"I beg your pardon," Whitaker muttered thickly.
"You don't, then?"
"Love her? No."
There was a slight pause. Then, "I do," said this extraordinary man, meeting Whitaker's gaze openly. "I do," he repeated, flushing in his turn, "but ... hopelessly.... However, that was the third reason," he pursued in a more level voice—"I thought you ought to know about it—that induced me to keep Sara Law's secret.... I loved her from the day I found her. She has never looked twice at me.... But that's why I never lost interest."
"You mean," Whitaker took him up diffidently—"you continued to—ah—?"
"Court her—as we say? No." Ember's shoulders, lifting, emphasized the disclaimer. "I'm no fool: I mean I'm able to recognize a hopeless case when it's as intimate to me as mine was—and is. Doubtless Mrs. Whitaker understands—if she hasn't forgotten me by this time—but, if so, wholly through intuition. I have had the sense not to invite the thunderbolt. I've sat quietly in the background, watching her work out her destiny—feeling a good deal like a god in the machine. She doesn't know it, unless Max told her against my wish; but it was I who induced him to take her from the ranks of a provincial stock company and bring her before the public, four years ago, as Joan Thursday. Since then her destiny has been rather too big a thing for me to tamper with; but I've watched and wondered, sensing forces at work about her of which even she was unsuspicious."
"What in blazes do you mean?" Whitaker demanded, mystified.
"Did it strike you to wonder at the extraordinary mob her farewell performance attracted to-night—the rabble that packed the street, though quite hopeless of even seeing the inside of the theatre?"
"Why—yes. It struck me as rather unusual. But then, Max had done nothing but tell me of her tremendous popularity."
"That alone, great as it is, wouldn't have brought so many people together to stare at the outside of a theatre. The magnet was something stronger—the morbid curiosity of New York. Those people were waiting, thrilled with expectancy, on tiptoe for—what do you think?"