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 which he stumbled—all these sensations, all these pictures came back on him, together with the emotions which should have accompanied them, like the recollections of a drunken crime which now assailed his sober consciousness with a sickening poignancy, vivid and revolting. He sat down in a nervous collapse. He put his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands; the cold perspiration gathered on his face; he shuddered with the faintness of vertigo.

What would Margaret say? What would Kidder say? Where would he find work? His anger had passed from him like the fumes of liquor and left him sitting with these questions, in the midst of the wreck which he had pulled down on himself.

A sudden, violent blow on the back of his head brought him to his feet in time to see Cousin running from the room in fear of pursuit. He looked at the shoe with which he had been struck, lying where Cousin had dropped it. He put his hand up to the bruise, and rubbed it, dazed.

He was standing so, staring at nothing, when the supers came in at the end of the act and crowded around him with questions. He shook his head, like an idiot. "Tell Miss Richardson to wait for me," he said. "Ask her to wait for me at the door. Tell her it'll be all right. Tell her to wait. Tell her to wait for me."

His message, and the news that he had been dismissed from the company, came to her—through Miss Doran—in the dressing-room, where she had remained, too hysterical to return to the stage. And when Don had