After which the audience settled back to be entertained. From the beginning interest was evident, the heroine’s fight to make her own life apart from the prejudice which is as rampant in the lower as in the upper classes holding them. The struggle of evolution is the most human, most vital problem in the world.

All through the first act the conflict endured, the girl’s discontent striking like flint on steel until the final scene when the little sister, matted hair falling over her eyes, dropped on her knees, crying: “All I know is—you’re goin’. You’re leavin’ me! An’ you can’t—you mustn’t! You’re gonna get hurt with them people you don’t know. They’re gonna step on you an’ make fun of you an’ beat you down until you ain’t got no fight left. You don’t belong there—you don’t [100] ]belong! Stay here with me! I’m your sister, your own blood—an’ I love you, I love you! Nobody couldn’t love you no more’n I do!”

Gloria Cromwell’s slight figure shook with the words, her eyes burned into Goring’s. That queer hysterical note lifted her voice into a throb that was heartrending, and as the star drew her close she seemed to crumple like a broken flower.

The applause that met the curtain’s descent was interspersed with the same gratifying sniffle they had encountered all along the route. A number of times it swung upward, members of the company taking it according to a schedule posted backstage.

CURTAIN—ACT I

First Curtain . . . . . .Tableau.
Second 〃Miss Goring and company
Third 〃Miss Goring and principals
Fourth 〃Miss Goring and principals
Fifth 〃Miss Goring and Mr. Burke
Sixth 〃Miss Goring

The manner and order of taking the curtains had been carefully rehearsed the night before, but as it rose the fifth time with the star and leading man alone on the stage, an incident unanticipated occurred. Someone in the gallery shouted “Cromwell!” And the applause seemed to swell in answer.

Goring at first paid no heed. The curtain fell—rose again and again. The call was repeated insistently. Goring went graciously to the wings and drew the girl onto the stage. She came, trembling so that she could [101] ]scarcely walk, eyes wide and terrified but shining somehow behind it all. She made an awkward bow, clinging like a child to Goring’s hand.

When several curtains had been taken alone and preparations were finally under way for Act II, Jane Goring picked her way past property men and scene shifters toward the dressing-room with a five-pointed star painted on the door—to an actress the gate of heaven. Miss Cromwell was waiting there.

“Oh, Miss Goring,” she breathed, “that was so—so sweet of you!”