Facing the Footlights

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Marjorie Helms and her husband, a young inventor, are thoroughly in love with each other and happy in their simple home life with their one child, a little daughter. Helms is conducting experiments with a view of improving certain high explosives and seems in a fair way of obtaining success. His laboratory being near his house, his wife has a habit of calling for him when it is time for him to finish his evening's work. With their little daughter she calls on him one day at the laboratory and the child pleading with her father to make some fireworks for her, he explodes a small quantity of powder. His wife and child have no sooner left the laboratory than they hear an explosion and see a burst of flame from the building. A spark from the impromptu firecracker had found its way unseen into the closet where the chemicals are stored and havoc results. With the aid of a servant, Marjorie rescues her husband from the wrecked and burning building. He is carried to a hospital, where he lies ill for a long time before he is recovered. His wife, in the meantime, has had a new laboratory built and equipped for him and what with hospital expenses and other needed expenditures, finds that their funds are exhausted and some laboratory bills still unpaid. She fears to tell her husband, as she wishes to keep him from worry, and determines to shoulder the burden herself. Going to Matcham, a theater manager and close friend of her husband's, she asks for his advice. He proffers to her a profitable engagement at his theater to pose for classical living pictures. With great reluctance and distress she accepts, but on the condition that her husband be kept in ignorance. She appears before the footlights and wins success, and each night as soon as she can leave the theater hurries to the laboratory to get her husband as had been her habit. All is well for a while, but something excites his suspicion and he determines to spy upon her. He follows her to the stage entrance of the theater, and then buys a ticket for the performance. Dumbfounded, he sees his wife upon the stage and on the conclusion of her act goes directly home. His wife calls at the laboratory and fails to find him there. Going to the house, she finds him a changed and angry man. He overwhelms her with abuse and vituperation until she falls fainting to the floor. Later when she has recovered from her swoon, but is still weak and ill, he goes to her still determined on his course. She asks him to bring her the strong box and then shows him the unpaid bills, the theater contract and all the evidences of their need for money. He is overwhelmed in the face of the facts and full of contrition and humility begs his wife for forgiveness, which she grants.