"Why not organize a church like Mrs. Allinger?" sneered another less friendly critic. "The stage is no place for sermons."
"You are horribly unjust. Lillian's Duty is a powerful acting drama, and has its audience if I could reach it. Perhaps I'm not the one to do Mr. Douglass's work, after all," she added, humbly.
Deep in her heart Helen MacDavitt the woman was hungry for some one to tell her that he loved her. She longed to put her head down on a strong man's breast to weep. "If Douglass would only open his arms to me I would go to him. I would not care what the world says."
She wished to see him reinstate himself not merely with the public but in her own estimate of him. As she believed that by means of his pen he would conquer, she comprehended that his present condition was fevered, unnatural, and she hoped—she believed—it to be temporary. "Success will bring back the old, brave, sanguine, self-contained Douglass whose forthright power and self-confidence won my admiration," she said, and with this secret motive to sustain her she went to her nightly delineation of Lillian.
She had lived long without love, and her heart now sought for it with an intensity which made her art of the highest account only as served the man she loved. Praise and publicity were alike of no value unless they brought success and happiness to him whose eyes called her with growing power.
XIV
T last the new play was finished and the author brought it and laid it in the hands of the actress as if it were a new-born child, and her heart leaped with joy. He was no longer the stern and self-absorbed writer. His voice was tender as he said, "I give this to you in the hope that it may regain for you what you have lost."
The tears sprang to Helen's eyes, and a word of love rose to her lips. "It is very beautiful, and we will triumph in it."