Sybil flushed again, but answered promptly: “I think he has some sort of part for me—a real part. He knows I don’t sing or dance. You are rehearsing, aren’t you, Miss Legaye?”

“Yes; with Alan Mortimer.”

“I wish you’d tell me what you think of him!” said Sybil, with interest. “He’s such a mystery to every one. His first play, isn’t it? As a star, I mean.”

“Yes; Dukane is trying an experiment—starring an unknown actor in a Broadway production. Pretty daring, isn’t it? But Dukane doesn’t make many mistakes. He knows Alan Mortimer will make good. He’s got a lot of personality, and he’s extremely attractive, I think. I—saw a good deal of him down at Nantucket during the summer.”

Kitty Legaye never blushed, but there was a certain soft hesitancy about the way in which she uttered the simple words that was, for her, the equivalent of a blush. Sybil, noting it, privately concluded that there had been something like a romance “down at Nantucket during the summer.”

Being a nice girl, and a tactful one, she said gently:

“Is it a good play, do you think?”

Miss Legaye shrugged her shoulders carelessly; the moment of sentiment had passed.

“It’s melodrama,” she rejoined; “the wildest sort. ‘Boots and Saddles’ is the name, and it’s by Carlton; now you know.”

They both laughed. Carlton was a playwright of fluent and flexible talent, who made it his business always to know the public pulse.

“What time is your appointment with Altheimer?”

“Quarter past one.”

“What an ungodly hour! Doesn’t the man ever eat? But finish your lunch comfortably; if you’re late he’ll appreciate you all the more. Besides——”

She paused, regarding the girl cautiously and critically; and that evanescently calculating look drifted across her face for the space of a breath.

“Besides what?” demanded Sybil. “If I lose that part, I’ll sue you for a job! Besides what?”

Kitty, for all her pretty, impulsive ways, rarely did things without consideration; so it was with quite slow deliberation that she answered Sybil’s question with another:

“Would you like to come with Alan Mortimer?”

“Mercy!” The girl put down her knife and fork and stared with huge blue eyes. “Do you mean to say that there’s a part open—after rehearsing ten days?”

“How do you know how long we’ve been rehearsing?” queried the older woman.

Sybil grew delicately pink. “I know a man in the company,” she confessed, laughing shyly. “Norman Crane—oh, he’s only got a little bit of a part; perhaps you haven’t noticed him, even. It’s a big company, isn’t it? But he’s quite keen about your play.”

“Norman Crane?” repeated the other thoughtfully. “Why, yes, I know him. A tall, clean-looking fellow with reddish hair and a nice laugh?”

“That’s Norman! He isn’t a great actor, but—he’s quite a dear.”

Miss Legaye nodded slowly, still regarding her. The notion which had come to her a minute before seemed to her more and more markedly a good notion, a wise notion—nay, even possibly an inspired notion! Mortimer’s leading woman, Grace Templeton, was a brilliant blonde with Isoldelike emotions, and Kitty had loathed and feared her from the first, for the new star swung in an orbit that was somewhat willful and eccentric, to say the very least of it, and his taste in feminine beauty was unprejudiced by a bias toward any special type.

For a long time Kitty had yearned to get rid of Miss Templeton. If the thing could possibly be managed, here was a girl of undoubted talent—she had seen her act and knew that she had twice the ability of the average young player—presentable, but not too radiantly pretty, and proper and conventional and all that—not at all the sort of girl who would be likely to have an affair with the star. And then, if she was interested in young Crane, why, it would be altogether perfect!

“So you know Norman Crane,” she said. “Then if you did come into the company, that would make it particularly nice for you, wouldn’t it?”

“Why, yes,” the girl returned, frankly enough. “We’re quite good friends, though I don’t see much of him these days. We used to play together in stock out West two years ago; we were both most awful duffers at acting.”

Kitty Legaye nodded as though fairly well satisfied. It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she would try to get Sybil a small part in the play, with the chance to understudy Miss Templeton—it was all she could even partially promise until she had conferred with Dukane and Mortimer—when her attention was sharply distracted by the sight of two men who had just entered the room and who were looking about them in choice of a table. She uttered a quick exclamation, as quickly suppressed.

“Look at those two men standing near the door!” she said. “There, close to the buffet. What do you think of them? Do tell me: I’ve a reason for asking.”

Sybil’s eyes followed hers.

The two men were both noticeable, but one of them was so striking in appearance that one hardly had eyes for any one else near by. He was a very tall, very broad, very conspicuous type of man. Everything about him was superlative—even the air of brooding ill temper which for the moment he seemed to wear. He was exceedingly dark, with swarthy coloring, coal-black hair, thick and tumbled, and deeply set black eyes. His features were strong and heavy, but well shaped. Indeed, he was in his general effect unquestionably handsome, and the impression which he made was one not lightly to be felt nor quickly to be forgotten.

“Well?” insisted Miss Legaye impatiently, as Sybil did not immediately speak. “I asked you what you thought of him.” This time she did not say “them,” but Sybil did not notice the altered word.

The girl continued to look at the tall, dark man as though she were mesmerized, and when she spoke it was in a curious, detached tone, as she might have spoken if she were thinking aloud.

“He is a very strange man,” she said. “He does not belong here in a Broadway restaurant. He should be somewhere where things are wild and wonderful and free—and perhaps rather terrible. I think he belongs in—is it Egypt? He would be quite splendid in Egypt. Or—the prairies——” She spoke dreamily as she stared at him.

“You look as though he were a ghost, not a man!” exclaimed Kitty, with a laugh. “I must tell him what you said——”

“Tell him?” repeated Sybil, rousing herself. “You know him, then?”

“My dear child,” said Kitty Legaye, “that is Alan Mortimer!”

At the same moment Mortimer caught sight of her and strode toward her, passing between the fragile little luncheon tables with the energy of a whirlwind.

“Guess what has happened now!” he exclaimed in a deep but singularly clear and beautifully pitched voice. “Dukane has fired Templeton, and apparently I open little more than two weeks from to-night without a leading woman! What do you know about that!”

“Without a leading woman? No, you don’t, either,” promptly rejoined Kitty, the inspired. She always liked a neat climax for a scene, especially when she could supply it herself. “I’ve just picked out Miss Merivale to play Lucille.”

Breathless and amazed, Sybil looked up to meet his eyes. They were dark and piercing. At first she thought only of that, and of their fire and beauty. Then something obscurely evil seemed for a transient second to look out of them. “What an awful man!” she said to herself. But he was holding out his hand.

“Did you think of that all by yourself, Kit?” he said. A faint but rather attractive smile lightening his moody eyes. “How do you do—Lucille? You may consider the engagement—ah—confirmed.”

But Sybil, as she drew her hand away, felt vaguely frightened—she could not have told why.