ed on, was an exciting form of
torment. The setting was different, tropical instead of Northern, and
the half-native heroine was more passionate, more emotional, more
animal than Joan. Nevertheless, the drama was a repetition. As Prosper
had laid his trap for Joan, silently, subtly undermining her whole
mental structure, using her loneliness, playing upon the artist soul
of her, so did this Englishman lay his trap for Zona. He was more
cruel than Prosper, rougher, necessarily more dramatic, but there was
all the essence of the original drama, the ensnarement of a simple,
direct mind by a complex and skillful one. Joan's surrender, Prosper's
victory, were there. He wondered how Joan could act it, play the part
in cold blood. Now he was condemned to live in his own imagination
through Joan's tragedy. There was that first pitifulness of a tamed
and broken spirit; then later, in London, the agony of loneliness, of
separation, of gradual awakening to the change in her master's heart.
Prosper had written the words, but it was Joan who, with her voice,
the music of memory-shaken heart-strings, made the words alive and
meaningful. Others in the audience might wonder over the girl's
ability to interpret this unusual experience, to make it natural,
human, inevitable. But Prosper did not wonder. He knew that simply she
forced herself to re-live this most painful part of her own life and
to re-live it articulately. What, in God's name, had induced her to do
it? Necessity? Poverty? Morena? All at once he remembered Betty's
belief, that Joan was the manager's mistress--his wild, beautiful
Joan, Joan the creation of his own wizardry. This thought gave him
such pain that he whitened.

"Prosper," murmured Betty, "you must tell me what is wrong. Evidently
your nerves are in bad shape. Is the excitement too much for you?"

"I believe it is," he said, avoiding her eyes and moving stiff, white
lips; "I've never seen such acting. I--I--Morena says he'll let me see
her in her dressing-room afterwards. You see, Betty, I'm badly shaken
up."

"Ye-es," drawled Betty, and looked at him through narrowed lids, and
she sat with this look on her face and with her fingers locked, when
Prosper, not giving her further notice, followed Morena out.

"Jasper,"--Prosper held his friend back in the middle of a passage
that led to the dressing-rooms,--"I want very particularly to see Miss
West alone. I am very much moved by her performance and I want to te