The day nurse arriving at seven, found him dazed and blank-eyed from sheer weakness. As one feeds a child, she made him swallow some steaming coffee, then led him without difficulty back to the couch.
“You must rest, Mr. Moore, or you won’t be equal to the performance to-night.”
“I—can’t.”
“But if I promise to call you when Mrs. Moore wakes up, won’t you try to sleep a bit?”
“I can’t, I tell you!”
“Please—”
She plumped up the pillows and he fell back among them, exhausted. He did not sleep but a sort of numbness gripped him as if the blood had been drained from his veins. And while his body lay still, his mind moved with wonder. Ambition—hope—of what use? To-day for him, this day that was to make all the days to come, there was just one reality. That face in there with its lines of suffering, that frail body, that soul that must live on for him. Nothing else was worth a thought—nothing! All night long as he had rehearsed, perfecting under the subtle guidance of Oswald Kane, the minutest [223] ]detail of characterization, the most delicate shading of the difficult rôle he had mastered, he had been standing in reality at her bedside. Like a well-ordered mechanism he had gone through the part. But the indeterminate something that was Franklyn Moore had been in that shadowy room—with her. Kane had noticed the lack. An anxious frown had drawn his expressive brows momentarily together. But he had said nothing until the dress rehearsal was over and the company had gone home to sleep in preparation for the night’s performance. Then he had linked his arm through Moore’s and drawn him into the darkness of the wings.
“Frank, I know this is an ordeal for you. If there were any way of postponing the opening, I would do it. You know that. But it can’t be managed. We’re all set. They could only conclude that something was wrong with the play.”
“Of course—I know. That’s all right.”
“And, my boy, we can’t afford to let it fail because of this—this misfortune that has come to you. It’s on your shoulders. We must come through, Frank. We can’t stand a failure.” His anxiety was all too evident.