“You want what?”
“I want you to help me by taking the part of my heroine. I read it yesterday by appointment to Fergusson. He accepted it at once on the most liberal terms. I told him there was one condition—that the part of my heroine must be offered to you, if you would accept it. There was a little difficulty, as, of course, Miss Robinson is a fixture at the Pall Mall. However, Fergusson saw you last night from the back of the dress circle, and this morning he has agreed. It only remains for you to read, or allow me to read to you the play.”
“Do you mean to say that you are offering me the principal part in a play of yours—at the Pall Mall—with Fergusson?”
“Well, I think that is about what it comes to,” he assented.
She rose to her feet and took his hands in hers.
“You are too good—much too good to me,” she said softly. “I dare not take it; I am not strong enough.”
“It will be you, or no one,” he said decidedly. “But first I am going to read you the play. If I may, I shall bring it to you to-morrow.”
“I want to ask you something,” she said abruptly. “You must answer me faithfully. You are doing this, you are making me this offer because you think that you owe me something. It is a sort of reparation for your attack upon Herdrine. I want to know if it is that.”
“I can assure you,” he said earnestly, “that I am not nearly so conscientious. I wrote the play solely as a literary work. I had no thought of having it produced, of offering it to anybody. Then I saw you at the New Theatre; I think that you inspired me with a sort of dramatic excitement. I went home and read my play. Bathilde seemed to me then to speak with your tongue, to look at me with your eyes, to be clothed from her soul outwards with your personality. In the morning I wrote to Fergusson.”