ambitious and intelligent. She wanted awfully to get on--and some of
those ladies were so lazy! Wayworth was sceptical--he had seen Miss
Violet Grey, who was terribly itinerant, in a dozen theatres but only
in one aspect. Nona Vincent had a dozen aspects, but only one
theatre; yet with what a feverish curiosity the young man promised
himself to watch the actress on the morrow! Talking the matter over
with Mrs. Alsager now seemed the very stuff that rehearsal was made
of. The near prospect of being acted laid a finger even on the lip
of inquiry; he wanted to go on tiptoe till the first night, to make
no condition but that they should speak his lines, and he felt that
he wouldn't so much as raise an eyebrow at the scene-painter if he
should give him an old oak chamber.

He became conscious, the next day, that his danger would be other
than this, and yet he couldn't have expressed to himself what it
would be. Danger was there, doubtless--danger was everywhere, in the
world of art, and still more in the world of commerce; but what he
really seemed to catch, for the hour, was the beating of the wings of
victory. Nothing could undermine that, since it was victory simply
to be acted. It would be victory even to be acted badly; a
reflection that didn't prevent him, however, from banishing, in his
politic optimism, the word "bad" from his vocabulary. It had no
application, in the compromise of practice; it didn't apply even to
his play, which he was conscious he had already outlived and as to
which he foresaw that, in the coming weeks, frequent alarm would
alternate, in his spirit, with frequent esteem. When he went down to
the dusky daylit theatre (it arched over him like the temple of fame)
Mr. Loder, who was as charming as Mrs. Alsager had announced, struck
him as the genius of hospitality. The manager began to explain why,
for so long, he had given no sign; but that was the last thing that