Joan found herself living out the part of Franzi as she rehearsed. It seemed somehow to fit into her own feelings.
"Now love has come to me, I pray,
That while I have the chance to,
I still may have the heart to play
A tune that you can dance to."
Franzi's one brief night of love which shone out, showing all the world golden, and then the little singer creeping back into the shadows with a broken heart but gay words on her lips.
"I still may have the heart to play
A tune that you can dance to."
Brown thought as he watched her that she showed promise as an actress. Why had he not noticed it before. He meditated a proposal by which she should be persuaded to join the company again when it started out on its Spring tour. Fanny had told him that Joan was tired of the life and meant to go back to office work, but if she had talent, that was of course absurd. Perhaps he had not done enough to encourage her. To-morrow he would have a good long talk with her and point out to her just how things stood.
Fanny, too, was impressed by Joan's powers. "You act as if you really meant it, honey," she said. "You make me want to cry in that last bit where Franzi goes off and leaves me, a bloated aristocrat on the throne, with my erring husband beside me. You make me think you feel it."
"Perhaps I do," Joan answered; "perhaps I am going back alone."
"But why," Fanny cried out; she ran to Joan and threw her arms round the other girl, they were in the dressing-room making up for the evening performance. "Why, honey? He is ready to go with you."
"And the Prince was ready to go with Franzi," Joan answered, "but she would not take him, not back into her land of shadows. Oh, Fanny, you are a dear, romantic soul, but you don't understand. Once, long ago when I was young, doesn't that sound romantic, there were two paths open to me and I chose the one which has to be travelled alone. If I dragged him on to it now it would only hurt him. You would not want to hurt something you loved," her voice dropped to a whisper, "would you?"
"No," Fanny admitted. She had drawn a little back and was watching Joan with wide eyes. "But——" she broke off abruptly. "I haven't any right to ask," she said, "but do you mean that there is something which you have done that you would be ashamed to tell him."