Mildred rose and, how she never knew, crossed the stage. She stumbled into the flats, fumbled her way to the pa.s.sageway, to her dressing-room. She felt that she must escape from that theater quickly, or she would give way to some sort of wild attack of nerves.

She fairly ran through the streets to Mrs. Belloc's, shut herself in her room. But instead of the relief of a storm of tears, there came a black, hideous depression. Hour after hour she sat, almost without motion. The afternoon waned; the early darkness came. Still she did not move--could not move. At eight o'clock Mrs. Belloc knocked.

Mildred did not answer. Her door opened--she had forgotten to lock it.

In came Mrs. Belloc.

"Isn't that you, sitting by the window?" she said.

"Yes," replied Mildred.

"I recognized the outline of your hat. Besides, who else could it be but you? I've saved some dinner for you. I thought you were still out."

Mildred did not answer.

"What's the matter?" said Agnes? "Ill? bad news?"

"I've lost my position," said Mildred.

A pause. Then Mrs. Belloc felt her way across the room until she was touching the girl. "Tell me about it, dear," said she.

In a monotonous, lifeless way Mildred told the story. It was some time after she finished when Agnes said:

"That's bad--bad, but it might be worse. You must go to see the manager, Crossley."

"Why?" said Mildred.

"Tell him what you told me."

Mildred's silence was dissent.

"It can't do any harm," urged Agnes.

"It can't do any good," replied Mildred.

"That isn't the way to look at it."

A long pause. Then Mildred said: "If I got a place somewhere else, I'd meet the same thing in another form."

"You've got to risk that."

"Besides, I'd never have had a chance of succeeding if Mr. Ransdell hadn't taught me and stood behind me."

It was many minutes before Agnes Belloc said in a hesitating, restrained voice: "They say that success--any kind of success--has its price, and that one has to be ready to pay that price or fail."

Again the profound silence. Into it gradually penetrated the soft, insistent sound of the distant roar of New York--a cruel, clamorous, devouring sound like a demand for that price of success. Said Agnes timidly:

"Why not go to see Mr. Ransdell."

"He wouldn't make it up," said Mildred. "And I--I couldn't. I tried to marry Stanley Baird for money--and I couldn't. It would be the same way now--only more so."

"But you've got to do something."

"Yes, and I will." Mildred had risen abruptly, was standing at the window. Agnes Belloc could feel her soul rearing defiantly at the city into which she was gazing. "I will!" she replied.

"It sounds as if you'd been pushed to where you'd turn and make a fight," said Agnes.

"I hope so," said Mildred. "It's high time."

She thought out several more or less ingenious indirect routes into Mr.

Crossley's stronghold, for use in case frontal attack failed. But she did not need them. Still, the hours she spent in planning them were by no means wasted. No time is wasted that is spent in desperate, concentrated thinking about any of the practical problems of life. And Mildred Gower, as much as any other woman of her training--or lack of training--was deficient in ability to use her mind purposefully. Most of us let our minds act like a sheep in a pasture--go wandering hither and yon, nibbling at whatever happens to offer. Only the superior few deliberately select a pasture, select a line of procedure in that pasture and keep to it, concentrating upon what is useful to us, and that alone. So it was excellent experience for Mildred to sit down and think connectedly and with wholly absorbed mind upon the phase of her career most important at the moment. When she had worked out all the plans that had promise in them she went tranquilly to sleep, a stronger and a more determined person, for she had said with the energy that counts: "I shall see him, somehow. If none of these schemes works, I'll work out others. He's got to see me."

But it was no occult "bearing down" that led him to order her admitted the instant her card came. He liked her; he wished to see her again; he felt that it was the decent thing, and somehow not difficult gently but clearly to convey to her the truth. On her side she, who had looked forward to the interview with some nervousness, was at her ease the moment she faced him alone in that inner office. He had extraordinary personal charm--more than Ransdell, though Ransdell had the charm invariably found in a handsome human being with the many-sided intellect that gives lightness of mind. Crossley was not intellectual, not in the least. One had only to glance at him to see that he was one of those men who reserve all their intelligence for the practical sides of the practical thing that forms the basis of their material career. He knew something of many things, had a wonderful a.s.sortment of talents--could sing, could play piano or violin, could compose, could act, could do mystifying card tricks, could order women's clothes as discriminatingly as he could order his own--all these things a little, but nothing much except making a success of musical comedy and comic opera. He had an ambition, carefully restrained in a closet of his mind, where it could not issue forth and interfere with his business. This ambition was to be a giver of grand opera on a superb scale. He regarded himself as a mere money-maker--was not ashamed of this, but neither was he proud of it.

His ambition then represented a dream of a rise to something more than business man, to friend and encourager and wet nurse to art.

Mildred Gower had happened to set his imagination to working. The discovery that she was one of those whose personalities rouse high expectations only to mock them had been a severe blow to his confidence in his own judgment. Though he pretended to believe, and had the habit of saying that he was "weak and soft," was always being misled by his good nature, he really believed himself an unerring judge of human beings, and, as his success evidenced, he was not far wrong. Thus, though convinced that Mildred was a "false alarm," his secret vanity would not let him release his original idea. He had the tenacity that is an important element in all successes; and tenacity become a fixed habit has even been known to ruin in the end the very careers it has made.

Said Mildred, in a manner which was astonishingly unemotional and businesslike: "I've not come to tattle and to whine, Mr. Crossley.

I've hesitated about coming at all, partly because I've an instinct it's useless, partly because what I have to say isn't easy."

Crossley's expression hardened. The old story!--excuses, excuses, self-excuse--somebody else to blame.

"If it hadn't been for Mr. Ransdell--the trouble he took with me, the coaching he gave me--I'd have been a ridiculous failure at the very first rehearsal. But--it is to Mr. Ransdell that my failure is due."

"My dear Miss Gower," said Crossley, polite but cold, "I regret hearing you say that. The fact is very different. Not until you had done so--so unacceptably at several rehearsals that news of it reached me by another way--not until I myself went to Mr. Ransdell about you did he admit that there could be a possibility of a doubt of your succeeding.

I had to go to rehearsal myself and directly order him to restore Miss Esmond and lay you off."

Mildred was not unprepared. She received this tranquilly. "Mr.

Ransdell is a very clever man," said she with perfect good humor. "I've no hope of convincing you, but I must tell my side."

And clearly and simply, with no concealments through fear of disturbing his high ideal of her ladylike delicacy, she told him the story. He listened, seated well back in his tilted desk-chair, his gaze upon the ceiling. When she finished he held his pose a moment, then got up and paced the length of the office several times, his hands in his pockets.

He paused, looked keenly at her, a good-humored smile in those eyes of his so fascinating to women because of their frank wavering of an inconstancy it would indeed be a triumph to seize and hold. Said he:

"And your bad throat? Did Ransdell give you a germ?"

She colored. He had gone straight at the weak point.

"If you'd been able to sing," he went on, "n.o.body could have done you up."

She could not gather herself together for speech.

"Didn't you know your voice wasn't reliable when you came to me?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"And wasn't that the REAL reason you had given up grand opera?" pursued he mercilessly.

"The reason was what I told you--lack of money," replied she. "I did not go into the reason why I lacked money. Why should I when, even on my worst days, I could get through all my part in a musical comedy--except songs that could be cut down or cut out? If I could have made good at acting, would you have given me up on account of my voice?"

"Not if you had been good enough," he admitted.

"Then I did not get my engagement on false pretenses?"