Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/241

Rh you find the most sympathetic audience? New York, now?"

"Oh, at New York I had a great success, both at the beginning and end of the tour," said Dolly, and in a breath all her natural vivacity returned, and she plunged into the tale of her triumphs. I had but to sit back in my chair, enjoy my cigarette, burnish up my American geography, and at intervals fling to her the name of a city. She had played but a small part in the adaptation of that popular romance "The Temporal City," yet as her brisk narration took its course, as we journeyed with her from New York to Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Buffalo, Denver, San Francisco, New Orleans and other great cities of America, as the tale of Press notices, admirers, bouquets and suppers grew, the impression was slowly but deeply stamped on our minds that she, and she alone, had borne the whole burden of that weighty entertainment, to her alone was due its enormous, vulgar success.

I could see that Angel was bored; and I, too, was bored, but reconciled to my boredom by the knowledge that the time was passing without an outburst of open hostility which would have endangered our secret. But at last, for all that she had taken many lessons in voice production, I saw with no little disquiet that Dolly's breath was running out, and I was casting about for some device to