llinger?" sneered another less
friendly critic. "The stage is no place for sermons."

"You are horribly unjust. _Lillian's Duty_ is a powerful acting drama,
and has its audience if I could reach it. Perhaps I'm not the one to do
Mr. Douglass's work, after all," she added, humbly.

Deep in her heart Helen MacDavitt the woman was hungry for some one to
tell her that he loved her. She longed to put her head down on a strong
man's breast to weep. "If Douglass would only open his arms to me I
would go to him. I would not care what the world says."

She wished to see him reinstate himself not merely with the public but
in her own estimate of him. As she believed that by means of his pen he
would conquer, she comprehended that his present condition was fevered,
unnatural, and she hoped--she believed--it to be temporary. "Success
will bring back the old, brave, sanguine, self-contained Douglass whose
forthright power and self-confidence won my admiration," she said, and
with this secret motive to sustain her she went to her nightly
delineation of _Lillian_.

She had lived long without love, and her heart now sought for it with an
intensity which made her art of the highest account only as served the
man she loved. Praise and publicity were alike of no value unless they
brought success and happiness to him whose eyes called her with growing
power.

XIV

At last the new play was finished and the author brought it and laid it
in the hands of the actress as if it were a new-born child, and her
heart leaped with joy. He was no longer the stern and self-absorbed
writer. His voice was tender as he said, "I give this to you in the hope
that it may regain for you what you have lost."

The tears sprang to Helen's eyes, and a word of love rose to her lips.
"It is very beautiful, and we will triumph in it."

He seemed about to speak some revealing, sealing word, but the presence
of the mother restrained him. Helen, recognizing the returning tide of
his love, to which she related no self-seeking, was radiant.

"Come, we will put it in rehearsal at once," she said. "I know you are
as eager to have it staged as I. I will not read it. I will wait till
you read it for the company to-morrow morning."

"I do not go to that ordeal with the same joy as before," he admitted.

The company met him with far less of interest in this reading of the
second play, and his own manner was distinctly less confident. Hugh and
Westervelt mai