheila in the alley and walked to her hotel with her. Mrs. Vining went along, very much along. They had to accept her presence; she would not be ignored. She put in sarcastic allusions to the uselessness of good luck in this world. In her day actors and actresses would have been dancing along the streets over such double fortune. As to their separation, it would be a good test of their alleged affection. If it was serious it would outlast the test; if not, it was a good time to learn how unimportant the whole thing was.
She regarded the elegies of young love with all the skepticism of the old who have seen so much of it, heard so much repetition of such words as “undying” and “forever,” and have seen the “undying” dying all about like autumn leaves, and few of the “forevers” lasting a year.
Sheila accepted Eldon’s invitation to have a bite of supper in the grill-room. Mrs. Vining was in a grill-room mood and invited herself along. Other members of the troupe appeared and visited the funeral table with words of envy.
In the spaces between these interruptions Sheila explained her plan to ask Reben to give Eldon a chance with the new company.
Mrs. Vining sniffed: “Sheila, you ought to have sense enough to know that the minute you mentioned this young man’s name Reben would send him to Australia—or fire him.”
“Fire him?” said Sheila. “He has a three years’ contract.”
“Yes, with a two weeks’ clause in it, I’ll bet.”
They fetched the contract out and looked it over again. There was the iniquitous clause, seated like a toad overlooked among the flowers, and now it was impossible to see the flowers for the toad.
“Oh, you ought to have changed that,” said Sheila. “It’s different in mine.”