The dark eyes glittered still more keenly as he spoke, and the hand that held the playbill tightened.
“You will succeed if you set your heart on it,” he said more calmly. “You have done well up to now; I haven’t praised you: that is not my way; but—but—I am satisfied. Up to now you have got on in regular strides—to-morrow night is the great leap! The great chance that seldom comes more than once in a life. Take it, Doris, take it!”
“Yes, Jeffrey,” she said, softly; but he heard the sigh she tried to stifle and looked up.
“Well?” he said grimly. “You would say——”
She moved away from him and leaned against the table, her hands clasped loosely.
“I was going to say that it seems to me as if all the trying in the world would not make me a Shakespeare’s Juliet! The lines are beautiful, and I know them—oh, yes, I know them, but——” she paused, then went on dreamily: “Do you think any young girl, any one so young as I am, could play it properly, Jeffrey?”
“Juliet was fourteen,” he said, grimly.
Doris smiled.
“That’s a mistake, I think, Jeffrey; she was eighteen, most people say! Oh, she was young enough; yes, but—but then you see she had met Romeo.”
The old man looked at her attentively, then his keen gaze dropped to the floor.