II
Elsie Gwyn had been on the stage three years, two of which had been spent in the provinces, principally in understudying. Like many other ambitious people, she told herself that she had never had a chance.
"It's rotten," she confided to a friend. "They always cast you according to your face. They're as bad as the American managers, who are always talking about 'the type.' Just because I've got fair hair and small features and blue eyes, and a sort of washed out appearance (as a matter of fact Elsie Gwyn was exquisitely pretty with golden hair, refined features and deep blue eyes, almost violet in tint), they cast me for vicars' daughters, milk-and-water misses and the like. I am sure I've got drama in me, only no one will give me the chance to get it out."
"Oh! dry up, Elsie," her friend had responded, "you want to be Juliet in your first year."
Elsie Gwyn had walked down the stairs to the stage-door of the Lyndhurst Theatre feeling that if anyone spoke crossly to her she would inevitably cry.
"It isn't fair," she muttered to herself after saying good morning to the stage doorkeeper, "it isn't fair to say I can't do it without giving me a chance. It's rotten of them, absolutely rotten."
She seemed to find some comfort from this expression of opinion.
"When I'm famous, and I shall be famous some day," she told herself, "he'll be sorry that he didn't give me my chance." With this comforting assurance Elsie Gwyn entered the small Soho restaurant she frequented when in the West End and ordered lunch.
III
The Sixth Sense had been put into rehearsal, and still the part of Jenny Burrow had not been cast. Bray had urged upon Telford the necessity of securing Helen Strange; but Telford had hung out.