“They like it,” Bambi said with a sigh.

“Yes, thank God!” from Jarvis.

“You told me not to take this seriously, Jarvis,” she reminded him.

“Does anybody know who wrote this book?” the Professor inquired.

“Not yet.  We are to know to-night.  I wonder where she is?” Jarvis added to Bambi.

“I’ve thought that fat old one in the opposite box,” she said wickedly.  “Why did you ask, father?”

“It is a diverting idea.  The girl is like you, or maybe it is the similarity of the names that suggests it.”

“What do you think about the play, Ardelia?”

“Law, honey, ‘tain’t no play-actin’ to me.  It’s jes’ lak’ bein’ home wid yo’ an’ de’ Perfessor and Marse Jarvis.  Dose folkses is jes’ lak yo’ all.”

Bambi laughed outright.  Ardelia was the only one who guessed.

“I trust you do not compare me to that impractical old fiddling man,” the Professor protested to Ardelia.

“Sh!  Here’s the curtain!” warned Bambi.

The second act went like a breeze.  Laughter and applause punctuated its progress.  The house was warming up.  Bambi slipped her hand into Jarvis’s, and he held it so tight that she could feel his heart beat through his palm.  There was no doubt about it at the end of the second act.  It was going.  The company took repeated curtain calls, smiling at the Jocelyns.

“I’m grinning so I shall never get my face straight again,” Bambi said to Richard, who came to the box to congratulate them.

“Looks like a go,” he said, cordially.

Even Jarvis unbent to him, and insisted upon his sitting with them for the third act.  Bambi added a smiling second.  She had explained to Richard, in advance, why she did not invite him to share the box.

“I am having a most unexpectedly good time,” the Professor admitted to them all.

Jarvis’s state of mind was painful as the last act began.  In the next thirty minutes he was to meet the woman he thought he loved.  Since his confession to Bambi the night before, a doubt had raised its head to stare at him as to the real depth of his feeling for his unknown inamorata.  Had he really been moved by love, or was it only a need of sympathy for his hurt pride that had driven him to her?  Bambi’s strange behaviour, her admission that she did not love Strong, most of all those moments when she lay in his arms—­they had upset all his convictions and emotions.  He paid no attention to the act at all, torn as he was as to what the night would bring him.

He was aroused by storms of applause.  The curtain went up again, and again; the company bowed solo and in a group.  Then calls of “Author!  Author!” were heard all over the house.  Bambi clutched Jarvis’s sleeve and drew him back of the box.

“Go on!  You’ve got to go out and bow.  You do it alone, Jarvis——­”

In answer he took her arm and propelled her in front of him, back on the stage.