“She’s holding her own,” she answered with the formula equally familiar.
“Can’t you tell me she’ll get well? Can’t you give me the assurance?”
“No one can do that, Mr. Moore. We can only wait and hope.”
She took a hesitant step toward him, hand outstretched to comfort. Then evidently realizing how futile such effort would be, she turned and went back to her place at the foot of the bed that was a misty blur in the darkened room beyond.
He followed, precipitately yet with scarcely the sound of a footfall. The room was full of shadows. A thread of sunlight, forcing its way between blind and window, crept across the floor and gradually toward the bed. But Frank Moore did not need its delicate finger-touch to illumine the face that lay so still upon the pillow. He knew every precious line of it, every contour, all the shades of modeling that made it exquisite even though disease had in a few short weeks pressed into a gaunt [221] ]mask the curves of beauty. He stood looking down at its stillness until a sudden broken cry came from him and he went quickly into the other room.
With no shame for his man’s tears, he flung himself full length on the couch and gave way to the misery he must hide when the wistful gaze of the eyes he loved was on him. Long days of rehearsal, long nights of anxiety, had weakened his resistance. He lay shaking with all the pitiable helplessness of the strong man gone under.
On side streets and flashing under the reflectors on the big twenty-four sheets along Sixth Avenue was his name in prominent black letters.
Kane Theatre
45th Street
beginning
November 5th
———
OSWALD KANE
Presents
the New Drama
“THE LAUREL WREATH”
by
Gaston Grisac
Featuring
FRANKLYN MOORE
How often they had dreamed of the day when he and she could look up and see that name as it stood out now, heralded, the featured one of the season’s big production! [222] ]How often had she pictured herself stopping to read it each time it loomed before them, scanning it over and over on her theater program, leaning beyond the rail of the stage box to spur him to the success that must be his!
And to-night—the night that was to have been the greatest in their life, she would be lying there, while he— He sprang up, with quick stride covered the floor, back and forth, back and forth, like a prisoner in a cell.