John Shakespeare’s son remarked once in a play he lightly invited us to take “As You Like It” that all the world’s a stage. He told us that men and women have their exits and their entrances, that one man in his time plays many parts. But John Shakespeare’s son did not refer to the acts that make up this drama of living. The first act of introduction, the second of conflict, the third of revelation, the fourth of readjustment. Not that all lives can be so simply subdivided. To some dramas there are ten or twelve scenes, swift-changing, tense, terrifying. But whether few or many, live in acts we do—each with its conflict, its climax, each beginning a new problem, a new turn, a new development, until the final curtain is rung down that leaves the house of life in darkness.

Partly because of this and partly because Nancy Bradshaw’s story is essentially of the theater, it seems but natural so to divide the telling of it.

The first scenes had been that old familiar struggle of the young girl trying to convince managers that even though she has had her theatrical training somewhere west of Broadway she really can act. She had encountered and combated the habitual have-to-show-me look until one day in Jerry Coghlan’s office while the latter regarded her over horn-rimmed specs, she gave him a disarming smile and said quietly:

[290]
“Yes, Mr.Coghlan, I know you’re from Missouri, but how can I show you unless you give me a chance?”

Coghlan, being Irish, had tossed back his head with a roar of approval and given her what she asked. He had never regretted it.

Nancy possessed two qualities that register with an audience more quickly than genius—charm and personality. I might better say, personality alone, because that includes charm, doesn’t it? By the time she had reached the place of leading woman and the age of twenty-six, she had a following many older and more experienced actresses envied. She was never idle. When Coghlan, who had her under contract, was unable to find a play or part for her, he loaned her to other managers who featured their good fortune in advance notices and electrics.

Nancy had what Broadway calls class. She was supple and slender with an airy slimness that seemed more spiritual than of the body. She could curl up in a couch corner with child-like grace or stand tense and supplicating or sway with emotion. But whatever she did, one felt the spirit ruling the flesh. She had heavy gold hair that fell in deep sweeping waves over ears and forehead. The brows that mounted above gold-brown eyes were straight and black as were the lashes shading them. Her mouth, a bit too large for beauty, had a fascinating upcurve when she smiled but in repose was strangely firm and chiseled. One found oneself puzzling as to whether it belonged in a face whose charm lay in the fact that its actual features eluded one. I’ve called her eyes gold-brown. They weren’t always. At times [291] across the footlights they looked green, at others hazel, and often in some scene of fury they went burning black.

Audiences loved her in all her moods—the matinÉe girls because she might have been one of them; older women because she might have been their daughter; young men because she was so much a girl they wondered how much a woman she might be; and old men because, for a fleeting moment, she gave them back their youth.

It looked pretty much as if Nancy’s drama of living were to flow smoothly to its final scene with no more conflict than a pastoral comedy. And then she met Richard Cunningham.

She had seen him once when lunching at the Ritz with Ted Thorne, author of the play in which she was rehearsing. Thorne had returned the nod of a man several tables away and Nancy asked who he was.

The young playwright’s eyes snapped as he answered: “You, too—eh? Never saw a woman yet who didn’t want to know Dick Cunningham.”

“Oh, I don’t want to know him,” Nancy defended herself. “I just want to know about him.”

“Amounts to the same thing, my dear. Well, when the papers speak of Cunningham, they call him a clubman—whatever that may mean—and turfman. He keeps a string of blooded horses at his place on Long Island that are the envy of exhibitors all over the country. He has a shooting box in the Adirondacks. He’s second Vice-president of a railroad or two, is a regular first-nighter, has more money than any one woman could spend, and no one woman has so far succeeded in annexing it. Men like him and women feel toward him much [292] as they do toward original sin—they love and fear him at the same time.”

“Thank you,” Nancy imitated his crisp tone. “After that, I really don’t think I care to know the gentleman.”

“You will—sooner or later,” drawled Thorne.

Nancy turned indifferently from the object of discussion, but in that one short glance she could have told you exactly what he looked like. Ted Thorne in a way was right. Cunningham was one of those men whom women sense the instant they enter a room, not so much for height, big shoulders and powerful dark head, as for a certain dynamic force that stimulates fear and curiosity at once. In CÆsar’s day he might have been a Marc Antony, but I doubt whether Cleopatra could ever have persuaded him to abandon his armies for her dear sake. More likely the devastating Egyptian would have descended from her throne, laid her dainty olive hand in his and followed where he led.

For a man with manifold interests, Cunningham had few hobbies—two, to be exact—his horses and the theater. Actors, managers, dramatists, press-agents, all the busy bees in that hive of Broadway, knew him—some by sight only, others well enough to call him by his given name. No first night was complete without him. His familiar shoulders swung down the aisle at eight-thirty sharp, hand stretched here and there in greeting.

It was said his love of the theater far exceeded his interest in women. In the same way, though in lesser degree, they were necessary to his happiness—for amusement. They entertained him. But as the play is done in a few hours and one seeks new diversion, so they had [293] a way of revealing themselves to him that after a short period became a bore. He grew to know them too well—and the glamor was gone. To-morrow another play! To-morrow—!

And then he met Nancy Bradshaw.

It happened the opening night of Thorne’s comedy just at the time Coghlan surprised Nancy by elevating her to stardom.

What a difference one little preposition makes! Stepping out of a taxi into dripping rain at the stage entrance, Nancy heard a shriek and saw her colored maid drop a hatbox on the wet pavement to point wildly at the electric sign outside the Coghlan Theater.

Instead of:—

“THE GAMESTER”
with
Nancy Bradshaw

she read:—

NANCY BRADSHAW
in
“The Gamester”

It blinked and smiled at her, that dazzling announcement. She shut her eyes in ecstasy that hurt. When she opened them, shameless tears were streaming down her cheeks and a prayer was in her heart.

Coghlan was waiting at the door of her dressing-room. She rushed at him, arms flung recklessly about his neck, and wept into the stiff white collar that held up his double chin.

[294]
“You deserve it!” he told her, his own eyes a bit moist. “You deserve it. Never asked for it. Never nagged me for anything. Just worked like hell—and waited. How old are you, kid?”

Nancy looked up. “T—twenty-three for publication.”

“But on the level?”

“Almost twenty-eight.”

“Well, by the time you’re thirty-three, you’ll be the greatest actress in the country. Take it from me—Jerry Coghlan knows what he’s talking about!”

With his prophecy singing in her ears, Nancy made her bow to New York as a star. The audience was with her from the first, sharing her joy, her triumph, eyes shining with hers, tears flowing when hers did. She took it all modestly enough, even dragging on the leading man to take the curtains with her. When finally they brought her out alone, she stood a bit left-center and one could plainly see her whole body shake, her lips tremble like some unaccustomed schoolgirl’s.

It was at this moment that a man with towering shoulders and the stride of authority left his seat and made for the lobby. There he cornered Coghlan and without preamble made his point.

“Jerry,” he said as they shook hands, “present me to Miss Bradshaw, will you?”

“Sure!” said Jerry proudly.

And thus brought about the climax to the first act of Nancy’s life drama.

Cunningham wanted to give a supper party that night. But she told him friends were entertaining her and Thorne at one of those crowded and supposedly exclusive [295] restaurants known as “Clubs.” He calmly followed them and with two other men managed to procure a table near theirs. Cunningham could procure anything anywhere.

Nancy saw him instantly and wished he hadn’t come. Not that he gave any sign of deliberate interest in her. In fact, one would have said he did not know she was there. His eyes—non-committal, steel-colored eyes they were, the sort that read without permitting themselves to be read—scanned the menu. Supper ordered, he turned their full attention to his companions. But his presence made Nancy self-conscious. Probably, she concluded, because of what Ted Thorne had told her!

As they recognized her, men sauntered from various parts of the room, white mustache to beardless youth, clamoring congratulations. And beside that sweet intoxication of dreams realized, the champagne set frankly before her was as plain water to the fountain of eternal youth. She drank in every word, hearing the same ones repeated many times.

When Thorne managed to break through the circle with her and spin into a one-step, those they passed nudged each other. About the graceful figure in cloudy silver with light hair tumbling over dark eyes and lips curving in laughter, filmed the aura of the theater, fairyland of illusion, the one magic world that makes children of us all.

As they went back to the table, she caught Cunningham watching her with an unlit cigarette between his lips and around them rather a puzzled look, as if he might be asking himself some question he could not answer.

[296]
“So you’ve met,” whispered Ted, as Nancy returned his bow over the plumes of her black feather fan.

“Yes, to-night. J.C. brought him back.” And added casually: “He’s asked me to make up my own party for supper some night. Will you come?”

“I will that!” rejoined Thorne. “But before it happens, I’ll ask you to marry me.”

“Don’t be a goose, Ted,” she laughed—and wondered why a frown replaced for a flash the twinkle in the sharp eyes behind Thorne’s glasses. They smiled again as he raised his champagne.

“Here’s to you, Nancy girl—and the future. May it be a knock-out for you always!”

Cunningham, however, did not wait for the date she had set. The following night he sent word to the theater, inviting her to ride next day. He had his horses in town for the Show and wanted her to try his pet stallion. His messenger would wait for an answer.

There was a tone of assumption in the brief note that Nancy resented. She couldn’t tell exactly where nor what it was but she had a feeling that, though couched in terms of invitation, it had been written with the assurance that she would not refuse. At first she was tempted to, but anxiety to see his horses—at least that explanation she gave herself—made her compromise by writing that he might telephone her in the morning.

By the time he called her, she had on her habit and half an hour later glided uptown in his car. Through the park, fairly purring as it sped over the smooth roads, it veered West and out at a street in the Sixties and pulled up before what appeared to be a two-story house. [297] Potted dwarf firs stood at either side of the big arched door on a level with the street. Across the front above it were three windows, each with its green window box from which ivy trailed over the dull red brick. A saucy little building it was in the midst of drab flat houses, like a French cocotte dropped by mistake into a New England village.

Nancy gazed, puzzled and curious, when the heavy iron-hinged door was drawn back and she stepped into the unmistakable pungent odor of the stable.

Cunningham came to meet her. His hands, tingling with vitality, sent a glow through hers as he held them an instant. Then he led the way toward the rear. The floor was covered with a sort of porous rubber that gave to the step and Nancy felt an absurd inclination to bound into the air as she walked. Along the walls were cases filled with blue, red and yellow ribbons, each rosette with its streamers as dear to the sportsman as if it had been pinned upon him instead of an equine representative. Prints of blue ribboners with famous jockeys up hung between the cases. Several of the originals stamped at that moment in the stalls downstairs. Cunningham helped her down the run.

“I want you to meet my best friends,” he said, stopping before the nearest stall. “Permit me—Lord Chesterfield!”

With approved good manners his Lordship settled his velvet nose in her outstretched hand.

“Chawmed, M’lord,” she smiled. Her wondering eyes went the length of the place.

It was daintily white as a woman’s boudoir, each stall [298] bordered in brilliant blue and bearing its occupant’s monogram in the same color. A border of blue ran round the white walls. Even the water buckets and feed boxes were white with horse’s heads painted on them.

There was a rush forward and eager heads poked out as Cunningham went down the line. Satin bodies swaggered, priming themselves for approval.

“No wonder they’re your friends!” Nancy observed. “You treat them so well.”

“Do you think friendship has to be won that way?” he put quickly.

“No. It’s usually given first and earned afterward.”

“That’s not friendship you’re speaking of.” The look he bent on her was disconcerting. Nancy turned to follow a groom who was leading two horses, saddled, toward the run.

A few moments later they swung through the wide doorway into the autumn sunshine. Nancy had never ridden any but academy horses and the sense of the fine, spirited animal under her with his rearing head and shining coat made her blood dance. Flying down the bridle path was like soaring heavenward on Pegasus. Poetry was in the air, in her eyes, in the crack of the gravel under their horses’ feet. The man beside her sat his mount, a bay of sixteen hands, as if part of it. His muscular hands barely touched the reins.

“How did you know that I rode?” she asked.

“I recalled seeing your picture in riding habit in one of the magazines.”

“But that doesn’t prove anything. It’s the privilege of an actress to be photographed in habit, even if she [299] wouldn’t go near enough to a real horse to feed him a lump of sugar.”

He laughed, looked down at her slim straight body in its tan coat, at the graceful limbs swung across her mount, at her glossy gold hair and the light of the sun in her eyes. “Well, I should have known you did anyway. There’s nothing vital you couldn’t do.”

He put it not as a question but directly, as if giving her the information. She found no answer. This man left her strangely speechless. For no reason at all her cheeks went red with a deeper flush than the exercise had brought to them.

She said little during the two hours of their ride. He told her of the fascination the theater had for him. Then her eyes shone through their black lashes and she told him it was her life. She loved it not as an artist loves his work but with the passion one gives a human thing.

“That’s why you’ve made good,” he answered promptly. “Because you’ve given yourself completely.” He paused, then with the usual startling abruptness: “Do you know, I had an actual sense of pride last night, watching that crowd swarm round you. Odd, that—isn’t it—in a man who had just met you?”

“Yes.” She did not meet the gaze she knew was turned on her.

When they dismounted and he was handing her into the car, he bent down and into his non-committal eyes came a warmth that enveloped her like a flame.

“And to think that I flipped a coin last night whether to go to the Show or go to see you!”

[300]
She rode with him every day after that. He arranged it as a matter of course. He had a direct way of taking things into his own hands just as he had a direct way of looking and speaking. Often it made her gasp but at the same time possessed the attraction male dominance always holds for the primitive in woman. Particularly to the woman who has fought her own battles is there something hypnotic in having decision taken out of her hands.

At the end of two weeks she called his horses by name; had fed them more sugar than was good for them; had dined and danced with him; and knew, though to herself she denied it, that tongues quick to wag, were busy with their names. Nancy Bradshaw, popular star, and Dick Cunningham who, in the eyes of the world, could like Joshua command sun and moon and stars to stand still!

When his friends—men who made the nation’s pulse throb—stopped at their table in a restaurant or, as was frequently the case, joined them at his invitation and gave to Nancy the homage a charming actress always receives from men a bit jaded, Cunningham’s probing glance warmed and a smile softened his sharply determined mouth.

He sent her flowers and books as a matter of course. Wherever they went he surrounded her with an atmosphere of unconscious luxury that was like a narcotic.

And finally at the house of the fir trees, instead of that diamond-lighted district bounded by the Forties, he gave the supper-party they had planned the night of their meeting. Ted Thorne was there and Lilla Grant, [301] ingÉnue of the company, a sinuous little thing with pert nose, full Oriental lips and eyes that might have come from Egypt. She had begged Nancy to let her meet Cunningham.

“She’ll get there, that kid,” Jerry Coghlan had once remarked. “Don’t know yet whether her name used to be O’Shaughnessy or Rabinowitz. But take it from me, she’ll make her mark—maybe because it used to be both.”

Lights shone in the upper windows as the four stepped from the car, not the brilliant light of electricity but one gentle and golden. They went up the flight of steps leading to the unique apartment above the stable.

“Make yourselves at home. I’ll send a maid.” Cunningham opened the door to a room done in gray and rose, with enameled dressing-table and pier-glass, and rose brocade chairs, divan and hangings.

Lilla dropped her frou-frou of cloak from bare shoulders and, taking the center of the floor, gazed round with glistening eyes.

“What a duck you were to ask me!” she cried. “I’ve been just crazy to see this place.”

Nancy turned. “You’ve heard of it?”

“Heard of it! My dear, there have been some parties given here!”

Swift indignation swept the color into Nancy’s cheeks. The insinuating tone more than the words angered her. “Don’t talk like that!” Her eyes flashed black as they sometimes did in a big scene.

Lilla looked up wickedly. “Crazy about him, aren’t you?”

The color went, leaving her white. “Of course not.”

[302]
“Well, don’t let him know it—that’s all I have to say.”

She powdered her nose, head perked to one side, guided a brush over hair dense-dark as velvet, added a touch of mascaro to her lashes, and turning to the maid who had just come in asked whether her dress was hooked all the way up the back.

“I do envy you, Nancy,” she frowned, taking in the other girl’s graceful figure in swathing black satin, relieved only by a splash of green fan. “One of these days—soon—I’m going to have a maid and not break my neck gathering myself together after the show.”

As they went out Lilla linked her arm in Cunningham’s.

“Do you live in this heavenly place?” she asked.

“No. But I like to have people here—the people I like, I should say. That’s why I fixed up the second floor—for parties like this one. There’s a fully equipped kitchen at the back. And here’s my banquet hall.”

The short corridor ended in the room of the three windows. They might have been entering an Italian Villa. Paneled oak stretched straight to the ceiling. At either end yawned a marble fireplace with logs sputtering the faint scent of fir. A refectory table, with couch the color of purple grapes backed against it fronted one. Drawn close to the other stood two old Medici chairs. On both mantels and smaller tables were candlesticks with thick yellow candles. The silver set for supper on the long table gleamed under the glow of branching candelabra.

[303]
Cunningham watched Nancy’s face as she paused in the doorway. Her eyes had dreams in them.

“Makes a great stage setting for you,” he whispered. “I’ll want you here all the time now.”

A manservant passed cigarettes. They sat and chatted while they waited for the other guests, Mr. and Mrs.Courtleigh Bishop and several friends who were coming in from the Opera. Nancy was in a chair by the fire; Lilla nested in the couch depths, her somber gaze lidded as if heavy with secrets, following her host; and Thorne springing up every now and then to wander about the room, examining its treasures.

Lilla watched and listened to the others, much as she watched and absorbed every word of the director at rehearsals. She had advanced by wits rather than wit and was clever enough to know the value of silence. Only when Cunningham brought her the spray of orchids he had supplied for each of the women did she look up from under thick lids.

“You do everything just right,” she murmured, pinning them into the orange chiffon at her waist, “and I guess never anything wrong.”

In her somnolent eyes was an obvious dare to which several weeks ago Cunningham would probably have responded. Now he smiled down amusedly at the round soft form sunk in the couch cushions and went back to Nancy. The somnolent eyes went after him.

They persuaded Thorne who, unlike a number of writing men, hated to talk about himself, to tell the plot of his new play.

[304]
“I’ve tackled a big problem,” he said. “Woman’s rights in love!”

“You’ve tackled the universe,” came from Cunningham. “Fifty years ago it could have been summed up in one beautiful word, ‘Submission’. To-day—” He flung up his hands.

Nancy smiled. “And you’re just the type a submissive woman would bore to death.”

“Don’t you believe it,” chimed in Lilla. “He’s apt to fall for some baby doll who’ll tell him what a great big wonderful man he is and do exactly what he wants—when he’s around.”

“You don’t subscribe to the fifty-fifty theory then, old man?” suggested Thorne when the laugh died down.

“No, I believe in ninety-nine-one. At least women can make it that if they know how to handle us. Just as Miss Grant says, we’re nothing but a bunch of boobs.”

“That’s what you like to make us think,” Nancy corrected. “And the unfortunate part of it is, we want to deceive ourselves just as much as you want to deceive us.”

Cunningham blew a ring of feathery cigarette smoke and studied her through it. “I didn’t know you were such a cynic.”

“Did you think dealing with theatrical managers had taught me nothing?” she laughed.

At twelve Mrs.Bishop bubbled in commandeering a group of light-voiced women and husky-voiced men.

She apologized for being late and wailed at the length of Russian Opera.

[305]
“Courty can sleep through it all,” she sighed. “But the noise keeps me awake.”

She caught Nancy by both hands, drawing her out of the chair.

“I’ve been so anxious to know you, my dear. I begged Dicky to bring you to see me but he said you were the mountain—Mohammet would have to come to you.”

All through the elaborate supper they gushed over her, with just that touch of patronage position assured permits itself toward those of the stage.

But though conversation was light and general and Cunningham the perfect host, he might have been alone with the young star, so completely did his eyes disregard the others. They seemed to send their gaze round her like a cloak. She felt it unmistakably and a glow radiated from her eyes and voice, from her whole body.

When the dregs of CrÈme de Menthe and Benedictine had settled in little green and gold pools at the bottom of cordial glasses, and candle flames gleamed faint blue in the dripping tallow; when laughing voices mellowed into distance and cars had slid off into darkness, two figures stood at the curb in front of the little house. The door swung slowly shut behind them. The woman looked up, the man down, and there flashed between them that secret look of understanding that can pass only when words no longer have value.

The last car drove up. He helped her in. The door slammed. Without a word he took her to him. Just as his gaze had encompassed her, so his arms enclosed [306] her now. Her lips trembled against his. For a moment, endless because of all time, there was silence—that intense beating silence that chokes.

Then his voice came with a ring of triumph.

“You know I want you.” And he waited for no answer. “You knew I wanted you that night we met.”

“Yes—I knew.”

“You’re the first woman I’ve ever wanted—for my wife.”

The word danced into the soft gloom of night merging into day, out across the wraith-like Park, up to the sky where pale stars spelled it before her. She murmured it, and he bent closer.

“Mine! Nancy—you don’t know how much it’s meant, seeing them gather round you and knowing that you were going to belong to me.”

Their lips were one again. At the moment she took no count of the assurance that had brooked no denial. She only throbbed to the strength of him and smiled into the eyes so close to hers.

The car sped past shadowy trees, past lamps paled against the rising dawn, through a world unreal not because light had not yet come but because these two were in a world apart. They spoke low, as lovers will though no one is there to hear; in short phrases, saying little yet so much, she seeking to hold close this wonder thing, he with the claim of the possessor.

“Why do you love me, Dick?” came finally the eternal question.

He told her the tale men have told women for centuries and will continue to tell them as long as the [307] world shall last. “I love you because you’re different from other women. There’s no one like you.”

“How—different?”

“Why analyze it? You’re You, complete, apart—wonderful.”

“But what attracted you—first? What made you—want me?”

“Well, seeing you there in the center of that stage with a first night audience wearing out its hands, you looked so beautiful and frightened—give you my word I wanted to go up then and there and take you in my arms.”

“It was the glamor of the stage then?”

“No. You’re not the first actress I’ve known, dear. But you’re the only one in town that scandal has never touched.”

She drew back a bit.

“That’s not fair, Dick. We’re a much-talked-of profession but half the stories you hear aren’t true.”

In the semi-gloom of the car she did not see the smile play about his knowing lips.

“What does it matter?” was his reply. “You’re in the theater, yet not of it—sought after, made much of, yet unspoilt. And I’ve won you—for myself.”

“Yes, you’ve won me.”

He drew her close. “How much do you love me?”

“Before all the world.” She closed her eyes as if to shut out all other vision.

“I’m going to take you to Hawaii,” he whispered. “That’s the land of lovers—green lapping waters and purple hills and palm trees with music in them.”

“You’ve been there?”

[308]
“Yes. Then to China and Japan—and if you like, India. We’ll make a year of it.”

She opened her eyes slowly and into them came a ray of amusement.

“You mustn’t take me too far away, for too long, or the fickle public will forget me.”

“They’re going to.”

“Going to?”

“Yes. I’m a jealous brute. You’ve got to belong to me exclusively.”

“Dick”—she pulled away then, groping dazedly for one silent second—“Dick—you don’t mean—you can’t mean you want me to give up the stage?”

“Yes.”

She stared at him, unbelieving. But his face was nothing more than a blur against the darkness. As the car rolled out of the Park, it rolled out of Eden.

“But—but it’s my career—my life!”

“I’ll make a new career—a new life for you.”

“But it’s the biggest—the best part of me.”

“The new life will be all of you.”

“No, Dick! I couldn’t—I couldn’t!”

He caught the hands that were raised to push him from her, caught them in both of his. “I want you for myself. I’m not satisfied with part of your time.”

“But dear—can’t you see—”

“Can’t you see that if you remain on the stage, your evenings and part of your days will go to the public. I’ll still be going round alone—just as I am now. If you’re my wife you’ve got to take your place with me.”

[309]
“But I can—except for a few hours. Dick, you say I’m different. Let me stay different!”

“You’ll always be that. Let’s look at it sensibly. Dick Cunningham’s wife earning her living—why, it’s a joke!”

“Every one would know it’s not a question of money.”

“Then why do it? Give some one else a chance—some one who needs it.”

“But it’s my life,” she repeated desperately. “And now, when success has just come—”

“You said—‘before all the world’ awhile ago.”

“Yes—and I meant it. I do love you, before everything. You know that. You’ve swept me off my feet. I can’t reason.” And then her hands came together and she cried out: “Oh, why did this have to happen—why?”

“It had to happen,” he repeated huskily.

“Why couldn’t you have cared for some one in your own set?”

“I want you.”

“Dick,” she said after a moment’s harsh stillness, “don’t make me choose. It—it’s too—it hurts too much. I couldn’t! I simply can’t do it. If you make me give up the stage, you make me tear out my heart. You wouldn’t ask that?”

“It’s a question of which means more. I’m merely asking what any normal man has the right to ask of the woman he marries—first place.”

“But you’ll have that.”

“No. You won’t be free to give it to me.”

“It’s queer”—her voice came shakily. “I’ve dreamed [310] of love as every girl does. But I never dreamed it would mean this—this sacrifice.”

“It won’t mean sacrifice to you. I’ll fill your life, Nancy. I’ll make you forget there ever was any other bond. Sweetheart—don’t you believe I will?”

She swayed toward him—then just as quickly pulled back.

“Haven’t I the right to ask it?” he urged.

“Dick—”

“Haven’t I?”

“Oh, I don’t know! I don’t know!”

“Consider my side.”

“I only know it’s everything you’re demanding—everything!”

“I’m giving everything in exchange.”

She closed her eyes with a very different expression from that of a few moments before. Then it had been to let him fill her vision. Now it was to shut him out.

Vaguely it came to her that he couldn’t realize the enormity of the thing he was asking. Vaguely she repeated aloud:

“No—I couldn’t! If I mean to you what you say, you won’t ask it.”

He lifted her face so that the eyes opened to meet his. Even through the shadows he could read their anguish.

“It’s because you mean what you do, that I can’t let you go on.”

Her hands closed tight on each other and she turned to fasten her gaze on the awakening streets.

“No, Dick—there’s no use. I couldn’t.”

[311]
“Does what I offer balance so little that you can thrust it away without even stopping to consider?”

“If I stop to consider—”

“You’ll do what I ask,” he put in quickly. “Ah, I thought so! Nancy, can’t you see? The woman in you is greater than the actress. You won’t always be young and worshipped by your public but love—”

“Will love last always?” And as his arms went out to answer: “No—no! Don’t try to influence me—don’t, please! I must think it over alone. It’s my whole life—just everything.”

His arms dropped. They did not again reach out to her. He said good-night with the usual handclasp and left her at the door of the apartment house, haunting white, her dark eyes strained toward the first flicker of sun as it came haltingly out of the east.

A month later she sent for him. In all that time he gave her no word, not even the message of a flower. He waited cleverly in silence—a silence that made the battle she fought all the more difficult. And in the end she sent for him, so completely had he absorbed her will. Not once during those weeks of struggle did her mind hark back to the fragment of conversation at the supper party. Because she could care with the intensity of the big woman and because she was in love, she did not realize that in sending for him she bowed before the god she had scorned—Submission.

And so the curtain fell on ActI of Nancy Bradshaw’s life drama.