“Depechez vous” I added, for I had delayed eight or ten minutes longer than I ought, and this had upset the exactness of my calculations.  The man obeyed; nevertheless, instead of reaching the top of Maxine’s street at two or three minutes before twelve, as I had intended, it was nearly ten minutes past when I got out of my cab at the corner:  and when I came to the gate of the house a clock somewhere was striking the quarter hour after midnight.

MAXINE DE RENZIE’S PART

CHAPTER VIII

MAXINE ACTS ON THE STAGE AND OFF

How I got through the play on that awful night, I don’t know.

When I went onto the stage to take up my cue, soon after the beginning of the first act, my brain was a blank.  I could not remember a single line that I had to say.  I couldn’t even see through the dazzling mist which floated before my eyes, to recognise Raoul in the box where I knew he would be sitting unless—­something had happened.  But presently I was conscious of one pair of hands clapping more than all the rest.  Yes, Raoul was there.  I felt his love reaching out to me and warming my chilled heart like a ray of sunshine that finds its way through shadows.  I must not fail.  For his sake, I must not fail.  I never had failed, and I would not now—­above all, not now.

It was the thought of Raoul that gave me back my courage; and though I couldn’t have said one word of my part before I came on the stage to answer that first cue, by the time the applause had died down enough to let me speak, each line seemed to spring into my mind as it was needed.  Then I got out of myself and into the part, as I always do, but had feared not to do to-night.  The audience was mine, to play with as I liked, to make laugh, to make cry, and clap its hands or shout “Brava-brava!”

Yet for once I feared it, feared that great crowd of people out there, as a lion tamer must at some time or other fear one of his lions.  “What if they know all I’ve done?” The question flashed across my brain.  “What if a voice in the auditorium should suddenly shout that Maxine de Renzie had betrayed France for money, English money?” How these hands which applauded would tingle to seize me by the throat and choke my life out.

Still, with these thoughts murmuring in my head like a kind of dreadful undertone, I went on.  An actress can always go on—­till she breaks.  I think that she can’t be bent, as other women can:  and I envy the women who haven’t had to learn the lesson of hardening themselves.  It seems to me that they must suffer less.

At last came the end of the first act.  But there were five curtain calls.  Five times I had to go back and smile, and bow, and look delighted with the ovation I was having.  Then, when the time came that I could escape, I met on the way to my dressing-room men carrying big harps and crowns, baskets and bunches of flowers which had been sent up to me on the stage.  I pushed past, hardly glancing at them, for I knew that Raoul would be waiting.