“Unbend, Jane!” he would say, prancing up and down her long drawing-room. “Come off your perch! You love him, Jane! You love him! D’you know what that means? You’d die for him. He ain’t your kind and you’d go through hell to get to him. Ever felt that way? Well, think about it—concentrate on it—and you’ll get it over.”
Vaguely, like a curtain lifted on another life, memory drifted before her eyes the vision of an afternoon on the Palisades when a vivid-haired girl clung to a brown-haired boy, whispering over and over that she loved him—didn’t want anything ever in the whole wide world but him.
For purposes of the drama she concentrated on it.
Quite like the actress she was, she flung herself into the passion of those first months as if she had lived them yesterday. Fortunately for her the Goring of to-day, the actress, was a shell into which emotion could be poured as one pours burning fluid into an empty vessel.
Little ’Dolph, with cigar twirling, eyes popping, perspiration dripping from his forehead, and a silk handkerchief tied round his short neck, kept her keyed to the highest pitch—no let-down, no time to think of self or the weather or rest; no time for anything but the part in hand. Though he would not have known whence the quotation sprang, with him “The play’s the thing” was a litany.
Critics in the Capital and in Baltimore were almost unanimous in the opinion that it was a vital thing, sure [95] ]of ultimate success when placed on view for the thumbs-up, thumbs-down decision of that capricious goddess—Broadway.
As a rule Goring and her leading man were the only two mentioned in the reviews, but this time almost every member of the company came in for a quota of praise. The old mother, the character man, the juvenile comedian, even the homely little sister with her wide hungry eyes and the queer catch in her voice, each had a word or two.
Gloria Cromwell was the girl’s name. It was quite as ornate as she was plain. Goring laughed the first time she heard it.
“Sounds as though she found it in a dime novel,” she told Cleeburg. “Why don’t you make her change it?”
“Says it’s her own. Anyhow, it don’t matter.”