"I was at the theatre in time for your part," he said. "There wasn't a seat, but they knew me at the box office and let me in."
"Then it was you that I saw in the balcony, and in Sanderson's box? I thought it was a vision."
"I had business with Sanderson." He turned back to what was beginning to make itself felt through his profound preoccupation, the charm of my presence. "There was that in your acting to-night that would have evoked visions," he smiled. "I had them myself." I knelt down on the floor beside his knees.
"Helmeth, tell me," I begged. He began to stroke my face with his hand.
"It doesn't seem so bad as it did a few moments ago, and yet it is bad enough. I must leave for Mexico in an hour."
"Leave me?" I was still, in my mind, occupied with what now began to seem a monstrous disloyalty to him, my obligation to Polatkin. There had been a great deal about our new venture on the programme, even if he hadn't seen the papers, he must have learned it as soon as he came into the theatre.
"Unless you can go with me in an hour ... yes, my dear, I know it is impossible...." He was silent a while, clasping and unclasping my hand on his knee, knitting his brows and staring into the fire with the expression of a man so long occupied with anxiety that his mind, in any moment of release, goes back to it automatically. I stirred presently when I saw that his perplexity had nothing to do with me. "I had a cable in London," he said. "Heaven only knows how long they were getting it down to the coast where they could send it; they have struck water in the mines." I failed to get the force of the announcement except that from the manner of his telling it, it was a great disaster. "I must leave on the twelve twenty-three," he warned me. I did understand that.
"Oh, no, no! Helmeth!" I cried out. "Not now ... not so soon!" I clung to him crying. "Stay with me to-night ... just for to-night!" We rocked in one another's arms. I remember little broken snatches of explanation.
"I've worked so, Olivia ... I've worked and sweated ... and now...." Presently he broke out again. "To have worked, and know that your work is sound, and to be played a trick, to lose by a ghastly trick! If there is a God, Olivia, why does He play tricks on a man like that?"
"Hush, my dear! Oh, my dear ..."