“I am only too happy to be able to add that little to so loyal a project.”
“Thank you. Your co-operation means more to me than you can possibly imagine.”
“Your friend has been telling me of your work, and how brave you are,” Mrs. Low said, as she took Esther’s hand at parting. “I shall come soon to see you. I think I can add a little sunshine to your life.”
CHAPTER XII.
Glenn saw Esther a few days afterward and found her unusually cheerful. Her face had a new light, and she had good reason for it. She spoke with a buoyancy of expression that Glenn had not lately heard. She told how Mrs. Low had arranged for her to play during the entire winter at her receptions. This simplified the complex future. She reflected a little more calmly on her condition. All these months she had tried to think of some way out of it. She had thought of everything—except giving up.
She made friends. She was interested in everything. In her appreciation and confiding ways Mrs. Low found a degree of satisfaction and intense pleasure in the reflected happiness from Esther’s life. Glenn encouraged the tonic of social life for her as something needful to everybody. Under his own eye, he was willing to let her glimpse at it in all its phases; the soullessness of it, its petty intrigues and foibles. The flawlessness of her own mind would itself be a shield. Her contact with such frivolity would be like that of satin and sandpaper. With intense interest he watched her career during the season. He was her severest and most unsparing critic, although he sometimes believed that it hurt him more than her. Their lives were moving along together with unconscious accord. There was an undercurrent of deeper sympathy lying dormant. He was making her a part of his life. He would have denied it, however, had any man put this truth into words and accused him. A thousand times he had told himself, reassuringly, that he was commander still. He reasoned that her art would soon be sufficiently lofty, sufficiently complete for her to hear any decree that fate might read to her. New friends, fresh scenes, homage to her art—all these would help to fill her life. This was a conviction born of his own philosophy. He fancied he could already perceive a more independent air; a less frequent turning to him for guidance and protection. This elusive, half-mysterious charm she had acquired, he misinterpreted. It was largely due to the different lights that had been thrown upon him.
She had been repeatedly stunned by chance-heard remarks of his betrothal. When Glenn heard that Esther’s name was to figure prominently in the most brilliant recitals of the season, there was a buoyant sweetness in the frank radiance of hope, the eager expectancy and passionate faith in her ability. She had been tasting some of the fruition of her toil. Of this he was proud.
The night came. It was a fashionable throng that poured into the Metropolitan. The fascinating twirl of jewelled lorgnettes and the flashing movement of the vast array of wealth and beauty made the two wide, innocent eyes that peered out from behind the curtain, reel—drunk with the wine of enthusiasm; this little atom who was to win or lose before this great audience of connoisseurs. Win she must. No girl could shake off the memory of so public a humiliation. The sight confused her. She trembled a little and slipped back to her dressing-room. “I feel as though the judgment day were at hand,” she said. “My heart is bigger than my whole body.”
“You darling, it was always that.” Mrs. Low gathered her proudly in her arms, as she spoke.
“Where have you been?” Esther left a warm kiss on her throat. “Up to the very same thing you were, looking for a particular face, I know.”