A happy look came into his face, too, for the first time since he had known the truth.
"That's the spirit! If a woman has the courage to take the big jump, she should have the grit to face the fences all round the course ... but I don't believe many do; and you can't blame them for that either. Rosalind, I want to tell you something. I'm a rich man, and I ... I have no children." He swallowed an odd sound in his throat and averted his eyes for a moment, but went on calmly: "I long ago made up my mind to leave every rap, when I die, to women who have done what you have done—and had to suffer for it."
She looked at him thoughtfully for a while.
"I think you would be wrong, Charlie. People would call it putting a premium on sin, and—you couldn't really help the woman who suffered. Nothing could help her. The right kind of woman would value her suffering more than your money, believe me." Then, as she saw his saddened face, she said, "Help the little love-babies, if you like, and bring them up to be as kind and sweet a friend as you are to women—" Impulsively he put his hand on hers lying on the dinner-table.
"Let me—" he began.
"But never offer to help my love-baby," she said warningly, "as long as he has a mother to work for him, and a king for his father somewhere in the world."
CHAPTER XIX
AT the end of April the season at the Lyceum drew to a close, and Ravenhill re-formed his company to tour the provinces.
Many of those who had worked with him throughout the season were moneyed girls, with such a passion for the stage, that they were only too glad to give their services—"walking-on," dancing, and understudying—without salary, for the sake of the experience in a London theatre; and it would have been an easy matter for the manager to have composed his touring company largely of such people. But he happened to be a man with a big heart for the stragglers of the profession; those who were in it for the love of their art, too, but incidentally obliged to make a living. And so, though he did not disdain to employ occasional rich amateurs, he never allowed them to usurp the work of legitimate actors and actresses.