e old Calumet Theatre, and she owned
New York. She had this quality; every man in the audience fell in love
with her. So did the women, too, for that matter, and the actors who
played with her. When she played a love-scene, people who'd been married
thirty years would sit and watch her and hold each other's hands--yes,
with tears in their eyes. I've seen 'em. And after the performance,
one night, the stage-door keeper, a man seventy years old, was caught
kissing the latch of the door where she'd touched it; and he was sober,
too. There was something about her looks and something about her voice
you couldn't get away from. You couldn't tell to save you what it was,
but after you'd seen her she'd seem to be with you for days, and you
couldn't think much about anything else, even if you wanted to. People
used to go around in a kind of spell; they couldn't think of anything or
talk of anything but Dora Preston. It didn't matter much what she did;
everything she did made you feel like a boy falling in love the first
time. It made you think of apple-blossoms and moonlight just to look at
her. She--"

"See here, Mr. Canby"--Talbot Potter interrupted suddenly. He dropped
into a chair and picked up the manuscript--"See here! I've got an idea
that may save this play. Suppose we let 'Roderick Hanscom' make his
sacrifice, not for the heroine, but because he's in love with the other
girl--the ingenue--I've forgotten the name you call her in
the script. I mean the part played by that little Miss Miss
girl--Miss-what's-her-name--Wanda Malone!"

Canby stared at Potter in fascinated amazement, his straining eyes
showing the whites above and below the pupils. It was the look of a man
struck dumb by a sudden marvel of telepathy.

"Why, yes," he said slowly, when he had recovered his breath, "I believe
that would be a good idea!"

VII

For two hours, responding to the manipulation of the star and his
thoroughly subjugated playwright, the character of "Roderick Hanscom"
grew nobler and nobler, speech by speech and deed by deed, while the
expression of the gentleman who was to impersonate it became, in precise
parallel with this regeneration, sweeter and loftier and lovelier.

"A little Biblical quotation wouldn't go so bad right in there," he
said, when they had finally established the Great Sacrifice for a Woman.
"We'll let Roderick have a line like: 'Greater love hath no man than
laying down his life to save another's.'"