"Then all is arranged," Miles Faraday concluded briskly. "We will leave the second act until tomorrow; then M. Graillot will bring us his revision. We will proceed now to the next act. Stand back a little, if you please, ladies and gentlemen. Miss Maurel, will you make your entrance?"
Louise made no movement. Her eyes were fixed upon a certain shadowy corner of the wings. Overwrought as she had seemed a few minutes ago, with the emotional excitement of her long speech, there was now a new and curious expression upon her face. She seemed to be looking beyond the gloomy, unlit spaces of the theater into some unexpected land.
Curiously enough, the three people there most interested in her—the prince, Graillot, and her friend, Sophy Gerard—each noticed the change. The little fair-haired girl, who owed her small part in the play to Louise, quitted her chair to follow the direction of her friend's eyes. Faraday, with the frown of an actor-manager resenting an intrusion, gazed in the same direction.
To Sophy, the newcomer was simply the handsomest young man she had ever seen in her life. To Faraday he represented nothing more nor less than the unwelcome intruder. The prince alone, with immovable features, but with a slight contraction of his eyebrows, gazed with distrust, almost with fear, unaccountable yet disturbing, at the tall hesitating figure that stood just off the stage.
Louise only knew that she was amazed at herself, amazed to find the walls of the theater falling away from her. She forgot the little company of her friends by whom she was surrounded. She forgot the existence of the famous dramatist who hung upon her words, and the close presence of the prince. Her feet no longer trod the dusty boards of the theater. She was almost painfully conscious of the perfume of apple-blossom.
"You!" she exclaimed, stretching out her hands. "Why do you not come and speak to me? I am here!"
John came out upon the stage. The French dramatist, with his hands behind his back, made swift mental notes of an interesting situation. He saw the coming of a man who stood like a giant among them, sunburnt, buoyant with health, his eyes bright with the wonder of his unexpected surroundings; a man in whose presence every one else seemed to represent an effete and pallid type of humanity.
The dramatist and the prince were satisfied, however, with one single glance at the newcomer. Afterward, their whole regard was focused upon Louise. The same thought was in the mind of both of them—the same fear!