“How do you think he would do?”
“I think he would be—he would be splendid.”
“All right,” said Reben. “The stock experience would be good for him, too. He might make a good leading man for you. You could practise team-work together. If he pans out, I could place him with the company we select for you.”
“Fine!” said Sheila.
Reben could never have suspected from her tone how deeply she was interested in Eldon. Unwittingly he had torn them asunder just as their romance was ripening into ardor; unwittingly he was bringing them together.
As soon as she left Reben’s office Sheila hurried to her room to write Eldon of their reunion. She wrote glowingly and quoted their old phrases. When she had sent the letter off she had a tremor of anxiety. “What if he finds me changed and doesn’t like me any more? How will he have changed after a season of success and—Dulcie Ormerod?”
CHAPTER XXI
Sheila had earned a vacation. And she had nearly a thousand dollars in bank, which was pretty good for a girl of her years, and enough for a golden holiday. But her ambition was burning fiercely now, and after a week or two of golf, tennis, surf, and dance, at her father’s Long Island home, she joined the summer stock company in the middle-sized city of Clinton. She did twice her usual work for half her usual salary, but she was determined to broaden her knowledge and hasten her experience.
The heat seemed intentionally vindictive. The labor was almost incredible. One week she exploited all the anguishes of “Camille” for five afternoons and six evenings. During the mornings of that week and all day Sunday she rehearsed the pink plights of “The Little Minister,” learning the rôle of Lady Babbie at such odd moments as she could steal from her meals or her slumber or her shopping tours for the necessary costumes. The next week, while she was playing Lady Babbie eleven times, she was rehearsing the masterful heroine of “The Lion and the Mouse” of mornings. While she played this she memorized the slang of “The Chorus Lady” for the following week.
Before the summer was over she had lived a dozen lives and been a dozen people. She had become the pet of the town, more observed than its mayor, and more talked about than its social leader.