"Very well. I will read the manuscript. If I like it I will send for the author."
With this show of tepid interest on the part of his star Westervelt had to be content. To Hugh he complained: "The influence of that crazy Douglass is strong with her yet. I'm afraid she will turn down this part."
Hugh was also alarmed by her indifference, and at frequent intervals during the day asked how she was getting on with the reading.
To this query she each time replied: "Slowly. I'm giving it careful thought."
She was, indeed, struggling with her tempted self. She was more deeply curious to read the manuscript than any one else could possibly be, and yet she feared to open the envelope which contained it. She did not wish to be in any sense a party to her lover's surrender. She knew that he must have written falsely and without conviction to have made such a profound impression on Westervelt. The very fact that the theme was Italian, and of the Middle Ages, was a proof of his abandonment of a cardinal principle, for he had often told her how he hated all that sort of thing. "What kind of a national drama would that be which dealt entirely with French or Italian mediæval heroes?" he had once asked, with vast scorn.
It would win back her former worshippers, she felt sure of that. The theatre would fill again with men whose palates required the highly seasoned, the far-fetched. The critics would rejoice in their victory, and welcome Helen Merival to her rightful place with added fervor. The bill-boards would glow again with magnificent posters of Helen Merival, as Alessandra, stooping with wild eyes and streaming hair over her slain paramour on the marble stairway, a dagger in her hand. People would crowd again behind the scenes at the close of the play. The magazines would add their chorus of praise.
And over against this stood the slim, poetic figure of Enid, so white of soul, so simple, so elemental of appeal. A whole world lay between the two parts. All that each stood for was diametrically opposed to the other. One was modern as the telephone, true, sound, and revealing. The other false from beginning to end, belonging to a world that never existed, a brilliant, flashing pageant, a struggle of beasts in robes of gold and velvet—assassins dancing in jewelled garters. Every scene, every motion was worn with use on the stage, and yet her own romance, her happiness, seemed to depend upon her capitulation as well as his.
"If they accept Alessandra he will come back to me proudly—at least with a sense of victory over his ignoble enemies. If I return it he will know I am right, but will still be left so deeply in my debt that he will never come to see me again." And with this thought she determined upon a course of action which led at least to a meeting and to a reconciliation between the author and the manager, and with the thought of seeing him again her heart grew light.
When she came to the theatre at night Westervelt was waiting at the door.
"Well?" he asked, anxiously. "What do you think of it?"