About eleven next morning, in similar attire, and with an electric fan whizzing in the room, he interrupted work long enough to open the envelope which Mrs. Sniffen brought him and which bore a special delivery stamp:
“Dear Mr. Annan:
“I tried to get you on the telephone up to the last moment. The disappointment seemed too much for me after I had waited so long. I could have wept. I didn’t; I don’t weep easily. But the vision of the evening we might have had haunts me every moment.
“This is what happened. The directors who finance the Betsy Blythe Films suddenly decided to send us to the Coast for the new pictures. The reasons, I believe, are economical.
“Can you imagine the company’s consternation? We had no time to prepare ourselves. If Mr. Smull and Betsy hadn’t stopped and taken me in Mr. Smull’s car I couldn’t have caught the train.
“My only consolation is that the play seems to be a good one and they have given me a part—a darling part if I do it decently. I was to have had only a maid’s part but Miss Cassell refused to go to the Coast and there wasn’t time to recast the part.
“Even then I don’t think they’d have given it to me if Mr. Smull hadn’t said that he’d like me to have it. I pray humbly that I may be equal to it. Never has anything so excited me as this chance.
“But if only I could have known it, and spent every second talking it over with you! I don’t mean that Mr. Donnell is not my hope and salvation; but you are you, Mr. Annan, and there is no other man’s mind that stimulates and enthralls mine as yours does.
“Please don’t forget me. Please write to me. I know it is a very great deal to ask of such a man. But you are kind, and you are famous; and I am ignorant and a nobody. Whatever you say helps. Just your voice, even your smile, acts on me like intellectual tonics—that lazy, wise, kindly, perplexing smile, so mischievously experienced, that encourages yet warns! I wanted it so desperately. I needed it—and you—just when I felt that my career was beginning. Oh, Mr. Annan, please understand and please, please don’t forget me.