"I'd love to if you and Mr. Hempel think I can. I promised Uncle Phil I would take a year of the school work though. Will I have to drop that?"
"I think so—most of it at least. You would have to be at the rehearsals usually which are in the morning. You might have to play Madge quite often then. There are reasons why I have to be away a great deal just now." Again the shadow, darkened the star's eyes and a droop came to her mouth. "It isn't even so impossible that you would be called upon to play before the real Broadway audience in fact. Understudies sometimes do you know."
Miss Clay was smiling now, but the shadow in her eyes had not lifted Tony saw.
"I am particularly anxious to get a good understudy started in immediately," the actress continued. "The one I had was impossible, did not get the spirit of the thing at all. It is absolutely essential to have some one ready and at once. My little daughter is in a sanitarium dying with an incurable heart leakage. There will be a time—probably within the next two months—when I shall have to be away."
Tony put out her hand and let it rest upon the other woman's. There was compassion in her young eyes.
"I am so sorry," she said simply. "I didn't know you had a daughter. Of course, I did know you weren't really Miss Clay, that you were Mrs. Somebody, but I didn't think of your having children. Somehow we don't remember actresses may be mothers too."
"The actresses remember it—sometimes," said Miss Clay with a tremulous little smile. "It isn't easy to laugh when your heart is heavy, Miss Antoinette. It is all I can do to go on with 'Madge' sometimes. I just have to forget—make myself forget I am a mother and a wife. Captain Carey, my husband, is in the British Army. He is in Flanders now, or was when I last heard."
"Oh, I don't see how you can do it—play, I mean," sighed Tony aghast at this new picture the actress's words brought up.
"One learns, my dear. One has to. An actress is two distinct persons.
One of her belongs to the public. The other is just a plain woman.
Sometimes I feel as if I were far more the first than I am the second.
There wouldn't be any more contracts if I were not. But never mind that.
To come back to you. Mr. Hempel will send you a contract to-morrow. Will
you sign it?"
"Yes, if Uncle Phil is willing. I'll wire him to-night. I am almost positive he will say yes. He is very reasonable and he will see what a wonderful, wonderful chance this is for me. I can't thank you enough, Miss Clay. It all takes my breath away. But I am grateful and so happy; you can't imagine it."