e of Helen's
popularity?" he asked himself, and a tremor of excitement ran over him,
the first thrill of the evening. Up to this moment he had a curious
sense of aloofness, indifference, as if the play were not his own but
that of a stranger. He began now to realize that this was his third
attempt to win the favor of the public, and according to an old boyish
superstition should be successful.

Helen had invited a great American writer--a gracious and inspiring
personality--to occupy her box to meet her playwright, and once within
his seat Douglass awaited the coming of the great man with impatience
and concern. He was conscious of a great change in himself and his
attitude towards Helen since he last sat waiting for the curtain to
rise.

"Nothing--not even the dropping of an act--could rouse in me the
slightest resentment towards her." He flushed with torturing shame at
the recollection of his rage, his selfish, demoniacal, egotistic fury
over the omission of his pet lines.

"I was insane," he muttered, pressing a hand to his eyes as if to shut
out the memory of Helen's face as she looked that night. "And she
forgave me! She must have known I was demented." And her sweetness, her
largeness of sympathy again overwhelmed him. "Dare I ask her to marry
me?" He no longer troubled himself about her wealth nor with the
difference between them as to achievement, but he comprehended at last
that her superiority lay in her ability to forgive, in her power to
inspire love and confidence, in her tact, her consideration for others,
her wondrous unselfishness.

"What does the public know of her real greatness? Capable of imagining
the most diverse types of feminine character, living each night on the
stage in an atmosphere of heartless and destructive intrigue, she yet
retains a divine integrity, an inalienable graciousness. Dare I, a
moody, selfish brute, touch the hem of her garment?"

In this mood he watched the audience gather--a smiling, cheerful-voiced,
neighborly throng. There were many young girls among them, and their
graceful, bared heads gave to the orchestra chairs a brilliant and
charmingly intimate effect. The _roue_, the puffed and beefy man of
sensual type, was absent. The middle-aged, bespangled, gluttonous woman
was absent. The faces were all refined and gracious--an audience
selected by a common interest from among the millions who dwell within
an hour's travel of the theatre.

Douglass fancied he could de