The "Doll's House" was a success. Mrs. Schoville ecstasized over it in terms so immeasurable, so unqualifiable, that Jacob Welse, standing¹ near, bent² a glittering gaze upon her plump white throat and unconsciously clutched and closed his hand on an invisible windpipe. Dave Harney proclaimed its excellence³ effusively⁴, though he questioned the soundness of Nora's philosophy and swore by his Puritan gods that Torvald was the longest-eared Jack⁵ in two hemispheres. Even Miss Mortimer, antagonistic⁶ as she was to the whole school, conceded that the players had redeemed⁷ it; while Matt McCarthy announced that he didn't blame Nora darlin' the least bit, though he told the Gold Commissioner⁸ privately⁹ that a song or so and a skirt dance wouldn't have hurt the performance.  
"Iv course the Nora girl was right," he insisted to Harney, both of whom were walking on the heels of Frona and St. Vincent. "I'd be seein'—"
 
"Rubber—"
 
"Rubber yer gran'mother!" Matt wrathfully exclaimed.
 
"Ez I was sayin'," Harney continued, imperturbably¹¹, "rubber boots is goin' to go sky-high 'bout¹² the time of wash-up. Three ounces the pair, an' you kin¹⁰ put your chips on that for a high card. You kin gather 'em in now for an ounce a pair and clear two on the deal. A cinch, Matt, a dead open an' shut."
 
"The devil take you an' yer cinches! It's Nora darlin' I have in me mind the while."
 
They bade good-by to Frona and St. Vincent and went off disputing under the stars in the direction of the Opera House.
 
Gregory St. Vincent heaved an audible sigh. "At last."
 
"At last what?" Frona asked, incuriously.
 
"At last the first opportunity for me to tell you how well you did. You carried off the final scene wonderfully; so well that it seemed you were really passing out of my life forever."
 
"What a misfortune!"
 
"It was terrible."
 
"No."
 
"But, yes. I took the whole condition upon myself. You were not Nora, you were Frona; nor I Torvald, but Gregory. When you made your exit, capped and jacketed and travelling-bag in hand, it seemed I could not possibly stay and finish my lines. And when the door slammed and you were gone, the only thing that saved me was the curtain. It brought me to myself, or else I would have rushed after you in the face of the audience."
 
"It is strange how a simulated part may react upon one," Frona speculated.
 
"Or rather?" St. Vincent suggested.
 
Frona made no answer, and they walked on without speech. She was still under the spell of the evening, and the exaltation which had come to her as Nora had not yet departed. Besides, she read between the lines of St. Vincent's conversation, and was oppressed by the timidity which comes over woman when she faces man on the verge¹³ of the greater intimacy¹⁴.
 
It was a clear, cold night, not over-cold,—not more than forty below,—and the land was bathed in a soft, diffused¹⁵ flood of light which found its source not in the stars, nor yet in the moon, which was somewhere over on the other side of the world. From the south-east to the northwest a pale-greenish glow fringed the rim¹⁶ of the heavens, and it was from this the dim radiance was exhaled¹⁷.
 
Suddenly, like the ray of a search-light, a band of white light ploughed overhead. Night turned to ghostly day on the instant, then blacker night descended¹⁸. But to the southeast a noiseless

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