left them
together he was less assertive and brusque in manner.

She was so luminous, so queenly, she dissipated his cloud of doubts and
scruples, and the tremor of the boyish lover came back into his limbs as
he turned to meet her. His voice all but failed him as he answered to
her question.

For some ten minutes from behind her mask she talked of the play with
enthusiasm--her sweet eyes untouched of the part she was about to
resume. At last she said: "There is my cue. Good-bye! Can you breakfast
with us to-morrow, at eleven-thirty? It's really a luncheon. I know you
are an early riser; but we will have something substantial. Will you
come?"

Her smooth, strong fingers closed cordially on his hand as she spoke,
and he answered, quickly, "With the greatest pleasure in the world."

"We can talk at our leisure then. Good-bye!" and as she opened the
canvas door in the "box-scene" he heard her say, with high, cool,
insulting voice, "Ah, my dear Countess, you are early." She was _The
Baroness_ again. After the fall of the curtain at the end, Douglass
slipped out upon the pavement, his eyes blinded by the radiant picture
she made in her splendid bridal robes. It was desolating to see her
represent such a role, such agony, such despair; and yet his feet were
reluctant to carry him away.

He was like a famishing man, who has been politely turned from the
glittering, savory dining-room into the street--only his hunger,
immaterial as light, was a thousand times keener than that of the one
who lacks only bread and meat. He demanded her face, her voice, as one
calls for sunlight, for air. He knew that this day, this night, marked a
new era in his life. Old things were passed away--new things, sweet,
incredible things, were now happening.

Nothing like this unrest and deep-seated desire had ever come into his
life, and the realization troubled him as a dangerous weakness. It
enslaved him, and he resented it. He secured a new view on his play,
also, with its accusing defiance of dramatic law and custom. In this
moment of clear vision he was permitted a prevision of Helen struggling
with the rebellious critics. Now that he had twice taken her hand he was
no longer so indifferent to the warfare of the critics, though he knew
they could not harm one so powerful as she.

In the end of his tumult he wrote her a letter, wherein he began by
begging her pardon for seeming to interfere in the slightest degree with
her work in the wor