party that is not mine?"

She shook her head. "I do not know. And yet you helped him."

Haward left the window, and came and sat beside her. "Yes, I helped him. I
am not sure, but I think I did it because, when first we met, he told me
that he hated me, and meant the thing he said. It is my humor to fix my
own position in men's minds; to lose the thing I have that I may gain the
thing I have not; to overcome, and never prize the victory; to hunt down a
quarry, and feel no ardor in the chase; to strain after a goal, and yet
care not if I never reach it."

He took her fan in his hand, and fell to counting the slender ivory
sticks. "I tread the stage as a fine gentleman," he said. "It is the part
for which I was cast, and I play it well with proper mien and gait. I was
not asked if I would like the part, but I think that I do like it, as much
as I like anything. Seeing that I must play it, and that there is that
within me which cries out against slovenliness, I play it as an artist
should. Magnanimity goes with it, does it not, and generosity, courtesy,
care for the thing which is, and not for that which seems? Why, then, with
these and other qualities I strive to endow the character."

He closed the fan, and, leaning back in his chair, shaded his eyes with
his hand. "When the lights are out," he said; "when forever and a night
the actor bids the stage farewell; when, stripped of mask and tinsel, he
goes home to that Auditor who set him his part, then perhaps he will be
told what manner of man he is. The glass that now he dresses before tells
him not; but he thinks a truer glass would show a shrunken figure."

He sat in silence for a moment; then laughed, and gave her back her fan.