Her eyes were like two rapier thrusts. He made for the door. “They’ll accept my hair just as it is,” was her verdict.
Their little chat did not tend to lift in any degree the mood that held her. She gave up trying to shake it off.
Fortunately it had no perceptible effect on her work. She was too clever for that. Many years on the stage had trained her to the difficult task of obliterating personal worries the instant the glow of the footlights would have revealed them to public gaze. In fact, she had almost succeeded in stamping them from consciousness when Gloria Cromwell made her entrance. At that moment there came a sudden burst of applause. Miss Cromwell tried to go on with her lines. They could not be heard. It was unprecedented, staggering. A girl, unknown, unheralded, was holding up the play! Of course, action had been suspended an instant when Goring came on, but this,—this was unheard of.
[106]
] Faintness seized the star, blinded her,—then fury. She knew now the nature of the weight that had stifled her all day. In a way, she had known it from the beginning. It was this girl! The lengthening of the part on tour, last night’s acclaim, her notices this morning, all had formed a cumulative irritant that now expressed itself in a surge of throttling hatred.
She jumped in on the girl’s lines, killing almost every speech. She changed her own so that cues would be missed. No move, no turn that would make the little sister’s performance fall flat was allowed to pass. Even the final speech, ending with the beautiful tableau that last night had brought down the house, was cut short. Like a red tongue of flame her rage swept over its object consuming every opportunity the part gave.
Still she did not kill the applause that greeted the curtain.
Storming to her dressing-room came Cleeburg.
“What’s the matter? You cut the act a minute and a half!”
“I was ill,” she told him. And barred the door, stripping off her dress while the maid prepared a dose of aromatics and bathed her head with eau de cologne.
Since Gloria Cromwell appeared only in the first act, dying for exigencies of plot off-stage—the remainder of the performance went as usual.