d not remember a single
line that I had to say. I couldn't even see through the dazzling mist
which floated before my eyes, to recognise Raoul in the box where I knew
he would be sitting unless--something had happened. But presently I was
conscious of one pair of hands clapping more than all the rest. Yes,
Raoul was there. I felt his love reaching out to me and warming my
chilled heart like a ray of sunshine that finds its way through shadows.
I must not fail. For his sake, I must not fail. I never had failed, and
I would not now--above all, not now.

It was the thought of Raoul that gave me back my courage; and though I
couldn't have said one word of my part before I came on the stage to
answer that first cue, by the time the applause had died down enough to
let me speak, each line seemed to spring into my mind as it was needed.
Then I got out of myself and into the part, as I always do, but had
feared not to do to-night. The audience was mine, to play with as I
liked, to make laugh, to make cry, and clap its hands or shout
"Brava-brava!"

Yet for once I feared it, feared that great crowd of people out there,
as a lion tamer must at some time or other fear one of his lions. "What
if they know all I've done?" The question flashed across my brain. "What
if a voice in the auditorium should suddenly shout that Maxine de Renzie
had betrayed France for money, English money?" How these hands which
applauded would tingle to seize me by the throat and choke my life out.

Still, with these thoughts murmuring in my head like a kind of dreadful
undertone, I went on. An actress can always go on--till she breaks. I
think that she can't be bent, as other women can: and I envy the women
who haven't had to learn the lesson of hardening themselves. It seems to
me that they must suffer less.

At last came the end of the first act. But there were five curtain
calls. Five times I had to go back and smile, and bow, and look
delighted with the ovation I was having. Then, when the time came that I
could escape, I met on the way to my dressing-room men carrying big
harps and crowns, baskets and bunches of flowers which had been sent up
to me on the stage. I pushed past, hardly glancing at them, for I knew
that Raoul would be waiting.

There he was, radiant with his unselfish pride in me--my big, handsome
lover, looking more like the Apollo Belvedere come alive and dressed in
modern clothes than like an ordinary diplomatic young man from t