"It is true, and that is the reason I was able to burn Alessandra."
"And that is the reason Hugh and Westervelt were so cordial, and I thought it was all on account of the advance sale of The Morning!"
"And this is only the beginning. I intend to play all your plays in a repertoire, and you're to write me others as I need them. And finally—and this I hate to acknowledge—you are no longer in my debt."
"That I know is not true," he said. "Everything I am to-night I owe to you."
"The resplendent author has made the wondrous woman very proud and yet very humble to-night," she ended, softly, with eyelashes drooping.
"She has reared a giant that seeks to devour her." He caught her to his side. "Do you know what all this means to you and to me? It means that we are to be something more than playwright and star. It means that I will not be satisfied till your life and mine are one."
She put him away in such wise that her gesture of dismissal allured. "You must go, dearest. Our friends are waiting, and I must dress. Some time I will tell you how much—you have become to me—but not now!"
He turned away exultant, for her eyes had already confessed the secret which her lips still shrank from uttering.