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Parsinova instantly became the rage.

She gave delicious interviews in which she misapplied American slang in a way that made the press chuckle. She spoke of the tragedy of Russia. She told of her struggles there. She gave her impressions of the American theater; American art; American fashions; the energy of the American man; the vitality of the American woman.

“They do not give as we foreign women,” she said. “They take. And so it is that they grow rich—in beauty—and are forever young.”

“But emotionally?” prompted the interviewer.

“I have said—they are forever young. Emotionally—they are children always.”

This statement was followed by indignant protest from American actresses and the sort of heated dramatic controversy that delighted the soul of Oswald Kane.

She received all reporters in her dressing-room at the theater. If any one save Kane knew where she lived, no one had ever crossed the sacred threshold.

“I live two lives quite a-part,” she said. “One in my home which is for me a-lone. And one in the theater which is for my dear public.”

Mr.Kane amplified this by stating that her hours at home were spent in study. Others intimated that her hours at home were given to some mysterious romance.

In spite of which she was not a hermit. Society, with [26] a capitalS, sought the privilege of entertaining her. Occasionally she accepted a dinner invitation—never on any day but Sunday, however—or permitted a tea to be given in her honor. She went nowhere during the week.

Her dressing-room was always fragrant with flowers. Kane had had it done over when she took possession. An alcove had been cut off for her make-up table, and the orchid silken drapes, black rug, suspended lights and carved chairs of the outer room gave it more the impression of a salon. Here she held court. Here she read the hysterical notes of matinée girls, the pleas of dilletanti youth that she dine or sup with them, the tributes of actors, the encomium of the world in general. Here, every week or so, she went into tantrums, threatening to kill her maid in a voice that caused the stage hands to tremble, until Kane himself had to be called to calm her. Here she smoked Russian cigarettes and looked over the urgent invitations that piled mountain high upon the bronze tray.

It was only at home in a cretonne hung bedroom, furnished with a rigid fourposter and dotted swiss curtains through which sunlight flowed, that she wept and sometimes felt lonely.

She played of course to packed houses. The S.R.O. sign was a common occurrence. More than once in that same place in the front row, the footlights illumined the face of the man whose intent gaze had fastened on hers the opening night. He seemed never to tire of her art.

Early in March Mrs.Collingwood Martin gave a reception for her. Mrs.Julian vanNess Collingwood [27] Martin flattered herself, with justification, that in her wide old house facing Washington Square she maintained the nearest approach to a salon that could be found this side of Paris.

Her high drawing-room brought together leading spirits of the professional, business and diplomatic worlds, and her gracefully tinted head was never troubled with fear that the wrong ones might meet. All those on her selected list were the right ones, each interested in what the other represented. Many a little coup between the artiste and the financier is consummated under the guise of drinking a cup of tea or punch. And more than one professional has amassed a neat little fortune by making wide-eyed queries of the Wall Street man about his end of the game.

On the afternoon in question the rooms on the lower floor were crowded with laughter, perfume, silks, jewels, furs and the hum of animated voices.

Bowls of early spring bloom, azaleas, jonquils, mammoth daisies, stood on tables and at either side of the arched doorway. A faint blue haze of cigarette smoke hung overhead. Twilight had sifted through sunlight before Parsinova appeared. She always came late.

As she stood, a silhouette within the white arch between the shining bowls of jonquils, there was a general hush, then a forward movement. She was gowned entirely in black—black lace trailing from her feet, a black hat shadowing her face, and drooping from it to curl against her shoulder, a black paradise. Black pearls dangled from her ears and a strand of them about her neck emphasized its whiteness.

[28] “Isn’t she wonderful? What personality—what atmosphere!”

“There’s no one like her.”

“She fairly oozes temperament.”

“Absolutely startling!”

“By Jove—these foreigners! Naughty but—er—so promising, don’t you know!”

Mrs.Collingwood Martin bore her triumphantly to a thronelike chair and presented the guests in turn.

Parsinova’s manner was charming, a bit weary but gracious, and her efforts to carry on a conversation in colloquial English were excruciating.

“That lit-tle French gentleman by the punch bowl,—I fear he has on a biscuit,” she told the group of adorers.

They looked puzzled. Then one of them flung back his head with a laugh. “You mean he has a bun on.”

“I shall never be right,” she sighed in the chorus of laughter that followed.

From the music-room came a clear tenor singing the “Ave Maria.” Silence met the lifted voice and at the final sobbing note, gentle applause.

Mrs.Collingwood Martin swept toward her guest of honor.

“Darling,” she smiled with that touch of privileged intimacy she loved to assume, “here is some one most anxious to meet you. Let me present Signor Luigi Rogero of the Metropolitan.”

Parsinova looked up and out from under dropped lids. Then she wondered whether any one saw the start she gave. Facing her with lips bent to her outstretched hand stood Lou Seabury.

[29] No mistaking him in spite of the close-fitting coat, carefully waxed little mustache and black-ribboned monocle! Due to a New York tailor’s art, his plump figure had grown slimmer. In place of the loose disjointed shamble of old home days, he bore himself with consummate savoir faire. But the pink cheeks and kind brown eyes were the same.

Parsinova waited breathlessly for some sign of recognition. None came. In perfect English he merely voiced his satisfaction at the meeting and joined the group about her chair. It was not until she rose to leave and he craved the honor of escorting her to her car that she met his gaze with curious question in her own. But his eyes were blank so far as any subtle meaning was concerned.

He followed down the steps, helped her into the perfectly appointed limousine. An impulse she made no attempt to curb prompted her to ask if she could drive him uptown. They had gone several blocks before either spoke. Then very low came the words:—

“Lizzie Parsons,—you’re a wonder!”

Instinctively she looked about to make sure his whisper had not been overheard. Then she gave a long, smothered laugh and clutched his hand just as she had that night in the three-a-day vaudeville theater.

“Lou,” she breathed, “I’m so glad, so glad!”

“Were you surprised to see me?”

“Surprised? I almost died.” She gave a little gasp. “Were you surprised to see me?”

“Not a bit.”

“You knew me then—at once?”

[30] “I’ve known who you were ever since your opening. I was there. Matter of fact, I have you to thank for the brilliant idea that made me an Italian.”

“Me?”

“Yep.” He lapsed into the old lingo and she closed her eyes with a beatific smile. “You don’t think my brains would ever be equal to such an inspiration.”

“Mine weren’t either. It was Oswald Kane’s.”

“Nobody would ever guess that you’re anything but Russian from the word go.”

“You did.”

“That was only because I’d known you. And even then I mightn’t have been on if I hadn’t heard your imitations. Do you remember that night?”

“Do I remember it! That was the night that ‘made me what I am to-day.’”

He laughed.

“I did my best to please you,” she went on, “and Oswald Kane was in front and liked my act. He came back afterward and arranged to sign me.”

“So that was why you left me cold. I dated you for supper and went round after the show, to find my bird had flown. Believe me, I was the most disappointed rube in town.”

“I wouldn’t have remembered my own name after Kane saw me.”

“Is that why you canned it?”

She laughed then, her low, rich contralto. “That was all his plan. I was as amazed when he told me about it as if he’d asked me to change my skin. He’s never told [31] me why he did it—he doesn’t trouble to tell you why. But I suppose he thought the public needed a thrill, something new, something different. And my impersonations gave him the idea. I think I might have made good if he had let me go on as just plain Parsons. But of course, not half the hit that Parsinova has made.”

“They sure are crazy about you. I wondered often how you were getting on.”

“You didn’t guess that somebody was making a new woman of me, did you?”

His gaze, as it traveled from her dark-rimmed eyes shadowed by the drooping hat, to the long white hands and slim black-swathed body, held the same look of awe it had worn the night he had seen her make up.

“Lordy, girl!” he gasped. “How you must have worked to accomplish it!”

“Work!” came in a breath. “I worked like a galley slave—never stopping, except for sleep. Even while I ate I studied—Russian and French, and gesture and movement. I even learned to eat herring. And all the time he was teaching me to act. In four years—almost—I’ve seen no one, talked to no one but him. I’ve had to obliterate self completely. He has in reality created Lisa Parsinova.”

“He had to have the material to do it. The stuff was there.”

“But he is a genius, Lou. He knows his public just as a magician knows his bag of tricks.”

The traffic at Thirty-fourth Street halted them. They spoke in whispers, and every now and then her eyes [32] rested with a look of caution on the inexpressive back of her chauffeur.

“Do you think he can hear?” she asked.

“’Course not.”

“I have to be so careful.”

She turned to him, eyes alight with interest as they started on up the Avenue. “Tell me about yourself. You’re another man, too.”

“Dad died shortly after I saw you,” he explained. “Apoplexy. And I thought of you, the break you had made, the gamble you took. So I gathered together what he left me, sold out to my brother Jim, and came to New York to stake everything on that voice you took such stock in. I went to Fernald and he thought he could do something with it. I’ve been in training so to speak ever since. And this season he got me the job with the Metropolitan.”

“If only I could hear you!”

“Oh, I haven’t done much—not yet. A few matinées and one or two Saturday nights. Next year, though, they’ve promised me a go at leads.”

“I knew if ever you had the chance you’d prove yourself.”

“I owe a great part of that chance to Randolph,—you know, Hubert Randolph. He’s one of the directors of the Metropolitan. I met him at Fernald’s studio last winter and it was through him that Fernald pushed me. He’s interested in you, by the way,—thinks you’re the greatest actress of the century.”

“The century is very young,” she smiled.

“Well, Rand’s seen them all in the last fifteen or [33] twenty years and knows what he’s talking about. We were at your opening together and he said then you were paralyzing.”

“Did I do that to you, too?”

“Paralyze me? Bet your life you did! When you walked out on that stage and raised your head, a ramrod went up my back. ‘That’s Lizzie Parsons,’ I said to myself, ‘or I’ll be shot.’ Then I thought I must be loony, that when I’d see you in a better light without the short wig, I’d laugh at my mistake. But in the second act I knew I was right, in spite of the black hair—”

“It’s dyed, Lou.” She made the confession haltingly. “At first I didn’t want to. My hair seemed sort of part of me—the color, I mean. But that’s just why he made me do it; it was a question of personality, he said. I begged him to let me wear a wig but he was afraid it would be detected. And he was right, I dare say. He’s always right.”

“Don’t you worry about the way it looks, either. You used to be just pretty. Now you’re a beauty!”

“Am I—really?” There was a childish earnestness in the query.

“Should have heard Randolph rave! Say, I’m dining with him to-night. Why not come along? He’s crazy to meet you and he won’t go to any of those society fandangles to do it.”

“Meet a stranger—with you around? Oh—I couldn’t! I’d burst into straight English as naturally as you burst into song. And that would ruin me.”

He patted her hand and his kind brown eyes beamed. “Nonsense! You’re too clever an actress for that.”

[34] There was something pathetic in the way she clung to his handclasp. “It’s so good finding you this way. I haven’t any friends—no one to whom I can actually talk. With me it isn’t a case of acting behind the footlights. I’m acting all the time, except when I’m alone.”

“But it’s not acting any more—this Russian business, is it?”

“No—it’s myself, the greater part of self, I dare say. But Lizzie Parsons isn’t all dead yet and I don’t want her to die—” She blinked up at him. “Don’t make me cry, please,—or the shadows will all come off my eyes.”

His eyes took in the luxurious appointment of the car, mauve enameled vanity apparatus on one side, smoking outfit on the other, gilt vase with its spray of fresh orchids, soft tan cushions and robe of fur. He gave her a warming look of satisfaction.

“I should say the exchange was all for the better. You must be making a mint.”

“One hundred and fifty a week.”

“One hundred and fifty—?”

“That’s my contract.”

“But good Lord—”

“Oh, I made it with my eyes open. It extends over the first five years—with an option on the next five.”

“But all this—” He waved his arm, bewildered, through the air.

“All this he gives me—my clothes, my car and its upkeep, my jewels, though they’re mostly paste, everything except my home. I wouldn’t let him give me that.”

He made an attempt to conceal the swift suspicion that [35] would have clouded any man’s eyes. Instantly she saw and answered it.

“Oh, don’t misunderstand! It’s purely a matter of business. I’ve got to be equipped to play my part off the stage and I don’t earn enough to do it on my own.”

“Then why doesn’t he give you enough?”

“I should probably grow too independent. This way he holds the reins. That’s only supposition, of course. I’ve never discussed it. One can’t discuss money with Oswald Kane.”

“It’s a damned outrage!”

“Oh, no it isn’t. He took a sporting chance. He staked time and effort and money on a venture that might have proved a hopeless failure. I had everything to gain. And now that I’ve made good under his guidance, it’s only fair that he should reap the harvest.”

“Indefinitely?”

“For six years to come, at any rate,—until my contract expires.” She leaned back, eyes closed, and an intensely weary look dropped the corners of her red, mobile mouth.

They drew near the park. She urged him to ride with her a bit and they drove into the blue velvet dusk, past the shimmer of lake curled among the bushes. The car glided on swiftly through cool dark silence.

“You haven’t told me yet how I inspired you to become an Italian,” she prompted.

“Oh, that—simple enough! Randolph remarked the night of your première that there was an aura of romance about artistes from the other side, particularly when they [36] hailed from Southern Europe; sort of Oriental, you understand. The next day I went to Fernald. ‘Can’t you change me to something Italian?’ I said. ‘Seabury’s a rotten name for an opera singer.’ Well, he did it. Of course, I make no attempt at accent—I couldn’t handle that job in conversation. But the people I’ve met don’t look for it; they understand the fact that I was brought up in England. All I have to be careful of is my grammar.”

They laughed together. As her laugh bubbled girlishly into the quiet night, she halted it with a swift movement of hand to lips and once more sent that look of caution at her chauffeur’s back.

He reminded her of his dinner engagement with Randolph. “He’s made up his mind to know you informally. And that’s all he has to do to get what he wants. He’s a human dynamo, that man. Never knew anybody with his finger in so many pies and able to put over whatever he tackles. Sooner or later you’re bound to meet him in his own way. Might as well be to-night.”

“What good would it do? He’ll never know me—the real me.”

“He’ll know a fascinating woman, any way you look at it.”

But she dropped him at the bachelor apartment on Park Avenue in spite of his pleas.

“Come and see me, Lou, often,” she murmured, giving him her address as he stepped out of the car. “You don’t know what a joy it is to play at being myself.”