ACT IV. SCENE: Living-room. Husband reads evening papers; wife

reads stupid magazines. Business of making love. Return to reading-matter. Husband falls asleep in chair. CURTAIN.

That’s the scenario, and the play has settled down for an indefinite run at this house.

Roger and Polly read the letter and shook their heads over it. Roger sighed.

“How long do you think it’s really booked for, Polly?”

“Knowing Sheila—” Polly began, then shook her head. “Well, really I don’t know. There are so many Sheilas, and I haven’t met the last three or four of them.”

For many months Sheila was royally entertained by what she called “the merry villagers.” She was the audience and they the spectacle. She took a childish delight in mimicking odd types, to Bret’s amusement and his mother’s distress. She took a daughter-in-law’s delight in shocking her mother-in-law by pretending to be shocked at the Blithevale vices.

Hitherto Sheila had gone to church regularly next Sunday, but seldom this. In Blithevale Mrs. Winfield compelled her to attend constantly. Sheila took revenge by quoting all the preacher said about the wickedness of his parishioners.

When she heard of a divorce or a family wreck she would exclaim, “Why, I thought that only actors and actresses were tied loose!”

When she heard of one of those hideous scandals that all communities endure now and then as a sort of measles she would make a face of horror: “Why, I’ve always read that village life was ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths pure.”

When Bret would fume at the petty practices of business rivals, the necessity for crushing down competition and infringement, the importance of keeping the name at the top of the list, Sheila would smile, “And do manufacturers have professional jealousy, too?”

She soon realized, however, that her comedy was not getting across the footlights as she meant it.

Seen through the eyes of one who had been used to hard work, far travel, and high salary, the business of being a wife as the average woman conducted it was a farce to Sheila.

That the average wife was truly a helpmeet appeared to her merely a graceful gallantry of the husbands. As a matter of fact, as far as she could see, the only help most of the men got from their wives was the help of the spur and the lash. The women’s extravagances and discontent compelled the husbands to double energy and increased achievement.

Thus, while the village was watching with impatient suspicion the behavior of this curious actress-creature who had settled there, the actress-creature was learning the uglier truths about that most persistently flattered of institutions, the American village.

But after the failure of her first satires Sheila resolved to stop being “catty,” and to dwell upon the sweeter and more wholesome elements of life in Blithevale. She ceased to defend the theater by aspersing the town.

She said never a word, however, of any longing for a return to the stage. Now and then an exclamation of interest over a bit of theatrical news escaped her when she read the New York paper that had been coming to the Winfield home for years. It arrived after Bret left for the office, and he usually glanced at it during his luncheon. One noon Bret’s eye was caught by head-lines on an inner page devoted largely to dramatic news. The “triumph” of “The Woman Pays” was announced; it had been produced in New York the night before. In spite of the handicap of its Chicago success it had conquered Broadway. As sometimes happens, it found the Manhattanites even more enthusiastic than the Westerners.

Bret noted with a kind of resentment that Sheila was not mentioned as the creator of the leading rôle. He hated to see that Dulcie Ormerod was taken seriously by the big critics. He winced to read that Floyd Eldon was a great find, a future star of the first magnitude.

Winfield had once been wretched for fear that his kidnapping of Sheila had ruined the chances of the play. Yet it was not entirely comfortable to see that the play prospered so hugely without her. He had not been entirely glad that Reben had returned his “I O U”; and he was not entirely glad that Reben stood to make a greater profit than he had estimated at first in spite of Sheila. It was a peculiarly galling humiliation.

Bret would have concealed the paper from Sheila, but he knew that she had read it before he came home to luncheon. He had wondered what made her so distraught. Now that he knew, he said nothing, but he could see the torment in the back of her smiling eyes, the labored effort to be casual and inconsequential. That Mona Lisa enigma haunted him at his office, and he resolved to take her for a spin in the car. She would be having a hard day, for ambitious fevers have their crises and relapses, too. Bret wanted to help his wife over this bitter hour.

When he came in unexpectedly he found her lying asleep on the big divan in the living-room. The crumpled newspaper lay on the floor at her side. She had been reading it again. Her lashes were wet with recent tears, yet she was smiling in her sleep. As he bent to her lips moved. He paused, an eavesdropper on her very dreams. And he made out the muffled, disjointed words:

“What can I say but, thank you—on behalf of the company—your applause—I thank you.”

She was taking a curtain call!

Bret tiptoed away, wounded by her and for her. He struggled for self-control a moment, telling himself that he was a fool to blame her for her dreams. He knocked loudly on the door and called to her. She woke with a start, stared, realized where she was and who he was, and smiled upon him lovingly. She explained that she had been asleep and “dreaming foolish dreams.”

But when he asked what they were she shrugged her shoulders and laughed, “I forget.”

* * * * *

Afterward Bret read that “The Woman Pays” had settled down for a long run on Broadway. Sheila settled down also and attended to her knitting. And knitting became a more and more important office. She was more and more content to sit in an easy-chair and wait.

Bret paused one day to pick up some of the curious doll-clothes.

“I knat ’em myself,” said Sheila, with boundless pride.

Bret, the business man, pondered the manufacturing cost.

“You could buy the whole lot for ten dollars,” he said. “And they’ve taken you a month to finish them. You’re not charging as much for your time as you did.”

“No,” she said, “I could buy ’em for less, and it would be still less trouble to adopt a child to wear ’em; but it wouldn’t be quite the same, would it?”

He agreed that it would not.