"Who is he?"
"A Mr. Delacour; at least, that's his stage name. He's been in America for the last five years. Clever enough, but a rolling stone. He's not to be depended on, poor devil; but it's Hobson's choice—we've got to depend on him."
The manager sat down beside her and clapped his hands.
The lights suddenly burned up behind the curtain, the curtain rose and the play began.
Some plays, some books, some men and women, possess a mysterious force which, for lack of a better word, we call vitality. Those who possess it not call it by all manner of ugly names. But, nevertheless, it is the great gift, the power that overcomes, which makes life on a large scale possible, which makes the soldier, the lover, the saint, possible. Most of us are only half alive. Our work is half dead. We deal in creep-mouse sentiment, and call it love. We write pathetically of our impotence to live, and call it resignation. We who have never been young, compare notes with each other on how to remain senile, and call it the art of growing old.
But others go through life, and spend themselves on it, piece by piece, with ardour as they go. These are the teachers—only they never teach. They know. If we want to learn anything, we can watch them. And some of us, again—and this is the hardest fate of all—come into life inadequately equipped, not provisioned for a prolonged journey. What little we have, and what little there is of us, we expend on the first part of life, and having nothing left for middle age.
Such a woman was Marion. She had talent, and she had, besides—as the manager beside her had divined—one live play in her. But he doubted whether she had more than one. She looked insolvent, a dweller in the past, crippled by an acute memory. No doubt it was this self-regarding memory which had resulted in the play. It was obviously a personal experience, and as she was rich enough to share the risk of producing it, he was more than ready to put it on. It was full of faults; it was melodramatic, it was amateurish, but it was passionately alive. The pit and the gallery would love it; and if the stalls found it a little cheap, what of that? He had considerable flair. He believed it would succeed.
He glanced once or twice furtively at the handsome, unhappy-looking, richly furred woman beside him—no longer young, "past youth, but not past passion," with much of the charm of youth lingering in her graceful erectness, her pretty hair, her delicate pallor.
She had told him feverishly that the only thing she cared for—had ever cared for—was art, success, fame. He had heard something like it often before.
He wished, with a half-sigh, that a little of that uneasy, egotistic ambition might have been instilled into the heart of Lenore, for whom he had a compassionate, bottled-up attachment of many years' standing.