Mildred had antic.i.p.ated the most repulsive a.s.sociations--men and women of low origin and of vulgar tastes and of vulgarly loose lives. She found herself surrounded by simple, pleasant people, undoubtedly erratic for the most part in all their habits, but without viciousness.

And they were hard workers, all. Ransdell--for Crossley--tolerated no nonsense. His people could live as they pleased, away from the theater, but there they must be prompt and fit. The discipline was as severe as that of a monastery. She saw many signs that all sorts of things of the sort with which she wished to have no contact were going on about her; but as she held slightly--but not at all haughtily--aloof, she would have had to go out of her way to see enough to scandalize her. She soon suspected that she was being treated with extraordinary consideration. This was by Crossley's orders. But the carrying out of their spirit as well as their letter was due to Ransdell. Before the end of that first week she knew that there was the personal element behind his admiration for her voice and her talent for acting, behind his concentrating most of his attention upon her part. He looked his love boldly whenever they were alone; he was always trying to touch her--never in a way that she could have resented, or felt like resenting. He was not unattractive to her, and she was eager to learn all he had to teach, and saw no harm in helping herself by letting him love.

Toward the middle of the second week, when they were alone in her dressing-room, he--with the ingenious lack of abruptness of the experienced man at the game--took her hand, and before she was ready, kissed her. He did not accompany these advances with an outburst of pa.s.sionate words or with any fiery lighting up of the eyes, but calmly, smilingly, as if it were what she was expecting him to do, what he had a right to do.

She did not know quite how to meet this novel attack. She drew her hand away, went on talking about the part--the changes he had suggested in her entrance, as she sang her best solo. He discussed this with her until they rose to leave the theater. He looked smilingly down on her, and said with the flattering air of the satisfied connoisseur:

"Yes, you are charming, Mildred. I can make a great artist and a great success out of you. We need each other."

"I certainly need you," said she gratefully. "How much you've done for me."

"Only the beginning," replied he. "Ah, I have such plans for you--such plans. Crossley doesn't realize how far you can be made to go--with the right training. Without it--" He shook his head laughingly. "But you shall have it, my dear." And he laid his hands lightly and caressingly upon her shoulders.

The gesture was apparently a friendly familiarity. To resent it, even to draw away, would put her in the att.i.tude of the woman absurdly exercised about the desirability and sacredness of her own charms.

Still smiling, in that friendly, a.s.sured way, he went on: "You've been very cold and reserved with me, my dear. Very unappreciative."

Mildred, red and trembling, hung her head in confusion.

"I've been at the business ten years," he went on, "and you're the first woman I've been more than casually interested in. The pretty ones were bores. The homely ones--I can't interest myself in a homely woman, no matter how much talent she has. A woman must first of all satisfy the eye. And you--" He seated himself and drew her toward him. She, cold all over and confused in mind and almost stupefied, resisted with all her strength; but her strength seemed to be oozing away. She said:

"You must not do this. You must not do this. I'm horribly disappointed in you."

He drew her to his lap and held her there without any apparent tax upon his strength. He kissed her, laughingly pushing away the arms with which she tried to shield her face. Suddenly she found strength to wrench herself free and stood at a distance from him. She was panting a little, was pale, was looking at him with cold anger.

"You will please leave this room," said she.

He lit a cigarette, crossed his legs comfortably, and looked at her with laughing eyes. "Don't do that," he said genially. "Surely my lessons in acting haven't been in vain. That's too obviously a pose."

She went to the mirror, arranged her hat, and moved toward the door. He rose and barred the way.

"You are as sensible as you are sweet and lovely," said he. "Why should you insist on our being bad friends?"

"If you don't stand aside, I'll call out to the watchman."

"I'd never have thought you were dishonest. In fact, I don't believe it yet. You don't look like one of those ladies who wish to take everything and give nothing." His tone and manner were most attractive. Besides, she could not forget all he had done for her--and all he could do for her. Said she:

"Mr. Ransdell, if I've done anything to cause you to misunderstand, it was unconscious. And I'm sorry. But I--"

"Be honest," interrupted he. "Haven't I made it plain that I was fascinated by you?"

She could not deny it.

"Haven't I been showing you that I was willing to do everything I could for you?"

"I thought you were concerned only about the success of the piece."

"The piece be jiggered," said he. "You don't imagine YOU are necessary to its success, do you? You, a raw, untrained girl. Don't your good sense tell you I could find a dozen who would do, let us say, ALMOST as well?"

"I understand that," murmured she.

"Perhaps you do, but I doubt it," rejoined he. "Vanity's a fast growing weed. However, I rather expected that you would remain sane and reasonably humble until you'd had a real success. But it seems not.

Now tell me, why should I give my time and my talent to training you--to putting you in the way of quick and big success?"

She was silent.

"What did you count on giving me in return? Your thanks?"

She colored, hung her head.

"Wasn't I doing for you something worth while? And what had you to give in return?" He laughed with gentle mockery. "Really, you should have been grateful that I was willing to do so much for so little, for what I wanted ought--if you are a sensible woman--to seem to you a trifle in comparison with what I was doing for you. It was my part, not yours, to think the complimentary things about you. How shallow and vain you women are! Can't you see that the value of your charms is not in them, but in the imagination of some man?"

"I can't answer you," said she. "You've put it all wrong. You oughtn't to ask payment for a favor beyond price."

"No, I oughtn't to HAVE to ask," corrected he, in the same pleasantly ironic way. "You ought to have been more than glad to give freely.

But, curiously, while we've been talking, I've changed my mind about those precious jewels of yours. We'll say they're pearls, and that my taste has suddenly changed to diamonds." He bowed mockingly. "So, dear lady, keep your pearls."

And he stood aside, opening the door for her. She hesitated, dazed that she was leaving, with the feeling of the conquered, a field on which, by all the precedents, she ought to have been victor. She pa.s.sed a troubled night, debated whether to relate her queer experience to Mrs. Belloc, decided for silence. It drafted into service all her reserve of courage to walk into the theater the next day and to appear on the stage among the a.s.sembled company with her usual air. Ransdell greeted her with his customary friendly courtesy and gave her his attention, as always. By the time they had got through the first act, in which her part was one of four of about equal importance, she had recovered herself and was in the way to forget the strange stage director's strange attack and even stranger retreat. But the situation changed with the second act, in which she was on the stage all the time and had the whole burden. The act as originally written had been less generous to her; but Ransdell had taken one thing after another away from the others and had given it to her. She made her first entrance precisely as he had trained her to make it and began. A few seconds, and he stopped her.

"Please try again, Miss Gower," said he. "I'm afraid that won't do."

She tried again; again he stopped her. She tried a third time. His manner was all courtesy and consideration, not the shade of a change.

But she began to feel a latent hostility. Instinctively she knew that he would no longer help her, that he would leave her to her own resources, and judge her by how she acquitted herself. She made a blunder of her third trial.

"Really, Miss Gower, that will never do," said he mildly. "Let me show you how you did it."

He gave an imitation of her--a slight caricature. A t.i.tter ran through the chorus. He sternly rebuked them and requested her to try again.

Her fourth attempt was her worst. He shook his head in gentle remonstrance. "Not quite right yet," said he regretfully. "But we'll go on."

Not far, however. He stopped her again. Again the courteous, kindly criticism. And so on, through the entire act. By the end of it, Mildred's nerves were unstrung. She saw the whole game, and realized how helpless she was. Before the end of that rehearsal, Mildred had slipped back from promising professional into clumsy amateur, tolerable only because of the beautiful freshness of her voice--and it was a question whether voice alone would save her. Yet no one but Mildred herself suspected that Ransdell had done it, had revenged himself, had served notice on her that since she felt strong enough to stand alone she was to have every opportunity to do so. He had said nothing disagreeable; on the contrary, he had been most courteous, most forbearing.

In the third act she was worse than in the second. At the end of the rehearsal the others, theretofore flattering and encouraging, turned away to talk among themselves and avoided her. Ransdell, about to leave, said:

"Don't look so down-hearted, Miss Gower. You'll be all right to-morrow. An off day's nothing."

He said it loudly enough for the others to hear. Mildred's face grew red with white streaks across it, like the prints of a lash. The subtlest feature of his malevolence had been that, whereas on other days he had taken her aside to criticize her, on this day he had spoken out--gently, deprecatingly, but frankly--before the whole company.

Never had Mildred Gower been so sad and so blue as she was that day and that night. She came to the rehearsal the following day with a sore throat. She sang, but her voice cracked on the high notes. It was a painful exhibition. Her fellow princ.i.p.als, who had been rather glad of her set-back the day before, were full of pity and sympathy. They did not express it; they were too kind for that. But their looks, their drawing away from her--Mildred could have borne sneers and jeers better. And Ransdell was SO forbearing, SO gentle.

Her voice got better, got worse. Her acting remained mediocre to bad.

At the fifth rehearsal after the break with the stage-director, Mildred saw Crossley seated far back in the dusk of the empty theater. It was his first appearance at rehearsals since the middle of the first week.

As soon as he had satisfied himself that all was going well, he had given his attention to other matters where things were not going well.

Mildred knew why he was there--and she acted and sang atrociously.

Ransdell aggravated her nervousness by ostentatiously trying to help her, by making seemingly adroit attempts to cover her mistakes--attempts apparently thwarted and exposed only because she was hopelessly bad.

In the pause between the second and third acts Ransdell went down and sat with Crossley, and they engaged in earnest conversation. The while, the members of the company wandered restlessly about the stage, making feeble attempts to lift the gloom with affected cheerfulness.

Ransdell returned to the stage, went up to Mildred, who was sitting idly turning the leaves of a part-book.

"Miss Gower," said he, and never had his voice been so friendly as in these regretful accents, "don't try to go on to-day. You're evidently not yourself. Go home and rest for a few days. We'll get along with your understudy, Miss Esmond. When Mr. Crossley wants to put you in again, he'll send for you. You mustn't be discouraged. I know how beginners take these things to heart. Don't fret about it. You can't fail to succeed."