stage."

"Who told you so?"

"Mr. Samuel Albrecht was guilty of the suggestion.

"It was extremely nice of him to discuss my motives thus freely with a
stranger. But he told you only a very small portion of the truth. In
my case it was rather the imperative necessity of an amateur to earn
her own living--a deliberate choice between the professional stage and
starvation."

"Without ambition?"

She hesitated slightly, yet there was a depth of respect slumbering
within those gray eyes gazing so directly into her darker ones,
together with a strength she felt.

"Without very much at first, I fear," she confessed, as though
admitting it rather to herself alone, "yet I acknowledge it has since
grown upon me, until I have determined to succeed."

His eyes brightened, the admiration in them unconcealed, his lips
speaking impulsively.

"And what is more, Miss Norvell, you 'll make it."

"Do you truly believe so?" She had already forgotten that the man
before her was a mere stage hand, and her cheeks burned eagerly to the
undoubted sincerity of his utterance. "No one else has ever said that