take his paint off, and Hubert walked
about the stage with Brown. Brown's insincerity was sufficiently
transparent; but men in Hubert's position catch at straws, and he soon
began to believe that the attitude of the public towards his play was not
so unfavourable as he had imagined.

Hubert tried to summon up a smile for the stage-door keeper, who, he
feared, had heard that the piece had failed, and then the moment they got
outside he begged Rose to tell him the exact truth. She assured him that
Ford had said that he had always counted on a certain amount of opposition;
but that he believed that the general public, being more free of prejudice
and less sophisticated, would be impressed by the simple humanity of the
play. The conversation paused, and at the end of an irritating silence he
said, 'You were excellent, as good as any one could be in a part that did
not suit them. Ah, if he had cast you for the adventuress, how you would
have played it!...'

'I'm so glad you are pleased. I hope my notices will be good. Do you think
they will?'

'Yes, your notices will be all right,' he answered, with a sigh.

'And your notices will be all right too. No one can say what is going to
succeed. There was a call after each of the last three acts.... I don't see
how a piece could go better. It is the suspense....'

'Ah, yes, the suspense!'

They lingered on the landing, and Hubert said, 'Won't you come in for a
moment?' She followed him into the room. His calm face, usually a perfect
picture of repose and self-possession, betrayed his emotion by a certain
blankness in the eyes, certain contractions in the skin of the forehead.
'I'm afraid,' he said, 'there's no hope.'

'Oh, you mustn't say that!' she replied. 'I think it went very well
indeed.... I know I did nothing with the young girl. I oughtn't to have
undertaken the part.'

'You were excellent. If we only get some good notices. If we don't, I shall
never get another play of mine acted.' He looked at her imploringly,
thirsting for a woman's sympathy. But the little girl was thinking of
certain effects which she would have made, and which the actress who had
played the adventuress had failed to make.

'I watched her all the time,' she said, 'following every line, saying all
the time, "Oh yes, that's all very nice and very proper, my young woman;
but it's not it; no, not at all--not within a hundred miles of it." I don't
think she ever really touched the part--do you?'