be the Salome we want!"

"If?" returned Louise, and she felt a wild joy in the word. "Why, I
thought there could be no earthly doubt about it."

"Oh, there isn't. We are all united on that point, I believe, Maxwell?"

Maxwell shrugged. "I confide in you and Mr. Grayson."

Godolphin looked at his watch. "It's eleven now, and she isn't here yet.
I would rather not have begun without her, but I think we had better not
delay any longer." He excused himself to Louise, and went and sat down
with his hat on at a small table, lit with a single electric bulb,
dropping like a luminous spider by a thread from the dark above. Other
electric bulbs were grouped before reflectors on either side of the
stage, and these shone on the actors before Godolphin. Back in the
depths of the stage, some scene-painters and carpenters were at work on
large strips of canvas lying unrolled upon the floor or stretched upon
light wooden frames. Across Godolphin's head the dim hollow of the
auditorium showed, pierced by long bars of sunlight full of dancing
motes, which slanted across its gloom from the gallery windows. Women in
long aprons were sweeping the floors and pounding the seats, and a smell
of dust from their labors mixed with the smell of paint and glue and
escaping gas which pervaded the atmosphere of the stage.

Godolphin made Maxwell come and sit with him at the table; he opened his
prompt-book and directed the rehearsal to begin. The people were mostly
well up in their parts, and the work went smoothly, except for now and
then an impatience in Godolphin which did not seem to come from what was
going forward.

He showed himself a thorough master of his trade in its more mechanical
details, and there were signal instances of his intelligence in the
higher things of it which might well have put Mrs. Maxwell to shame for
her many hasty judgments of the actor. He was altogether more of a man,
more of a mind, than she had supposed, even when she supposed the best
of him. She perceived that Godolphin grasped the whole meaning of her
husband's work, and interpreted its intentions with perfect accuracy,
not only in his own part of Haxard, but in all the other persons, and
he corrected the playing of each of the roles as the rehearsal went on.
She saw how he had really formed the other actors upon himself. They
repeated his tones, his attitudes, his mannerisms, in their several
ways. His touch could be felt all through the performance, and hi