“Of what use is the applause of the multitude,” he pleaded, “if I must lose you?”
And as he spoke the words only a few in that vast audience saw his eyes fasten on an empty chair in the stage box.
The dark eyes that met his shone. The shadowy hands came together in applause. The white throat pulsed. She was so alive in all her vagueness. She was sending out to him what he had always known she would give him when the moment came, the spark she had said she lacked, the power of love to leap the chasm of uncertainty, to know the heights of achievement.
His lips formed “Elaine!” He waited for the applause to die down. Then with the man’s eyes still on that box, the actor crossed the stage to the woman he had lost.
“I ask you only not to leave me! Not now! Give me the chance to share with you the success that has robbed me of—everything. One chance! Just one!”
And as she told him it was too late to ask anything of her and the door shut behind her, he lifted his two arms and his voice broke with the tragedy of the immortal tenor’s in “Il Pagliacci” as he cried out:—
[243]
] “I am at the top—and I am alone.”
Even before the curtain fell the bravos rang out. The force of them was deafening. That drawing aside of the curtain of his soul, that sudden springing to life of the fire of genius had an effect more dynamic than would have been an easy success from the very beginning.
It was like a clarion blast across a silent world. It galvanized the sullen crowd to action. It carried them out of their seats. Through the din and the repeated rise and fall of the curtain Moore did not move. They clamored for a speech. He shook his head. But like insistent children they shouted his name, and as the curtain remained lifted, he stepped downstage.
“There’s nothing I can say—the credit for this is not mine— It belongs to one—” his voice halted. It broke. He stepped back.