* *

The first real love scene Flora had ever acted in was a triumphant
success.

CHAPTER XXI

HEREFORD VAUGHAN

To have eleven plays, all written out of one's own head, and all being
performed simultaneously in American, in Eskimo, and even in Turkish,
besides in every known European language; to have money rolling in, and
the strange world of agents and managers pursuing you by every post and
imploring for more contracts by every Marconigram; and these triumphs to
have come quite suddenly, was really enough to have turned the head of
any young man; yet Hereford Vaughan's (known by his very few intimate
friends as Gillie) had remained remarkably calm. He was not even
embittered by success.

To know his jokes were being got over the footlights of so many lands
was a curious sensation, and it often made him laugh suddenly to reflect
how wicked certain quips must sound in, say, Japanese. Perhaps his
friends were rather inclined to resent the way he retained his balance
after what was really an almost unheard-of hit. They would have been
readier to pardon it had he shown some sign of boring fatuity; or
perhaps they thought he might at least have had a temporary nervous
breakdown; taking the form (for choice) of losing all sense of the value
of money and wildly throwing bank-notes and gold at every one he saw.
But he remained quiet, reserved, and as apparently modest as ever.

Modesty is a valuable merit (as I think Schopenhauer has discovered) in
people who have no other, and the appearance of it is extremely useful
to those who have, but I am not suggesting that Vaughan was not human,
and there was, no doubt, many a moment when he smiled to himself, and
felt that he was a great man.

He was rather secretive and mysterious than blatant or dashing, and
this, of course, made him, on the whole, more interesting to women. The
fact that he had made a fortune and lived alone in a charming house with
nothing but housekeepers, secretaries, telephones, typewriters, and
cooks, of course made all the women of his acquaintance who had the
match-making instinct (and what woman has not?) desire to see him
married. As he showed no sign of doing so, they tried to console
themselves by pretending that he had some secret romance. Old ladies
hoped he had a broken heart for some fiancee who was lying under the
daisies, having died of decline in the classical middle-Victorian way.
Young ladies thought that he was proba