ile upon his handsome
lips, holding in his hands some pages of exquisite dialogue, she humbled
herself before him. "After all, what am I beside him? He is a poet, a
creative mind, while I am only a mimic," and straightway she began to
make excuses for him. "Have I not always had the same selfish, desperate
concentration? Am I always a sweet and lovely companion? Certainly the
artistic temperament is not a strange thing to me."

Nevertheless, she suffered. It was hard to be the one optimist in the
midst of so many pessimists. The nightly performance to an empty house
wore on her most distressingly, and no wonder. She, who had never
hitherto given a moment's troubled thought to such matters, now sat in
her dressing-room listening to the infrequent, hollow clang of the
falling chair seats, attempting thus to estimate the audience straggling
sparsely, desolately in. To re-enter the stage after an exit was like an
icy shower-bath. Each night she hoped to find the receipts larger, and
indeed they did from time to time advance suddenly, only to drop back to
desolating driblets the following night. These gains were due to the
work of the loyal Hugh as advertising agent, or to some desperate
discount sale to a club on the part of Westervelt, who haunted the front
of the house, a pale and flabby wraith of himself, racking his brain,
swearing strange, German oaths, and perpetually conjuring up new
advertising devices. His suffering approached the tragic.

His theatre, which had once rustled with gay and cheerful people, was
now cold, echoing, empty, repellent. Nothing came from the balcony,
wherein Helen's sweet voice wandered, save a faint, half-hearted
hand-clapping. No one sat in the boxes, and only here and there a man
wore evening-dress. The women were always intense, but undemonstrative.
Under these sad conditions the music of the orchestra became factitious,
a brazen clatter raised to reinforce the courage of the ushers, who
flitted about like uneasy spirits. There were no carriages in waiting,
and the audience returned to the street in silence like funeral guests
from a church.

Hugh remained bravely at his post in front. Each night after a careful
toilet he took his stand in the lobby watching with calculating eye and
impassive face the stream of people rushing by his door. "If we could
only catch one in a hundred?" he said to Westervelt. "I never expected
to see Helen Merival left like this. I didn't think it possible.