success. This last surprised even her friends and admirers. A moderate
hit was quite expected, but not a triumph which placed her almost in
the first rank, and was due not merely to her acting, but to a bigness
of spirit and comprehension she had never before had an opporturnty to
reveal.

It was, indeed, the justification of Hal's devotion. Hal, by her very
nature, could not love a small-minded woman. What she so unceasingly
loved and admired in Lorraine was a hidden something she alone had had
the
perspicacity to perceive, and could so instinctively rely upon. It was
the something which, given once a fair opening, carried her quickly
through the company of the lesser successes, and placed her on that
high plane which
demands soul as well as skill.

Then came the dreadful climax. In a drunken, mad moment her husband
hurled at her that he had been her mother's lover, and proposed to
return to his old allegiance - had, in fact, already done so.

Lorraine immediately packed up her own special belongings and left his
roof for ever.

Expostulations, promises, threats, passionate assurances that he had
not been responsible for what he said failed alike to move her. She
knew that whether responsible or not he had spoken the truth, and that
everything
else either he or her mother could say was false.

Finding her obdurate, he swore to ruin them both; but she told him she