Paula rose and gave both her hands.
"Oh, I'm so glad for you," she said. "I know something about how you have worked for this——"
"Yes, and the play is The Thing. I am an ugly slaving drudge, but have all the emotions that the sweet ingenue of the piece should have, and the audience watches me deliver. Yes, I've waited long for this, and yet I'm not so glad as I thought I should be. I've been pretty sure of it for the last year or two. I said I was celebrating for two things——"
"Pray, what is the other?"
"I forget that it might not interest you—though it certainly does me," Selma Cross said with a queer, low laugh.... "He wasn't ugly about it, but he has been exacting—ugh! The fact is, I have earned the privilege at last of sleeping in my own respectable apartment."
Paula couldn't help shivering a bit. "You mean you have left your——"
"Oh, he wasn't my husband.... It's such a luxury to pay for your own things—for your own house and clothes and dinners—to earn a dollar for every need and one to put away.... You didn't think that I could get my name above the name of a play—without an angel?"
"I didn't know," Paula said, "I saw you with him often. It didn't exactly occur to me that he was your husband, because he didn't come here. But do you mean that now when you don't need him any longer—you told him to go away?"
"Just that—except it isn't at all as it looks. You wouldn't pity old man Villiers. Living God, that's humorous—after what I have given. Don't look for wings on theatrical angels, dear."
It was plain that the woman was utterly tired. She regarded Paula with a queer expression of embarrassment, and there was a look of harsh self-repression under the now-drooped eyelids.