Half an hour passed, another half hour.  Martie had intended to do some serious thinking, but she found herself sleepy.

After a while she crept in beside her husband, and went to sleep, her heart still hot with anger.

But when the morning came she forgave him, as she was often to forgive him.  What else could she do?  The sunlight was streaming into their large, shabby bedroom, cable cars were rattling by, fog whistles from the bay penetrated the soft winter air.  Martie was healthily hungry for breakfast, Wallace awakened good natured and penitent.

“You were a darling to me last night, Mart,” he said appreciatively.

Martie had not known he was awake.  She turned from her mirror, regarding him steadily between the curtains of her shining hair.

“And you’re a darling not to rub it in,” Wallace pursued.

“I would rub it in,” Martie said in a hurt voice, “if I thought it would do any good!”

Wallace sat up, and pressed his hands against his forehead.

“Well, believe me—­that was the last!” he said fervently.  “Never again!”

“Oh, dearest,” Martie said, coming to sit beside him, “I hope you mean that!” That he did mean it, they both believed.

Half an hour later, when they went out to breakfast, she was in her happiest mood.  The little cloud, in vanishing, had left the sky clearer than before.  But some little quality of blind admiration and faith was gone from her wifeliness thereafter.

In December the stock company had a Re-engagement Extraordinary, and Martie got her first part.  It was not much of a part—­three lines—­ but she approached it with passionate seriousness, and when the first rehearsal came, rattled off her three lines so glibly that the entire jaded company and the director enjoyed a refreshing laugh.  At the costumier’s, in a fascinating welter of tarnished and shabby garments, she selected a suitable dress, and Wallace coached her, made up her face, and prompted her with great pride.  So the tiny part went well, and one of the papers gave a praising line to “Junoesque Miss Salisbury.”  These were happy days.  Martie loved the odorous, dark, crowded world behind the scenes, loved to be a part of it.  This was living indeed!

And Sally was expecting a baby!  Martie laughed aloud from sheer excitement and pleasure when the news came.  It was almost like having one herself; in one way even more satisfactory, because she was too busy now to be interrupted.  She spent the first money she had ever earned in sending Sally a present for the baby; smiling again whenever she pictured Sally was showing it to old friends in Monroe:  “From Martie; isn’t it gorgeous?”