Page:Frank Owen - The Actress.djvu/55

Rh was silent. Then suddenly he rose in his bed, with a cry of joy.

"Olga!" he gasped. "Olga! Why didn't Jerry tell me that you had come back with him?" His voice grew faint again. "Olga, home at last!"

With a sigh of unmistakable joy his head slipped back on the pillow. His face was wreathed in smiles, as though he had received a man's reward at last.

Meanwhile, back in New York, Olga Fullerton was portraying the part of "The Better Self" for the hundredth time. As the curtain fell at the close of the second act, an old white-haired Southerner turned to his wife.

"Magnificent acting," he declared. "She throws her very soul into her work."

"Yes," replied the grand old lady, "she is a born actress. She almost makes one feel as though she lives the part as she plays it."

Down in Zanzibar, from the balcony of the European Club, one lone man stood silently watching the sun set over the distant maze of gnarled and matted forest. Nine hours of darkness, and a new day would dawn. The world would slowly take up its endless duties as it had done for countless ages. On and on the days would go, but they would go without Coningsby.

Jerold Wharton bowed his head upon his hands as though crushed by the wheel of things. From somewhere in the garden below, Watson, the club