“Yes—he can stay in here until—”
[225]
] “Until he’s ready to go to the theater. Please—please!”
“If you don’t wear yourself out.”
“I won’t—I promise.”
The big dark eyes followed him out of the room.
He stripped off his clothes, took a cold shower and in clean linens tried to persuade himself that he felt relaxed. He telephoned the doctor for a report on last night’s visit and was told Mrs. Moore was about the same. If she had gained some sleep that was decidedly in her favor. The doctor would be over at five and as Mr. Moore had requested, would make arrangements to stay until his return from the theater.
The small face on the pillow was lifted eagerly as he reappeared. Two long braids of pale gold fell over the shoulders and onto the white spread. He had always adored that pale gold hair. It intensified the dark of her eyes, making them almost black. It made her mediæval, an Elaine of poetry. He called her “Elaine” which after all was not so very far from her own name, “Helen.”
“No, I want you here.” She pointed to the foot of the bed. “Where I won’t miss a word or an expression. Now tell me—about everything.”
In a low voice, without stress or excitement, he related the incidents that always occur at a dress rehearsal. Props that had to be replaced at the last minute. The leading woman’s gowns gone wrong. The house cat sauntering across the stage during the big scene and its portent, good luck! Kane’s decision to light him with white instead of amber in the final act. All the little [226] ]shadings, the quaint superstitions, the unimportant incidents that make the stage the fascinating realm it is, even to the initiated.
She listened with lips parted and an occasional faint nod of the head. It was her world, too, though the world in which she had failed.