The farewell kiss was imprinted upon Helen's hand, and out of the window
and down the fire-escape sprang John Delaney, Africa bound.
A little slow music, if you please--faint violin, just a breath in the
clarinet and a touch of the 'cello. Imagine the scene. Frank, white-hot,
with the cry of a man wounded to death bursting from him. Helen, rushing
and clinging to him, trying to explain. He catches her wrists and tears
them from his shoulders--once, twice, thrice he sways her this way and
that--the stage manager will show you how--and throws her from him to
the floor a huddled, crushed, moaning thing. Never, he cries, will he
look upon her face again, and rushes from the house through the staring
groups of astonished guests.
And, now because it is the Thing instead of the Play, the audience must
stroll out into the real lobby of the world and marry, die, grow gray,
rich, poor, happy or sad during the intermission of twenty years which
must precede the rising of the curtain again.
Mrs. Barry inherited the shop and the house. At thirty-eight she could
have bested many an eighteen-year-old at a beauty show on points and
general results. Only a few people remembered her wedding comedy, but
she made of it no secret.
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