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“Who was that?” Potter interrupted fiercely. “Mounet-Sully?”

“No. I meant Dora Preston.”

“Never heard of her!”

“No,” said the old man. “You wouldn’t. They don’t put up monuments to pretty actresses, nor write about them in school histories. She dropped dead in her dressing-room one night forty-two years ago. I was thinking of her to-day; something reminded me of her.”

“Was she a friend of yours, Mr. Tinker?” Canby asked.

“Friend? No. I was an usher in the old Calumet Theatre, and she owned New York. She had this quality; every man in the audience fell in love with her. So did the women, too, for that matter, and the actors who played with her. When she played a love-scene, people who’d been married thirty years would sit and watch her and hold each other’s hands–yes, with tears in their eyes. I’ve seen ’em. And after the performance, one night, the stage-door keeper, a man seventy years old, was caught kissing the latch of the door where she’d touched it; and he was sober, too. There was something about her looks and something about her voice you couldn’t get away from. You couldn’t tell to save you what it was, but after you’d seen her she’d seem to be with you for days, and you couldn’t think much about anything else, even if you wanted to. People used to go around in a kind of spell; they couldn’t think of anything or talk of anything but Dora Preston. It didn’t matter much what she did; everything she did made you feel like a boy falling in love the first time. It made you think of apple-blossoms and moonlight just to look at her. She–“

“See here, Mr. Canby”–Talbot Potter interrupted suddenly. He dropped into a chair and picked up the manuscript–“See here! I’ve got an idea that may save this play. Suppose we let ‘Roderick Hanscom’ make his sacrifice, not for the heroine, but because he’s in love with the other girl–the ingenue–I’ve forgotten the name you call her in the script. I mean the part played by that little Miss Miss girl–Miss-what’s-her-name– Wanda Malone!”

Canby stared at Potter in fascinated amazement, his straining eyes showing the whites above and below the pupils. It was the look of a man struck dumb by a sudden marvel of telepathy.

“Why, yes,” he said slowly, when he had recovered his breath, “I believe that would be a good idea!”

VII

For two hours, responding to the manipulation of the star and his thoroughly subjugated playwright, the character of “Roderick Hanscom” grew nobler and nobler, speech by speech and deed by deed, while the expression of the gentleman who was to impersonate it became, in precise parallel with this regeneration, sweeter and loftier and lovelier.

“A little Biblical quotation wouldn’t go so bad right in there,” he said, when they had finally established the Great Sacrifice for a Woman. “We’ll let Roderick have a line like: ‘Greater love hath no man than laying down his life to save another’s.'” He touched a page of the manuscript with his finger. “There’s a good place for it.”

“Aren’t you afraid it would sound a little–smug?” Canby asked timidly. “The way we’ve got him now, Roderick seems to me to be always seeing himself as a splendid man and sort of pointing it out to the–“

“Good gracious!” cried Potter, astounded. “Hasn’t it got to be pointed out? The audience hasn’t got a whole lifetime to study him in; it’s only got about two hours. Besides, I don’t see what you say; I don’t see it at all! It seems to me I’ve worked him around into being a perfectly natural character.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Canby, meekly scribbling.

“Biblical quotations never do any harm to the box-office,” Potter added. “You may not get a hand on ’em, but you’ll never get a cough, either.” He looked dreamily at the ceiling. “I’ve often thought of doing a Biblical play. I’d have it built around the character of St. Paul. That’s one they haven’t touched yet, and it’s new. I wouldn’t do it with a beard and long hair. I wouldn’t use much makeup. No. Just the face as it is.”