The insatiable few were still clapping and stamping assiduously when Magda, after taking innumerable calls, at last came off the stage. It had been a wonderful night of triumph, and as she made her way towards her dressing-room she was conscious of a sudden breathless realisation of all that she was sacrificing. For a moment she felt as though she must rush back on to the stage and tell everybody that she couldn’t do it, that it was all a mistake—that this was not a farewell! But she set her teeth and moved resolutely towards her dressing-room.
As her fingers closed round the handle of the door, someone stepped out from the shadows of the passage and spoke:
“Magda!”
The voice, wrung and urgent, was Antoine Davilof’s.
Her first impulse was to hurry forward and put the dressing-room door betwixt herself and him. She had not seen him since that night when he had come down to the theatre and implored her to be his wife, warning her that he would prevent her marriage with Michael. He had carried out his threat with a completeness that had wrecked her life, and although, since the breaking-off of her engagement, he had both written and telephoned, begging her to see him, she had steadfastly refused. Once he had come to Friars’ Holm, but had been met with an inexorable “Not at home!” from Melrose.
“Magda! For God’s sake, give me a moment!”
Something in the strained tones moved her to an unexpected feeling of compassion. It was the voice of a man in the extremity of mental anguish.
Silently she opened the door of the dressing-room and signed to him to follow her.
“Well,” she said, facing him, “what is it? Why have you come?”
The impulse of compassion died out suddenly. His was the hand that had destroyed her happiness. The sight of him roused her to a fierce anger and resentment.