to read in winter in order to indulge my passion for the stage in summer and early autumn. Then I secured a small part in a real company, and at a salary that permitted me to send some money home. I knocked about the country this way two seasons more – that makes me twenty-two. I knew the office of every manager in New York by this time, but had been able to reach an audience with but one or two. They were kind enough, but failed to 'see anything' in me, as the phrase goes; and I was quite disheartened. Oh, 'the Rialto'!" Her face clouded and her voice softened. "It is a brilliant and amusing place to the successful, but to the girl who walks it seeking a theatrical engagement it is a heartless and cruel place. You can see them there to-day – girls eager and earnest and ready to work hard and conscientiously – haunting the agencies and the anterooms of the managers just as I did in those days – only five years ago."
"It seems incredible," exclaimed Douglass. "I thought you came here from a London success."
"So I did, and that is the miraculous chapter of my story. I went to London with Farnum – with only a little part – but McLennan saw me and liked my work, and asked me to take the American adventuress in his new play. And then – my fortune was made. The play was only a partial success, but my own position was established. I continued to play the gay and evil-minded French and Russian woman of the English stage till I was tired of them. Then I tried Joan of Arc and Charlotte Corday. The public forced me back to The Baroness Telka, and to wealth and great fame; and then I read your little book, which seemed directed straight to me, and I asked Hugh to write you – now you have the 'story of me life.' I have had no struggle since – only hard work and great acclaim." She faced her mother with a proud smile. Then her face darkened. "But – there is always a but – I want New York to know me in some better way. I'm tired of these women with cigarettes and spangled dinner-gowns."
She laid her hand again on her mother's knee, and the gentle old fingers closed around the firm, smooth wrist.
"I've told mother that I will cut these rôles out. We are at last in a position to do as we please. I am now waiting for something worth while to come to me. That is my present situation, Mr. Douglass. I don't know why I've been so frank. Now let me hear your play."
He flushed a little. "To tell the truth, I find it rather hard to begin. I feel as though I were re-enacting a worn-out scene in some way. Every other man in the car writes plays nowadays and torments his friends by reading to them, which, I admit, is an abominable practice. However, as I came here for that express purpose, I will at least outline my scenario."
"Didn't you bring the play itself?"
"Yes; but, really, I hesitate. It may bore you to death."
"You could not write a play that would bore me – I am sure of that."
"Very well," he soberly answered, and drew forth his manuscript. As if upon signal, the mother and her son rose to withdraw. "You are entirely justified," said Douglass, with some humor. "I quite understand your feelings."
"We should like very much to hear it, but – "
"No excuses, I beg of you. I wonder at Miss Merival's hardihood. I am quite sure she will live to repent her temerity."
In this spirit of banter the playwright and the star were left alone with the manuscript of the play. As he read on, Douglass was carried out of his own impassivity by the changes in the face before him. It became once more elusive, duskily mysterious in its lines. A reflective shadow darkened the glorious eyes, veiled by drooping lids. Without knowing it, the actress took on from moment to moment the heart-trials of the woman of the play. In a subconscious way even as he read, Douglass analyzed and understood her power. Hers was a soul of swift and subtle sympathy. A word, a mere inflection, was sufficient to set in motion the most complicate and obscure conceptions in her brain, permitting her to comprehend with equal clarity the Egyptian queen of pleasure and the austere devotee to whom joy is a snare. From time to time she uttered little exclamations of pleasure, and at the end of each act motioned him to proceed, as if eager to get a unified impression.
It was after eleven o'clock when he threw down the manuscript, and, white with emotion, awaited her verdict. She was tense with the strain, and her lashes were wet with tears, but her eyes were bright and her mind alert. She had already entered upon a new part, having been swept up into a region of resolution as far away from the pleasant hostess as from the heartless adventuress whose garments she had worn but the night before. With hands clasped between her knees, and shoulders laxly drooping, she brooded on the sorrows of his mimic world.
"I will do your play," she said at last. "I will do it because I believe in its method and because I think it worthy of my highest powers."
The blood rushed to the playwright's throat and a smarting heat dimmed his eyes. He spoke with difficulty. "I thank you," he said, hoarsely. "It is more than I expected; and now that you have promised to do it, I feel you ought not to take the risk." He could say no more, overcome by the cordial emphasis of her decision.
"There is a risk, I will be frank with you; but your play is worth it. I have not been so powerfully moved in years. You have thrilled me. Really I cannot tell you how deeply your theme has sunk into my heart. You have the Northern conscience – so have I; that is why I rebel at being merely the plaything of a careless public. Yes, I will do your play. It is a work of genius. I hope you wrote it in a garret. It's the kind of thing to come from a diet of black bread and water."
He smiled. "I live in a sort of garret, and my meals are frequently beans and brown bread. I hope that will do."
"I am glad the bread is at least brown… But you are tired. Leave the manuscript with me." He rose and she moved towards him with a gesture of confidence which made words impossible to him. "When we meet again I want you to tell me something of yourself… Good-night. You will hear from me soon." She was regal as she said this – regal in her own proper person, and he went away rapt with wonder and admiration of the real Helen Merival as she now stood revealed to him.
"She is greater than my dreams of her," he said, in a sort of rapture as he walked the street. "She is greater than she herself can know; for her genius is of the subtle, unspeakable deeps – below her own consciousness, beyond her own analysis. How much greater her art seems, now that I have seen her. It is marvellous! She will do my play, and she will succeed – her power as an actress would carry it to a success if it were a bad play, which it is not. My day has dawned at last."
Helen went to bed that night with a consciousness that something new and powerful had come into her life. Not merely the play and her determination to do it moved her – the man himself profoundly impressed her. His seriousness, his decision and directness of utterance, and the idealism which shone from his rugged, boyish face remained with her to the verge of sleep. He was very handsome, and his voice singularly beautiful, but his power to charm lay over and beyond these. His sincere eyes, his freedom from flippant slang, these impressed her with a sense of his reliability, his moral worth.
"He is stern and harsh, but he is fine," she said to her mother next morning, "and his play is very strong. I am going to do it. You will like the part of Lillian. It has the Scotch sense of moral responsibility in it."
II
DOUGLASS rose next morning with a bound, as if life had somehow become surcharged with fresh significance, fresh opportunity. His professional career seemed dull and prosaic – his critical work of small avail. His whole mind centred on his play.
His was a moody, sensitive nature. Stern as he looked, and strong as he really was, he could be depressed by a trifle or exalted by a word. And reviewing his meeting with Helen in the light of the morning, he had more than a suspicion that he had allowed himself to talk too freely in the presence of the brother and mother, and that he had been over-enthusiastic,
