PAULA SEES SELMA CROSS IN TRAGEDY, AND IN HER OWN APARTMENT NEXT MORNING IS GIVEN A REALITY TO PLAY Selma Cross did not reach New York until the morning of the opening day at the Herriot Theatre. She was very tired from and the try-outs along the string of second cities. There had been a big difference of opinion regarding The Thing, among what New Yorkers are pleased to call the critics. From the character of the first notices, on the contrary, it was apparent that the townsmen were not a little afraid to trust such a startling play to New York. Mid-forenoon of an early April day, the actress rapped upon Paula's door.
 
"I have seen the boards," Paula exclaimed. "'Selma Cross' in letters big as you are; and yesterday afternoon they were hanging the electric sign in front of the Herriot. Also I shall be there to-night—since I was wise enough to secure a ticket ten days ago. Isn't it glorious?"
 
"Yes, I am quite happy about it," Selma Cross said, stretching out upon the lounge. "Of course, it's not over until we see the morning papers. I was never afraid—even of the vitriol-throwers, before. You see, I have to think about success for Stephen Cabot, too."
 
"Is he well?" Paula asked hastily.
 
"Oh yes, though I think sometimes he's a . Oh, I have so much to say——"
 
"You said you would tell me some time how Vhruebert first to take you on," Paula urged.
 
"Before I got to the gate where the star-stuff passes through?" Selma Cross answered laughingly. "That was four years ago. I had been to him many times before he let me in. His chair under him. He looked at me first as if he were afraid I would spring at him. I told him what I could do, and he kept repeating that he didn't know it and New York didn't know it. I said I would show New York, but unfortunately I had to show him first. He screwed up his face and stared at me, as if I were startlingly original in my ugliness. I know he could hear my heart beat.
 
"'I can't do anything for you, Miss Gross,' he said impatiently, but in spite of himself, he added, 'Come to-morrow.' You see, I had made him think, and that hurt. He knew something of my work all right, and wondered where he would put a big-mouthed, clear-skinned, yellow-eyed amazon. The next day, he kept me waiting in the reception-room until I could have screamed at the half-dressed women on the walls.
 
"'I don't know exactly why I asked you to come again,' was his greeting when the door finally opened to me. 'What was it, once more, that you mean to do?'
 
"'I mean to be the foremost tragedienne,' I said.
 
"'Sit down. Tragedy doesn't bay.'
 
"'I shall make it pay.'
 
"'Um-m. How do you know? Some brivate vire of yours?'
 
"'I can show you that I shall make it pay.'
 
"'My Gott, not here! We will go to the .'
 
"And he meant it, Paula. It was mid-winter. He took me to a little summer-theatre up Lenox way. The place had not been open since Thanksgiving. Vhruebert sat down in the centre of the frosty , shivering in his great coat. You know he's a thin-lipped, smile-less little man, but not such a dead soul as he looks. He leaks out occasionally through the dollar-varnish. Can you imagine a colder reception? Vhruebert sat there blowing out his breath repeatedly, seemingly absorbed in the effect the steam made in a little bar of sunlight which across the icy theatre. That was my try-out before Vhruebert. I gave him some of Sudermann, Boker, and Ibsen. He raised his hand finally, and when I halted, he called in a bartender from the establishment adjoining, and commanded me to give something from Camille and Sapho. I would have murdered him if he had been fooling me after that. The bartender shivered in the cold.
 
"'What do you think of that, Mr. Vite-Apron?' Vhruebert inquired at length. He seemed to be warmer.
 
"'Hot stuff,' said the man. 'It makes your sizzle.'
 
"The criticism delighted Vhruebert. 'Miss Gross, you make our goppers sizzle,' he exclaimed, and then ordered wine and told me to be at his studio to-morrow at eleven. That was the real winning," Selma Cross concluded. "To-night I put the crown on it."
 
Paula invariably felt the fling of emotions when Selma Cross was near. The latter seemed now to have found her perfect dream; certainly there was fresh coloring and in her words and actions. It was inspiriting for Paula to think of Selma Cross and Stephen Cabot having been accepted by the hard-headed Vhruebert—that such a pair could eat his bread and drink his wine with merry hearts. It was more than inspiriting for her to think of this heart covering and mothering the unfortunate. Paula asked, as only a woman could, the question uppermost in both minds.
 
"Love me?" Selma whispered. "I don't know, dear. I know we love to be together. I know that I love him. I know that he would not ask me to take for a husband—a broken ——"
 
"But you can make him know that—to you—he is not a broken vessel!... Oh, that would mean so little to me!"
 
"Yes, but I should have to tell him—of old Villiers—and the other!... Oh, God, he is white fire! He is not the kind who could understand that!... I thought I could do anything, I said, 'I am case-hardened. Nothing can make me suffer!... I will go my way,—and no man, no power, earthly or occult, can make me alter that way,' but Stephen Cabot has done it. I would rather win for him to-night, than be called the foremost living tragedienne.... I think he loves me, but there is the price I paid—and I didn't need to pay it, for I had already risen out of the depths. That was vanity. I needed no angel. I didn't care until I met Stephen Cabot!"
 
"I think—I think, if I were Stephen Cabot, I could forgive that," Paula said slowly. She wondered at herself for these words when she was alone, and the little place of books was no longer by the other's presence.
 
Selma started up from the lounge, stretched her great arm half across the room and clutched Paula's hand. There was a soft grateful glow in the big yellow eyes. "Do you know that means something—from a woman like you? Always I shall remember that—as a fine thing from my one fine woman. Mostly, they have hated me—what you call—our sisters."
 
"You are a different woman—you're all brightened, since you met Stephen Cabot. I feel this," Paula declared.
 
"Even if all smoothed out here, there is still the old in Kentucky," Selma said, after a moment, and sprang to her feet, shaking herself full-length.
 
"Won't you tell me about that, too?"
 
"Yes, but not now. I must go down-town. There is a dress-maker—and we breakfast together.... Root for me—for us, to-night—won't you, dear girl?"
 
"With all my heart."
 
They passed out through the hall together—just as the elevator-man tucked a letter under the door.... Alone, Paula read this Spring greeting from Quentin Charter:
 
I look away this morning into the brilliant East. I think of you there—as glory waits. I feel the strength of a giant to battle through dragons of flesh and of Nature.... Who knows what conflicts, what , rage in the glowing distance—between you and me? Not I, but that I have strength—I do know.... By the golden glory of this Spring morning which spreads before my eyes a world of work and blessed of the Most High God, I only ask to know that you are there—that you are there.... While is yet young, we shall emerge out of time and distance; though it be from a world altered by great cosmic shattering—yet shall we emerge, man and woman.
 
You are there in the brilliant East. In good time I shall go to you. Meanwhile I have your light and your song. The dull dim is gone from me, forever. Even that black prince of the blood, Passion, stands beyond the magnetic circle. With you there, I feel a divine right kingship, and all the black princes of the body are afar off, with the beasts. I tell you, since I have heard the Skylark sing—there is no death.
 
That day became a vivid memory. Charter reached the highest of her mind—a man who could love and who could wait. The message from the West her. Here, indeed, was one of the New Voices. All through the afternoon, out of the of her mind, would rise this pæan from the West—sentence after sentence for her.... No, not for her alone. She saw him always in the midst of his people, illustrious among his people.... She saw him coming to her over mountains—again and again, she caught a glimpse of him, configured among the peaks, and striding toward her—yet between them was a valley torn with storm.... It came to her that there must be a prophecy in this message; that he would not be suffered to come to her easily as his letters came. Yet, the strength he had felt was hers, and those were hours of ecstasy—while the gray of the Spring afternoon thickened into dark. Only The Thing could have called her out that night; for once, when it was almost time to go, the storm lifted from the valley between them. She saw his path to her, just for an instant, and she longed to see it again....
 
Paula entered the theatre a moment before the curtain rose, but in the remaining seconds of light, discovered in the fourth far to the right—"the finest, lowest head" and the long white face of Stephen Cabot. If a man's face may be called beautiful, his was—firm, delicate, ,—brilliant eyes, livid pallor. And the hand in which the thin cheek rested, while large and chalky-white, was slender as a girl's.... In the middle of the first act, a tall, elderly man down the aisle and sank into the chair in front of Paula, where he , preparing to be bored. This was Felix , one of the best known of the critics, notorious as a play-killer.
 
The first-night crowd can be counted on. It meant nothing to Vhruebert that the house was packed. The venture was his up to the rise of the curtain. Paula was absorbed by the first two acts of the play, but did not feel herself fit to judge. She was too intensely interested in the career of Selma Cross; in the face of Stephen Cabot; in the attitudes of Felix Larch, who occasionally forgot to pose. It was all very big and intimate, but the bigger drama, up to the final curtain, was the battle for success against the blasé of the audience and the ultra-critical enemy personified in the man before her.
 
The small and excellent company was balanced to a . Adequate rehearsals had finished the work. Then the lines were rich, forceful and flowing—strange with a poetic quality that "got across the footlights." Paula these matters with relief. Unquestionably the audience forgot itself throughout the second act. Paula realized, with distaste, that her own critical sense was for trouble. She had hoped to be as receptive to emotional as she imagined the average play-goer to be. Though she failed signally in this, her sensibilities were in no way , nor even irritated. On the contrary, she began to rise to the of the work and its performance. The of Selma Cross, though in , was haunting, unforgettable. Felix Larch had twice disturbed her by taking his seat in the midst of the first and second acts. She had heard that he rarely sat out a whole performance, and took it therefore as a good when he returned, in quite a gentlemanly fashion, as the final curtain rose.
 
By some new mastery of style, Selma Cross had managed, almost throughout, to keep her profile to the audience. The last act was half gone, moreover, before the people realized that there were qualities in her voice, other than richness and . She had held them thus far with the theme, charging the massed consciousness of her audience with subtle passions. Now came the rising moments. Full into the light she turned her face.... She was quite alone with her tragedy. A gesture of the great bare arm, as the stage darkened, and she turned loose upon the men and women a perfect of emptiness—in the shadows of which was manifesting a huge unfinished human. She made the people see how a passion, suddenly of its object, turns to the brain that held it. They saw the great, gray face of The Thing slowly rubbed out—saw the mind behind it, and run away into . There was a whisper, horrible with exhaustion—a breast beaten in the gloom.
 
Felix Larch swore softly.... The Thing was laughing as the curtain crawled down over her—an easy, wind-blown, laugh....
 
The critic grasped the low shoulders of a bald, thin-lipped acquaintance, exclaiming:
 
"Where did you get that , Lucky One?"
 
Paula heard a voice, but the words of the reply were lost.
 
"Come over across the street for a minute. I want a and a talk with you," Felix Larch added, into his overcoat.
 
There was a low, husky laugh, and then plainly these words: "She makes your goppers sizzle—eh?... Wait until I tell her she has won and I'll go with you," added the queer little man, whom Paula knew now to be Vhruebert....
 
The latter passed along the emptied aisle toward Stephen Cabot, who had not left his seat. Paula noted with a start that the playwright's head had dropped forward in a queer way. Vhruebert glanced at him, and grasped his shoulder. The old manager then cleared his throat—a sound which had meaning for the nearest , who hurried forward to be dispatched for a doctor. It was very cleverly and quietly done.... Stephen Cabot, who could see more deeply than others into the art of the woman and the power of his own lines, and possibly deeper into the big result of this fine union of play and player—had fainted at the climacteric moment.... A physician now breasted his way through the crowd at the doors, and The Thing suddenly appeared in the nearest box and forward like a rush of wind. She gathered the insensible one in her arms and repeated his name low and swiftly.
 
"Yes," he murmured, opening his eyes at last.
 
They seemed alone.... Presently Stephen Cabot laughingly protested that he was quite well, and disappeared behind the scenes, assisted by the long, bare arm that had so recently havoc over the . Paula waited for a few moments at the door until she was assured.
 
Drivi............