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Rh understood, now, how she was so sure of every move, why she knew her characters so well. What a blind fool he had been not to see that Francesca was herself! How she had played with him about that, too. How she drew him out about the other characters. He stopped in his tracks as the last blow fell. The musician was intended for a study of him—that hazy, impossible dreamer, with his half-baked, egotistical theories of his own divine importance. Why, in God’s name, had she married him if that was her opinion of him? His brain beat it over and over, to the click of his heels on the pavement.

The fiddler was the Professor, of course. Any one but a blind man would have seen it. So she had made mock of them, the two men nearest to her, for all the world to laugh at! That she wanted to punish him for not coming up to her expectations, that he could understand, but why had she betrayed the Professor whom she loved?

He reviewed the period of rehearsals—her sure touch revealed again. She knew every move. She even saw herself so clearly that she could correct the actress in a false move. She had held herself up for public inspection, too. He had to admit that. It seemed so shameless to him, so lacking in reserve.