CHAPTER XXI
MARION GRAY PLAYS FAIR.
Marion Gray was a very charming young woman. Slight, and rather tiny, she had a piquant face which was fascinating. Taken separately, scarcely one of her features would be found quite perfect, but one never scrutinized Marion Gray’s face that way. The ensemble disarmed criticism.
Some one had once said that had she been positively ugly she would still have remained none the less attractive; for she had that wonderful, illusive quality of magnetism, without which there is no real success on the stage.
And, more than that, she had brains, and knew how to use them. In the comparative short space of three years she had made a place for herself, alone and unaided, in the hearts of the theatre-going public of New York, which is about as difficult as a passage through the eye of a needle by the proverbial camel.
In three years she had acquired a personal following, and a large one, at that. When Buffer and Lane had threatened her with their displeasure if she persisted in going with Austin Demarest, she had laughed at them. She knew, and so did they, that such threats amounted to nothing. The moment she was at leisure—and probably long before—they would be after her on bended knee, begging, beseeching, offering a fabulous salary, to secure the actress for which New York was clamoring.
But she had reasons of her own for wishing to play for the talented young actor-manager. Perhaps the reasons were no longer her own. During the long rehearsals of “Jarvis of Yale,” it had been almost impossible to hide from the penetrating eyes of the other members in the cast the interest she felt in the person of the author and star. They had long ago sized up the situation, and confided to each other that Marion was daffier than ever about “Demmy.” They had all seen it but the one she cared more for than any one else in the world.
This morning, as she sat alone at breakfast in the dining room of the New Haven House, she sighed a little as she thought of it. He was very blind. They had always been good pals. Once she thought that his feeling for her was something more than that, but now she was not sure.
They had been separated all summer. He was writing his play, and she resting in the mountains. Since their return to the city he had been so full of his wonderful new venture that he seemed scarcely to have time to eat and sleep.
All at once she glanced toward the door, and her eyes brightened. He had entered the room, and was striding toward her table. In one hand he held an open telegram. His face was full of perplexity and annoyance.