"My admiration?"

"Your dissimilarity. She has your face, your air, your voice, your
motion; she has many elements of your being."

"Then she'll damn your play!" Mrs. Alsager replied. They joked a
little over this, though it was not in the tone of pleasantry that
Wayworth's hostess soon remarked: "You've got your remedy, however:
have her done by the right woman."

"Oh, have her 'done'--have her 'done'!" the young man gently wailed.

"I see what you mean, my poor friend. What a pity, when it's such a
magnificent part--such a chance for a clever serious girl! Nona
Vincent is practically your play--it will be open to her to carry it
far or to drop it at the first corner."

"It's a charming prospect," said Allan Wayworth, with sudden
scepticism. They looked at each other with eyes that, for a lurid
moment, saw the worst of the worst; but before they parted they had
exchanged vows and confidences that were dedicated wholly to the
ideal. It is not to be supposed, however, that the knowledge that
Mrs. Alsager would help him made Wayworth less eager to help himself.
He did what he could and felt that she, on her side, was doing no
less; but at the end of a year he was obliged to recognise that their
united effort had mainly produced the fine flower of discouragement.
At the end of a year the lustre had, to his own eyes, quite faded
from his unappreciated masterpiece, and he found himself writing for
a biographical dictionary little lives of celebrities he had never
heard of. To be printed, anywhere and anyhow, was a form of glory