For months Beverly Carlysle had remained a remote and semi-mysterious
figure. She had been in some hearts and in many minds, but to most of
them she was a name only. She had been the motive behind events she
never heard of, the quiet center in a tornado of emotions that circled
about without touching her.

On the whole she found her life, with the settling down of the piece to
a successful, run, one of prosperous monotony. She had re-opened and was
living in the 56th Street house, keeping a simple establishment of
cook, butler and maid, and in the early fall she added a town car and a
driver. After that she drove out every afternoon except on matinee days,
almost always alone, but sometimes with a young girl from the company.

She was very lonely. The kaleidoscope that is theatrical New York
had altered since she left it. Only one or two of her former friends
remained, and she found them uninteresting and narrow with the
narrowness of their own absorbing world. She had forgotten that the
theater was like an island, cut off from the rest of the world, having
its own politics, its own society divided by caste, almost its own
religion. Out of its insularity it made occasional excursions to dinners
and week-ends; even into marriage, now and then with an outlander. But
almost always it went back, eager for its home of dressing-room and
footlights, of stage entrances up dirty alleys, of door-keepers and
managers and parts and costumes.