“But you have some idea what they are?”
“Yes. I have read them. Shakespeare wrote quite a lot of that kind of talking pieces, didn’t he?”
Jasper was less surprised than Yarnall. “At present I have a play on my hands which is a very brilliant and promising piece of work, but which I have been unable to produce for lack of a heroine. There isn’t an actress on my list that can take the part and do it justice. Now, Miss Jane, I believe that with some training you could take it to perfection. My wife and I would like to take you to New York, paying all your expenses, of course, and put you into training at once. It would take a year’s hard work to get you fitted for the part. Then next fall we could bring out the play and I think I can promise you success and fame and wealth in no small measure. I don’t know you very well; I don’t know whether or not you are ambitious; but I do know that every woman must love beauty and ease and knowledge and experience. For what else,” he smiled, “did Eve eat the apple? All these you can have if you will let us take you East. Of course, if I find you cannot take this part, I will hold myself accountable for you. I will not let you be a loser in any way by the experiment. With your beauty”—Yarnall fell back in his chair and gaped from the excited speaker to the silent listener—“and your extraordinary voice, and your magnetism, you must be especially fitted for a career of some kind. I promise to find you your career.”
Every drop of blood had fallen from Jane’s face and the rough hands on her knee were locked together.
“What part,” she asked in a quick, low voice, “is this that you think I could learn to do?”
Jasper changed his position. He came nearer and spoke more rapidly. “It is the story of a girl, a savage girl, whom a man takes up and trains. He trains her as a professional might train a lioness. It is a passion with him to break spirits and shape them to his will. He trains her with coaxing and lashing—not actual lashing, though I believe in one place he does come near to beating her—and he gets her broken so that she lies at his feet and eats out of his hand. All this, you understand, while he’s an exile from his own world. Then, in the second act,—that is the second part of the play,—he takes his tamed lioness back to civilization. They go to London and there the woman does his training infinite credit. She is extraordinarily beautiful; she is civilized, successful, courted. Her eccentricities only add to her charm. So it goes on very prettily for a while. Then he makes a mistake. He blunders very badly. He gives his lioness cause for jealousy and—to come to the point—she flies at his throat. You see, he hadn’t really tamed her. She was under the skin, a lioness, a beast, at heart.”
Jasper had been absorbed in the plot and had not noticed Jane, but Yarnall for several minutes had been leaning forward, his hands tightened on the arms of his chair. The instant Jasper stopped he held up his hand.
“Quiet, Jane,” he said softly as a man might speak to a plunging horse. “Steady!”
Jane got to her feet. She was very white. She put up her hand and pressed the back of it against her forehead and from under this hand she looked at the two men with eyes of such astonished pain and beauty as they could never forget.
“Yes,” she said presently; “that’s something I could do.”