"Have you had any experience?" he asked.
"None at all," said Poppy sadly. She was getting tired of the question, and felt inclined to vary the answer, but the truthful, kind eyes abashed the thought.
"Is there anything you could recite to me?"
Poppy thought swiftly. She knew volumes of prose and poetry, but at the word everything fled from her brain except two things—Raleigh's "O Eloquent, Just and Mighty Death!" which she in somewhat morbid mood had been reading the night before, and a poem of Henley's that had been dear to her since she had loved Carson. In desperation, at last she opened her lips and gave forth the sweet, tender words, brokenly, and with tears lying on her pale cheeks, but with the voice of a bird in the garden:
"When you are old and I am passed away—
Passed: and your face, your golden face is grey,
I think—what e'er the end, this dream of mine
Comforting you a friendly star shall shine
Down the dim slope where still you stumble and stray.
"Dear Heart, it shall be so: under the sway
Of death, the Past's enormous disarray
Lies hushed and dark. Still tho' there come no sign,
Live on well pleased; immortal and divine
Love shall still tend you as God's angels may,
When you are old."
When she had finished she stood, swaying and pale, tears falling down. Ravenhill looked at her sadly. He thought: "This girl has more than her share of the world's hard luck."
"I will take you as a walker-on," he said, "with an understudy and with the chance of a small part. You have a fine voice, and a temperament—but I need not tell you that. Of course, if you want to get on, you need to study and work hard. I can't offer you more than thirty shillings a week—with a difference if you play."
He did not mention that all other walkers-on with understudies were only getting a guinea; some of them nothing at all. He only looked at her with kindness and comradeship.
As for her: she could have fallen at his feet in thankfulness. The contract was signed and she went home happy.