Helen patted her mother's hand. "We have one loyal supporter, Mr. Douglass."
"Ye've many more, if the truth were known," said the old mother, stoutly, for she liked young Douglass.
"I believe that," cried Helen. "Did you consider that as I change my rôles and plays I must also, to a large extent, change my audience? The people who like me as Baroness Telka are amazed and angered by your play. They will not come to see me. But there are others," she added, with a smile at the slang phrase.
"I thought of that, but not till last night."
"It will take longer to inform and interest our new public than any of us realized. I am determined to keep Lillian on for at least four weeks. Meanwhile you can prune it and set to work on a new one. Have you a theme?"
"I have a scenario," he triumphantly answered. "I worked it out this morning between two o'clock and four."
She reached her hand to him impulsively, and as he took it a warm flush came into her face and her eyes were suffused with happy tears.
"That's brave," she said. "I told them you could not be crushed. I knew you were of those who fight hardest when closest pressed. You must tell me about it at once—not this minute, of course, but when we are alone."
When Hugh came in a few minutes later he found them discussing a new automobile which had just made a successful trial run. The play became the topic of conversation again, but on a different plane.
Hugh was blunt, but not so abusive as he had declared his intention to be. "There's nothing in Lillian," he said—"not a dollar. We're throwing our money away. We might better close the theatre. We won't have fifty dollars in the house to-night. It's all right as a story, but it won't do for the stage."