"You didn't give me an opening. Besides, to welcome a deserter from the Great Beyond is enough to drive all other thoughts from a man's mind."
"There's to be a supper in honour of the circumstances, at the Beaux Arts to-night," supplemented Max. "You'll come, of course."
"Do you think you could keep me away with a dog?"
"Wouldn't risk spoiling the dog," said Drummond. He added with a tentative, questioning air: "There'll be a lot of old-time acquaintances of yours there, you know."
"So much the better," Whitaker declared with spirit. "I've played dead long enough."
"As you think best," the lawyer acceded. "Midnight, then--the Beaux Arts."
"I'll be there--and furthermore, I'll be waiting at the church a week hence--or whenever it's to come off. And now I want to congratulate you." Whitaker held Drummond's hand in one of those long, hard grips that mean much between men. "But mostly I want to congratulate her. Who is she?"
"Sara Law," said Drummond, with pride in his quick color and the lift of his chin.
"Sara Law?" The name had a familiar ring, yet Whitaker failed to recognize it promptly.
"The greatest living actress on the English-speaking stage," Max announced, preening himself importantly. "My own discovery."
"You don't mean to say you haven't heard of her. Is New Guinea, then, so utterly abandoned to the march of civilization?"
"Of course I've heard--but I have been out of touch with such things," Whitaker apologized. "When shall I see her?"
"At supper, to-night," said the man of law. "It's really in her honour--"
"In honour of her retirement," Max interrupted, fussing with a gardenia on his lapel. "She retires from the stage finally, and forever--she says--when the curtain falls to-night."
"Then I've got to be in the theatre to-night--if that's the case," said Whitaker. "It isn't my notion of an occasion to miss."
"You're right there," Max told him bluntly. "It's no small matter to me--losing such a star; but the world's loss of its greatest artist--_ah!_" He kissed his finger-tips and ecstatically flirted the caress afar.
"'Fraid you won't get in, though," Drummond doubted darkly. "Everything in the house for this final week was sold out a month ago. Even the speculators are cleaned out."