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“I was twenty-six. I was leading lady my second season, and starred my third,” said the actress, without enthusiasm. “I was starred in ‘The Jack of Clubs.’ It ran a season in New York and gave me my start. Lud, how tired we all got of it!”

“And then I hope you went back home, Ju, and were lionized,” said the other woman, vigorously.

“Oh, not then! No, I’d been meaning to go–and meaning to go–all those three years. The little sisters used to write me–such forlorn little letters!–and mother, too–but I couldn’t manage it. And then–the very night ‘Jack’ played the three hundredth time, as it happened–I had this long wire from Sally and Beth. Mother was very ill, wanted me–they’d meet a certain train, they were counting the hours–“

Miss Ives demolished her watercourse with a single sweep of her palm. There was a short silence.

“Well!” she said, breaking it. “Mother got well, as it happened, and I went home two months later. I had the guest room, I remember. Sally was everything to mother then, and I tried to feel glad. Beth was engaged. Every one was very flattering and very kind in the intervals left by engagements and weddings and new babies and family gatherings. Then I came back to ‘Jack,’ and we went on the road. And then I broke down and a strange doctor in a strange hospital put me together again,” she went on with a flashing smile and a sudden change of tone, “and his wholly adorable wife sent me double white violets! And they–the Arbuthnots, not the violets–were the nicest thing that ever happened to me!”

“So that was the way of it?” said the doctor.

“That was the way of it.”

“And as the Duchess would say, the moral of THAT is–?”

“The moral is for me. Or else it’s for little dancing girls, I don’t know which.” Miss Ives wiped her eyes openly and, restoring her handkerchief to its place, announced that she perceived she had been talking too much.

Presently the Dancing Girl came down from the tennis-court, with her devoted new captive in tow. The captive, a fat, amiable-looking youth, was warm and wilted, but the girl was fresh and buoyant as ever. They heard her allude to the “second two-step” and something was said of the “supper dance,” but her laughing voice stopped as she and her escort came nearer the actress, and she gave Julie her usual look of mute adoration. The boy, flushing youthfully, lifted his hat, and Julie bowed briefly.

They were lingering over their coffee two hours later, when the newly arrived young man made the expected move. He threaded the tables between his own and the doctor’s carefully, the eager Dancing Girl in his wake.

“I don’t know whether you remember me, Miss Ives–?” he began, when he could extend a hand.

Julie turned her splendid, unsmiling eyes toward him.

“Mr. Polk. How do you do? Yes, indeed, I remember you,” she said, unenthusiastically. “How is Mr. Gilbert?”

“Uncle John? Oh, he’s fine!” said young Polk, rapturously. “I wonder why he didn’t tell me you were spending the summer here!”

“I don’t tell any one,” said Julie, simply. “My winters are so crowded that I try to get away from people in the summer.”

“Oh!” said the boy, a little blankly. There was an instant’s pause before he added rather uncomfortably:

“Miss Ives–Miss Carter has been so anxious to meet you–“

“How do you do, Miss Carter?” said Julie, promptly, politely. She gave her young adorer a ready hand. The usually poised Dancing Girl could not recall at the moment one of the things she had planned to say when this great moment came. But she thought of them all as she lay in bed that night, and the conviction that she had bungled the long-wished-for interview made her burn from her heels to the lobes of her ears. What HAD she said? Something about having longed for this opportunity, which the actress hadn’t answered, and something about her desperate admiration for Miss Ives, at which Miss Ives had merely smiled. Other things were said, or half said–the girl reviewed them mercilessly in the dark–and then the interview had terminated, rather flatly. Marian Carter writhed at the recollection.