"You will do no such thing!" bawled the manager, leaping to his feet and shaking his fist at him. "Omit it! Why, Miss Wright, it's an inspiration. Gets him the whole sympathy just at the critical moment. And what a curtain! Good God! What a curtain!"
"Isn't it?" said Lenore. "Leave out my bit at the end altogether, and make that the curtain. Don't you agree, Miss Wright? And, look here, Mr. Delacour, take the front centre here."
"Start again at 'falsehood,'" said the manager briskly to Lenore. "Now, then, everybody. Sit down at the back there. Now——"
The play started again. Marion, astonished at her own violence, ashamed, shattered by conflicting emotions, speechless, could only bow her approval of the change, not that the manager cared a pin whether she approved or not.
Was Delacour acting? Marion knew that he was not. And as the play proceeded it changed in character. The words were the words she had written. Many of them were the words he had used himself, but his passion transformed them. They took on a new meaning. It was Maggie who was becoming a mean figure in spite of her grandiloquence—perhaps because of it. Her rigid principles, her petty, egotistic pride, her faultless demeanour jarred on the audience. Lenore, like a true artist, caught the novel side of the situation and emphasised it. Her Maggie dwindled, dwindled, until the man held the stage alone, dominated it. Marion had never before seen his side of the miserable drama in which her happiness had made shipwreck, had never before seen her own character in this light. It was as if he were saying the truth at last, defending himself at last—which he had never done in real life.
Finally repulsed, silent under her scornful invective, Delacour gathered himself together and went off magnificent in defeat.
The curtain fell for the last time.
The tiny audience, strengthened by the rest of the cast who were not needed in the final scene, broke into rapturous applause. The manager, excited and radiant, clapped with the rest.
"He's immense. He's immense!" he kept on saying. "Delacour's the making of it. He's immense! Hang Montgomery! He may have bronchitis till he's blue. Delacour makes the play. I will fetch him!"
He disappeared behind the curtain, and in a few minutes reappeared, dragging Delacour with him to introduce him to Marion.