They advised me to go and see another manager, and, if I secured an engagement, simply to drop the other theatre.
I went to the —— Theatre, but on the way I began to cry, and I was in tears when I arrived there. I asked to see the manager, and told him my story.
He offered me one hundred and fifty dollars a week. I was to make my first appearance at once, and sign a contract dating from the next day.
On reaching home I asked if nothing had come for me from the other theatre.
Nothing had come.
That evening my friends went to the theatre, where they saw a poster announcing, for the following evening, the initial appearance in the “Serpentine” of Miss —— ——. When they told me that piece of news I understood that my six weeks on the road had been profitably employed by my manager and one of the chorus girls to meet just this situation, and I understood, too, why my name was not mentioned on the first posters.
They had stolen my dance.
I felt myself overcome, dead—more dead, as it seemed to me, than I shall be at the moment when my last hour comes. My very life depended on this success, and now others were going to reap the benefit. I cannot describe my despair. I was incapable of words, of gestures. I was dumb and paralysed.
Next day, when I went to sign my new contract, the manager received me rather coldly. He was willing to sign only if I would give him the privilege of cancelling at his own discretion. He felt that my imitator at the Casino, announced for the same day, would diminish greatly the interest that would be felt in what he ironically called my “discovery.”
I was obliged to accept the conditions which he imposed, but I experienced all the while an access of rage and grief as I saw in what a barefaced manner they had stolen my invention.