He found a hotel showy enough to dazzle her without being too exorbitantly dear; and they had dinner in a sham marble restaurant where every masculine eye was turned to them, and she glowed in innocent enjoyment of the warmth and light, and the glory of sitting with him, as his wife, at a pink-candle-shaded table. Afterward, with a charming assumption of superiority, she decided on a theatre rather than the pictures. It was a good deal more expensive—but, hang it, he'd write another story: it was wonderful, how the unwritten stories were accumulating on the shelves of his mental library. It was he who selected the play: Romeo and Juliet, with a young actress, tragically lovely, as Juliet; and presently they were seated in the fashionable audience, Vance with mind and eye riveted on the stage, Laura Lou obviously puzzled by the queer words the actors used and the length of their speeches, and stealing covert glances (when what was going on became too incomprehensible) at the fashionable clothes and exquisitely waved heads all about them. Between the acts she sat silent, brimming with a happy excitement, her hand close in her husband's, as if that contact were the only clue to life. As at the restaurant, many glances were drawn to her small head with its silvery-blonde ripples and the tender moulding of brow and cheek; but Vance saw that she was wholly unaware of attracting attention, and enclosed in his nearness as in a crystal world of her own.

Gradually this barrier was penetrated by what was happening on the stage: the beauty of the young actress, the compelling music of the words, seemed to stir in Laura Lou some confused sense of doom, and Vance felt her anguished clutch on his arm. "Oh, Vanny, I'm sure it's going to end bad," she whispered, and a tear formed on her lashes and trembled down.

"You darling—" he breathed back, wondering why on earth he had chosen Romeo and Juliet for a honeymoon outing; but when the tragedy rose and broke on them he saw that even her tears, now flowing in a silver stream, were part of the happiness in which she was steeped to the weeping lashes. "It's too dreadful … it's too lovely … " she moaned alternately as the play moved deathward, and with a furtive movement she dried her wet cheek against his sleeve. And brooding on those beautiful dead lovers they went home to another night of love.

The next morning Vance presented himself at the office of The Hour. As he sprang up the stairs he almost ran into Frenside, who was coming slowly down. The older man stopped and looked at him curiously.

"Going up to settle about your job?"

"Well, I hope so, sir."

"All right. Good luck." Frenside nodded and passed on. From a lower step he turned to call back: "I wouldn't tie yourself up too far ahead—especially your fiction."