"I should like to," she answered. "I seem to have so much to say to you."

He piled her chair with cushions and drew it back into the shade. Then he lit a cigarette, and sat down by her side.

"I suppose you must think that I am very ungrateful," she said. "I have scarcely said 'thank you' yet, have I?"

"You will please me best by never saying it," he answered. "I only hope that it will be a step you will never regret."

"How could I?"

He looked at her steadily, a certain grave concentration of thought manifest in his dark eyes. Berenice was looking her best that afternoon. She was certainly a very beautiful and a very distinguished-looking woman. Her eyes met his frankly; her lips were curved in a faintly tender smile.

"Well, I hardly know," he said. "You are going to be a popular actress. Henceforth the stage will have claims upon you! It will become your career."

"You have plenty of confidence."

"I have absolute confidence in you," he declared, "and Fergusson is equally confident about the play; chance has given you this opportunity--the result is beyond question! Yet I confess that I have a presentiment. If the ma.n.u.script of 'The Heart of the People' were in my hands at this moment, I think that I would tear it into little pieces, and watch them flutter down on to the pavement there."

"I do not understand you," she said softly. "You say that you have no doubt----"

"It is because I have no doubt--it is because I know that it will make you a popular and a famous actress. You will gain this. I wonder what you will lose."

She moved restlessly on her chair.

"Why should I lose anything?"

"It is only a presentiment," he reminded her. "I pray that you may not lose anything. Yet you are coming under a very fascinating influence.

It is your personality I am afraid of. You are going to belong definitely to a profession which is at once the most catholic and the most narrowing in the world. I believe that you are strong enough to stand alone, to remain yourself. I pray that it may be so, and yet, there is just the shadow of the presentiment. Perhaps it is foolish."

Their chairs were close together; he suddenly felt the perfume of her hair and the touch of her fingers upon his hand. Her face was quite close to his.

"At least," she murmured, "I pray that I may never lose your friendship."

"If only I could ensure you as confidently the fulfilment of all your desires," he answered, "you would be a very happy woman. I am too lonely a man, Berenice, to part with any of my few joys. Whether you change or no, you must never change towards me."

She was silent. There were no signs left of the brilliant levity which had made their little luncheon pa.s.s off so successfully. She sat with her head resting upon her elbow, gazing steadily up at the little white clouds which floated over the housetops. A tea equipage was brought out and deftly arranged between them.

"To-day," Matravers said, "I am going to have the luxury of having my tea made for me. Please come back from dreamland and realize the Englishman's idyll of domesticity."

She turned in her chair, and smiled upon him.

"I can do it," she a.s.sured him. "I believe you doubt my ability, but you need not."

They talked lightly for some time--an art which Matravers found himself to be acquiring with wonderful facility. Then there was a pause. When she spoke again, it was in an altogether different tone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I can do it," she a.s.sured him. "I believe you doubt my ability, but you need not"]

"I want you to answer me," she said, "it is not too late. Shall I give up Bathilde--and the stage? Listen! You do not know anything of my circ.u.mstances. I am not dependent upon either the stage or my writing for a living. I ask you for your honest advice. Shall I give it up?"

"You are placing a very heavy responsibility upon my shoulders," he answered her thoughtfully. "Yet I will try to answer you honestly. I should be happier if I could advise you to give it up! But I cannot!

You have the gift--you must use it. The obligation of self-development is heaviest upon the shoulders of those whose foreheads Nature's twin-sister has touched with fire! I would it were any other gift, Berenice; but that is only a personal feeling. No! you must follow out your destiny. You have an opportunity of occupying a unique and marvellous position. You can create a new ideal. Only be true always to yourself. Be very jealous indeed of absorbing any of the modes of thought and life which will spring up everywhere around you in the new world. Remember it is the old ideals which are the sweetest and the truest.... Forgive me, please! I am talking like a pedagogue."

"You are talking as I like to be talked to," she answered. "Yet you need not fear that my head will be turned, even if the success should come. You forget that I am almost an old woman. The religion of my life has long been conceived and fashioned."

He looked at her with a curious smile. If thirty seemed old to her, what must she think of him?

"I wonder," he said simply, "if you would think me impertinent if I were to ask you to tell me more about yourself. How is it that you are altogether alone in the world?"

The words had scarcely left his lips before he would have given much to have recalled them. He saw her start, flinch back as though she had been struck, and a grey pallor spread itself over her face, almost to the lips. She looked at him fixedly for several moments without speaking.

"One day," she said, "I will tell you all that. You shall know everything. But not now; not yet."

"Whenever you will," he answered, ignoring her evident agitation.

"Come! what do you say to a walk down through the Park? To-day is a holiday for me--a day to be marked with a white stone. I have registered an oath that I will not even look at a pen. Will you not help me to keep it?"

"By all means," she answered blithely. "I will take you home with me, and keep you there till the hour of temptation has pa.s.sed. To-day is to be my last day of idleness! I too have need of a white stone."

"We will place them," he said, "side by side."

CHAPTER X

Matravers' luncheon party marked the termination for some time of any confidential intercourse between Berenice and himself. Every moment of her time was claimed by Fergusson, who, in his anxiety to produce a play from which he hoped so much before the wane of the season, gave no one any rest, and worked himself almost into a fever. There were two full rehearsals a day, and many private ones at her rooms.

Matravers calling there now and then found Fergusson always in possession, and by degrees gave it up in despair. He had a horror of interfering in any way, even of being asked for his advice concerning the practical reproduction of his work. Fergusson's invitations to the rehearsals at the theatre he rejected absolutely. As the time grew shorter, Berenice became pale and almost haggard with the unceasing work which Fergusson's anxiety imposed upon her. One night she sent for Matravers, and hastening to her rooms, he found her for the first time alone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Do you know that man is driving me slowly mad?"]

"I have sent Mr. Fergusson home," she exclaimed, welcoming him with outstretched hands, but making no effort to rise from her easy chair.

"Do you know that man is driving me slowly mad? I want you to interfere."

"What can I do?" he said.

"Anything to bring him to reason! He is over-rehearsing! Every line, every sentence, every gesture, he makes the subject of the most exhaustive deliberation. He will have nothing spontaneous; it is positively stifling. A few more days of it and my reason will go! He is a great actor, but he does not seem to understand that to reduce everything to mathematical proportions is to court failure."

"I will go and see him," Matravers said. "You wish for no more rehearsals, then?"

"I do not want to see his face again before the night of the performance," she declared vehemently. "I am perfect in my part. I have thought about it--dreamed about it. I have lived more as 'Bathilde' than as myself for the last three weeks. Perhaps," she continued more slowly, "you will not be satisfied. I scarcely dare to hope that you will be. Yet I have reached my limitations. The more I am made to rehea.r.s.e now, the less natural I shall become."

"I will speak to Fergusson," Matravers promised. "I will go and see him to-night. But so far as you are concerned, I have no fear; you will be the 'Bathilde' of my heart and my brain. You cannot fail!"

She rose to her feet. "It is," she said, "The desire of my life to make your 'Bathilde' a creature of flesh and blood. If I fail, I will never act again."

"If you fail," he said, "the fault will be in my conception, not in your execution. But indeed we will not consider anything so improbable. Let us put the play behind us for a time and talk of something else! You must be weary of it."

She shook her head. "Not that! never that! Just now it is my life, only it is the details which weary me, the eternal harping upon the mechanical side of it. Will you read to me for a little? and I will make you some coffee. You are not in a hurry, are you?"

"I have come," he said, "to stay with you until you send me away! I will read to you with pleasure. What will you have?"