ors' names, but he described them. He wished to see them on urgent business. But they had paid their bill and gone away. The woman who met Baron at the door was sure they had said something about finishing their engagement at the Folly and about leaving the city.

As Baron turned away from the door it seemed to him that the street had suddenly gone empty-that the whole world was a haunted wilderness.

XXIII

THE BREAK OF DAY"

"MR. VICTOR BARON, please."

An usher with an absurdly severe uniform and a frankly cherubic countenance had pushed aside the hangings and stood looking into the Baron box in the Barrymore Theatre.

It was the night of the first performance of Baggott's play, "The Break of Day," in Thornburg's theatre, and the Barons were all present-by special and urgent invitation.

Baron had been studying the aisles full of people, eagerly seeking their seats, and listening to the continuous murmur which arose all over the house. But when he heard his name called he arose and slipped out into the shadows.

"Mr. Thornburg sends his compliments and asks if you'll be good enough to visit him in his office for a few minutes." Thus the cherubic usher.

The Barrymore office was off from the lobby, but it commanded a view not only of the street but also of the procession of men and women who passed the ticket office.

Thornburg had left the door open, and Baron, approaching, caught sight first of a considerable expanse of dazzling white shirt-front and then of the manager's ruddy, smiling countenance. Evidences of prosperity were all about. A procession of motor-cars continued to stop before the theatre to deposit passengers. Throughout the lobby there was the shimmer of costly fabrics worn by women, the flashing of jewels, the rising and falling of gusts of laughter, and a chaos of happy speech. And everywhere there was the glitter of onyx panels and pillars, and the

warmth of hooded lights, and the indefinable odor of fine raiment and many delicate perfumes.

Thornburg seized Baron's hand and shoved the door to with his foot. Happiness radiated from him. "I've a secret to tell you," he began. "I want you to be one of the first to know."

"Let's have it!" responded Baron, trying to reflect a little of the manager's gayety.

"You'll remember my telling you that I had a little daughter by my first wife?" "I remember."

"I've found her again!"

"Ah, that's fine!"

Baron shrunk back with a sense of utter loss. "Thornburg," he said, "I want you to tell me is the little girl the daughter of-of Miss Barry?"

The manager clapped a heavy hand on Baron's shoulder. "No," he responded. And after a moment's almost pensive reflection he regained his buoyant manner and resumed: "I'd like you to meet her. Between acts, or after the play. You and your family. She's young. little attention, especially motherly attention, will mean a lot to her just now. Of course she mustn't be worried tonight; but suppose we make up a little party, after the performance, and make her feel that she's got friends here?"

Baron couldn't think of refusing. "I'd have time to pay my respects, at least," he agreed. "And I'll put the case before my mother and the others, just as you have stated it. I think perhaps she'll consent."

"That's a good fellow. I'll be looking for you," concluded Thornburg, and then he joyously shoved Baron out of the office.

The footlights were being turned on

She

Baron did not catch his mother's response, and she did not repeat it. had turned to listen to the music. For the moment the orchestra was commanding a good deal of attention. A cycle of popular melodies was being played, and under the spell of the singing violins the outside world was being made to recede into the distance while the mimic world became real.

Men and women forgot that out on the winter streets, only a few yards from them, there was passing that disinterested throng which always passes the door of every theatre; the eager, the listless, the hopeful, the discouraged, and that sprinkling of derelicts who have no present drama at all but who are bearing inevitably on toward the final tragedy.

The orchestra completed the popular melodies; and after a brief interval the leader rapped his music-rack with his baton to enjoin attention. Then he lifted his hand as if in benediction over a player to his left, and a wood-wind instrument announced a new theme-penetratingly, arrestingly. Then the strains of "The Ride of the Valkyries," with their strident and compelling quality, filled the theatre.

Baron was startled by the touch of a hand on his shoulder. Baggott was leaning toward him. "That's to create the right atmosphere," he whispered, nodding toward the orchestra. "It's to put the idea of the supernatural into everybody's mind, you know." He withdrew then.

Baron thought that was just like Baggott-to be explaining and asserting himself as if he were doing it all. He was glad to be rid of him. He wanted to feel, not to think. Then he realized that the musicians had laid aside their instruments and that the curtain was being slowly lifted.

Then the foliage of the big tree began to be agitated by a rising storm, and the leaves shook as if they were being beaten by descending drops.

For a moment the summer-shower effect continued. Then from the highest point on the stage visible to the audience a character in the drama appeared-the Sprite. She sprang from some unseen point to the limb of the ancient tree. The limb gave gently, and she sprang to the next limb below. The secure platforms making this form of descent possible were hidden from the audience by heavy foliage. The descent continued until the fairy figure sprang lightly to the stage.

She was clad in a costume of leaves, the prevailing color of which was a deep green rising to natural tints of yellow. She wore a hood which was cunningly fashioned from one big leaf, around which an automobile veil of the gauziest texture was wound so that it concealed her face. She began unwinding this veil as she spoke her first lines.

"Back again where the storms are!" she was saying. "Ah, it is good, after that dreadful calm."

Baron realized that his mother had lifted her hands to her bosom as if to stifle a cry. For himself, a thrill shot through his body, and then he leaned forward, rigid, amazed.

For when the Sprite had removed the last fold of her veil and faced the audience he beheld again, after long waiting and vain search, the lost guest, Bonnie May.

She wore her hair in a little golden knot at the crown of her head; the waist-line of her dress was just below her arms, and a pair of tiny golden sandals adorned her feet. When she would have lain the veil aside a screen of leaves parted and a Titan sprang to her side to render service.

And so the play began.

But for the moment Baron could not think about the play. He was thinking of Baggott-Baggott, who had known all the time. Then again he felt a touch on his arm, and, turning, he found himself

looking into the playwright's eyes; and he could perceive only the delight of a childish creature, jubilant because he had achieved an innocent surprise.

He tried to respond with a smile and could not. But little by little the play caught his attention. The impression grew upon him that "The Break of Day" was a play of that indefinable quality which goes unfailingly to the heart. But more he realized that Bonnie May was carrying her audience with her with the ease and certainty of an artist. She ceased to be on trial almost immediately, and those who watched her began to feel rather than to think, to accept rather than to judge.

When the first intermission came Baron slipped out of the box and went in search of Baggott, whom he found standing apart in the foyer.

"I don't have to tell you I'm glad," he began; and then, with furrowed brow, he added, "but surely.

Baggott read his thought accurately. "I wanted to give you the surprise of your life! You can't help being pleased?" "Pleased! Certainly! But we've been distressed about her."

"Oh-distressed! Well, she belongs to the theatre. She always has. I saw that right away!"

"But if we'd only known! I don't suppose we could have stood in the way."

"But it was her idea-at first. She didn't want you to know. I mean when we put the piece on here for a try-out-at first."

"You don't mean

"Of course! It was when you were laid up. I thought she'd lay down on me, because you wouldn't see her that night. And then came the Chicago engagement. I took my mother along to look after her. I didn't know she hadn't told you anything for a time, and then I left it to her to do what she wanted to do. It was always her idea to take you by surprise. I think she cared more for that than for anything else. Great goodness, man, you don't imagine you've been treated badly?" Baron's glance became inscrutable. "Why, just think of it!" Baggott went on. "She's drawing the salary of a regular star. And her reputation is made."

Baron turned away almost curtly.

What was to be gained by discussing Bonnie May with a creature who could only think of salary and reputation?— to whom she was merely a puppet skilled in repeating lines of some one else's fashioning?

He entered Thornburg's office. His manner was decidedly lugubrious.

The manager held out his hand expansively. "You've come to congratulate me," he said. And then he took in Baron's mood.

"Oh, I see!" he went on. "There's something that needs explaining. played, fair with you all right, Baron. You see, I was in the dark myself in some ways."

He took occasion to light a cigar, which he puffed at absent-mindedly. "Just before Bonnie May showed up here-when you got hold of her-I learned that her mother had died. It had been kept from me. You see, I was sending the mother money. And when the little one was only a year or so old I got a letter from her mother offering to give her up to me. I've told you what happened then. I-I couldn't take her. Then I got another letter from the mother saying she was turning Bonnie May over to her sister for the time being and that I was to send the remittances to her. That was Miss Barry.

"I believed the arrangement was only temporary. I didn't understand it, of course. But when several years went by I began to suspect that something was wrong. I didn't like Miss Barry. She was never the woman her sister was. She was-well, the brazen sort of woman. I wasn't willing to leave the little daughter with her any longer. I wrote to her and told her she might send Bonnie May to me, if she cared to, but that there weren't to be any more remittances. I thought that would fetch her. I meant to put the little daughter in a home or a school somewhere. And then they blew in here and you got her and your getting her was just the thing I wanted.

An incandescent light on the manager's desk winked once and again. "The curtain's going up," he informed Baron, and the latter hurried back to his seat.

As he entered the box a flood of cold air from the stage swept over the au

dience. And when his mother shivered slightly he observed that Peter Addis, sitting immediately behind her, quietly leaned forward and lifted a quilted satin wrap from a chair, placing it deftly about her shoulders.

She yielded with a nestling movement and with a backward flash of grateful recognition which told a story of their

own.

The audience was stilled again as the second setting was revealed-"the home of the autumn leaves." Here was a masterpiece of designing and painting, Baron realized. A house was being constructed for the Sprite. Much disputation arose. The sort of talk which precedes the planning of a home was heard-save that the terms were grotesquely altered. Then the action was complicated by the arrival of a band of vikings driven ashore by a gale.

And then Baron, too, forgot that Bonnie May was a human being, as Baggott seemed to have done, and was lost in the ingenious whimsicality of the play.

It was after the third act-in which there was a picture of cruel winter, with all the characters in the play combating a common foe in the form of the withering cold-that the Sprite won the heartiest approval.

Thunders of applause swept over the house; and when the effect of thunder had passed there was a steady demonstration resembling the heavy fall of rain. Again and again Bonnie May bowed as the curtain was lifted and lowered, and again and again the applause took on new vigor and earnestness. And then she stepped a little forward and nodded a little toward some one back in the wings, and the curtain remained up.

She made a little speech. It seemed she had a special voice for that, too. It was lower, but elaborately distinct. The very unconventionality of it afforded a different kind of delight. Her manner was one of mild disparagement of an inartistic custom. She bowed herself from the stage with infinite graciousness.

She was a tremendous success.

It was only after the curtain went down for the last time that Thornburg appeared at the Baron box. The scene had been called "Spring-and the Fairies," and it

had put the pleasantest of thoughts into the minds of the audience, which was now noisily dispersing.

"I hope you're all coming back on the stage for a minute," said the manager. He was dismayed by Mrs. Baron's impetuosity. She was too eager to remain an instant talking to any one. She could scarcely wait to be escorted back to the stage and yet she had no idea how to reach that unknown territory undirected. Her bearing was really quite pathetic.

And in a moment the entire party had passed through a doorway quite close to the box, and were casting about in that region where the wings touch the dressingrooms. The players were hurrying to and fro, and one man, carrying a large waxen nose and a pair of enormous ears he had been a gnome in the play-paused and looked curiously at the very circumspect intruders.

Somehow it did not seem at all remarkable to Baron, as it might have done, that he presently found himself confronting Miss Barry. It was plain that she had been waiting to enter the child's dressingroom, and at the approach of Thornburg she brightened rather by intention, perhaps, than spontaneously.

"Oh, how fortunate!" she began. "You'll be able to help me, of course. I want to see the new star! I'd lost track of her." Her practised smile and shifting eyes played upon Thornburg menacingly, inquiringly, appealingly. "I want to begin planning for her again. When her engagement here is over I mean to take her with me to the coast. She's reached an age now when I can be of real help to her. Isn't it wonderful-the way she has developed?"

Thornburg had paused to hear her to the end. He realized that there was a pitiful lack of assurance of conviction— in her manner.

When she had finished he smiled tolerantly yet with unmistakable significance. "No, Miss Barry," he said, replying to her thought rather than her words. "That's all ended now. When Bonnie May has finished her work here I shall see that she has a home in her father's house."

The party moved into the dressingroom, where Bonnie May had been robbed