But nobody was deceived.  One week the public were informed that they could book their seats a month in advance; the next that the successful drama had to be withdrawn at the height of its popularity, owing to other arrangements.  What the other arrangements were to be our manager was at his wit’s end to decide.  There only wanted three weeks to the close of the season.  Fired with a wild ambition born of suspense and disappointment, I suggested that Shakespeare should fill the breach.  “Romeo and Juliet,” with me, Sybil Gascoigne, as the heroine.

“Pshaw!” said our good-humoured manager, “you do not know what you are talking about.  Juliet!  You have not the depth, the temperament, the experience for a Juliet.  She had more knowledge of life at thirteen than most of our English maids have at thirty.  To represent Juliet correctly an actress must have the face and figure of a young girl, with the heart and mind of a woman, and of a woman who has suffered.”

“And have I not suffered?  Do you think because you see me tripping through some foolish, insipid role that I am capable of nothing better?  Give me a chance and see what I can do.”

“Oh! bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,”

I began, and declaimed the speech with such despairing vigour that our manager was impressed.

Well, the end of it was that he yielded to my suggestion.

It seemed a prosperous time to float a new Juliet.  At a neighbouring theatre a lovely foreign actress was playing the part nightly to crowded houses.  We might get some of the overflow, or the public would come for the sake of comparing native with imported talent.  Oh! the faces of my traducers, who had said, “Those Gascoigne girls have no feeling for art,” when it was known that they were out of the bill, and that Sybil Gascoigne was to play Shakespeare.  I absolutely forgot Jack for one moment.  But the next, my grief, my desolation, were present with me with more acuteness than ever.  And I was glad that it was so.  Such agony as I was enduring would surely make me play Juliet as it had never been played before.

At rehearsals I could see I created a sensation.  I felt that I was grand in my hapless love, my desperate grief.  I should make myself a name.  If Jack were dead or had forsaken me, my art should be all in all.

The morning before the all important evening dawned, I had lain awake nearly an hour, as my custom was of nights how, thinking of Jack, wondering if ever woman had so much cause to grieve as I. Then I rose, practised taking the friar’s potion, and throwing myself upon the bed, until my mother came up and told me to go to sleep, or my eyes would be red and hollow in the morning.  But I told my mother that hollow eyes and pale cheeks were necessary to me now—­that my career depended upon the depths of my despair.

“To-morrow, mother, let no one disturb me on any account.  Keep away letters, newspapers, everything.  Tomorrow I am Juliet or nothing.”