r than my dreams of her," he said, in a sort of rapture as
he walked the street. "She is greater than she herself can know; for her
genius is of the subtle, unspeakable deeps--below her own consciousness,
beyond her own analysis. How much greater her art seems, now that I have
seen her. It is marvellous! She will do my play, and she will
succeed--her power as an actress would carry it to a success if it were
a bad play, which it is not. My day has dawned at last."

* * * * *

Helen went to bed that night with a consciousness that something new and
powerful had come into her life. Not merely the play and her
determination to do it moved her--the man himself profoundly impressed
her. His seriousness, his decision and directness of utterance, and the
idealism which shone from his rugged, boyish face remained with her to
the verge of sleep. He was very handsome, and his voice singularly
beautiful, but his power to charm lay over and beyond these. His sincere
eyes, his freedom from flippant slang, these impressed her with a sense
of his reliability, his moral worth.

"He is stern and harsh, but he is fine," she said to her mother next
morning, "and his play is very strong. I am going to do it. You will
like the part of _Lillian_. It has the Scotch sense of moral
responsibility in it."

II

Douglass rose next morning with a bound, as if life had somehow become
surcharged with fresh significance, fresh opportunity. His professional
career seemed dull and prosaic--his critical work of small avail. His
whole mind centred on his play.

His was a moody, sensitive nature. Stern as he looked, and strong as he
really was, he could be depressed by a trifle or exalted by a word. And
reviewing his meeting with Helen in the light of the morning, he had
more than a suspicion that he had allowed himself to talk too freely in
the presence of the brother and mother, and that he had been
over-enthusiastic, not to say egotistic; but he was saved from dejection
by the memory of the star's great, brown-black eyes. There was no
pretence in them. She had been rapt--carried out of conventional words
and graces by something which rose from the lines he had written, the
characters he had depicted.

The deeper his scrutiny went the more important she became to him. She
was not simple--she was very complex, and an artist of wonderful range,
and certainty of appeal. He liked the plain and simple (almost ang