The next night Dan, magnetically drawn down the Strand to the Gaiety, arrived just before the close of the last act, slipped in, and sat far back watching Letty Lane close her part. After hearing her sing as she had the afternoon before in the worldly group, it was curious to see her before the public in her flashing dress and to realize how much she was a thing of the people. To-night she was a completely personal element to Dan. He could never think of her again as he had hitherto. The sharp drive through the town that afternoon in her motor had made a change in his feelings. He had been hurt for her, with anger at the Duchess of Breakwater’s rudeness, and from the first he had always known that there was in him a hot championship for the actress. To-night, whenever the man who sang with her, put his arms around her, danced with her, held her, it was an offense to Dan Blair; it had angered him before, but to-night it did more. One by one everything faded out of his foreground but the brilliant little figure with her golden hair, her lovely face, her beautiful graceful body, and in her last gesture on the stage before the curtain went down, she seemed to Blair to call him and distinctly to make an appeal to him:
“You might rest your weary feet
If you came to Mandalay.”
Well, there was nothing weary about the young, live, vigorous American, as, standing there in his dark edge of the theater, his hands in his pockets, his bright face fixed toward the stage, he watched the slow falling of the curtain on the musical drama. Dan realized how full of vigor he was; he felt strong and capable, indeed a feeling of power often came to him delightfully, but it had never been needful for him to exert his forces, he had never had need to show his mettle. Now he felt at those words:
“You might rest your weary feet”
how, with all his heart, he longed that the dancer should rest those lovely tired little feet of hers, far away from any call of the public, far away on some lovely shore which the hymn tune called the coral strand. As he gazed at her mobile, sensitive face, whose eyes had seen the world, and whose lips—Dan’s thoughts changed here with a great pang, and the close of all his meditations was: “Gosh, she ought to rest!”
The boy walked briskly back of the scenes toward the little door, behind which, as he tapped, he hoped with all his heart to hear her voice bid him come in. But there were other voices in the room. He rattled the door-knob and Letty Lane herself called to him without opening the door:
“Will you go, please, Mr. Blair? I can’t see any one to-night.”
He had nothing to do but to go—to grind his heel as he turned—to swear deeply against Poniotowsky. His late ecstasy was turned to gall. The theater seemed horrible to him: the chattering of the chorus girls, their giggles, their laughter as he passed the little groups, all seemed weird and infernal, and everything became an object of irritation.
As he went blindly out of the theater he struck his arm against a piece of stage fittings and the blow was sharp and stinging, but he was glad of the hurt.
Without, in the street, Dan took his place with the other men and waited, a bitter taste in his mouth and anger in his breast, waited until Letty Lane fluttered down, followed by Poniotowsky, and the two drove away.