itations to
the rehearsals at the theatre he rejected absolutely. As the time grew
shorter, Berenice became pale and almost haggard with the unceasing
work which Fergusson's anxiety imposed upon her. One night she sent
for Matravers, and hastening to her rooms, he found her for the first
time alone.

[Illustration: "Do you know that man is driving me slowly mad?"]

"I have sent Mr. Fergusson home," she exclaimed, welcoming him with
outstretched hands, but making no effort to rise from her easy chair.
"Do you know that man is driving me slowly mad? I want you to
interfere."

"What can I do?" he said.

"Anything to bring him to reason! He is over-rehearsing! Every line,
every sentence, every gesture, he makes the subject of the most
exhaustive deliberation. He will have nothing spontaneous; it is
positively stifling. A few more days of it and my reason will go! He
is a great actor, but he does not seem to understand that to reduce
everything to mathematical proportions is to court failure."

"I will go and see him," Matravers said. "You wish for no more
rehearsals, then?"

"I do not want to see his face again before the night of the
performance," she declared vehemently. "I am perfect in my part. I
have thought about it--dreamed about it. I have lived more as
'Bathilde' than as myself for the last three weeks. Perhaps," she
continued more slowly, "you will not be satisfied. I scarcely dare to
hope that you will be. Yet I have reached my limitations. The more I
am made to rehearse now, the less natural I shall become."

"I will speak to Fergusson," Matravers promised. "I will go and see
him to-night. But so far as you are concerned, I have no fear; you
will be the 'Bathilde' of my heart and my brain. You cannot fail!"

She rose to her feet. "It is," she said, "The desire of my life to
make your 'Bathilde' a creature of flesh and blood. If I fail, I will
never act again."

"If you fail," he said, "the fault will be in my conception, not
in your execution. But indeed we will not consider anything so
improbable. Let us put the play behind us for a time and talk of
something else! You must be weary of it."

She shook her head. "Not that! never that! Just now it is my life,
only it is the details which weary me, the eternal harping upon the
mechanical side of it. Will you read to me for a little? and I will
make you some coffee. You are not in a hurry, are you?"

"I have come," he said, "to stay with you until yo