Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/140

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN Capulets. It is no longer true. Miss Cowl had all the illusion of youth that Miss Neilson and other great Juliets lacked. Even technically she gave a finer performance. In the balcony scene, Miss Neilson dropped flowers one at a time to Romeo. Miss Cowl did it better without an adventitious aid.

I was stumbling out of the theater in a romantic haze when Adolph Klauber, Miss Cowl's husband and manager, stopped me and asked me backstage.

"Tell her how you enjoyed it," he said. "She will love it."

But I, who had seen a lovely girl kill herself, forgetting footlights, curtain, audience and all, demurred. "I wouldn't lose the illusion for anything," I told him. "Give her my love and tell her that the fact that I do not want to see her is the truest proof of my appreciation."

He laughed at me and shoved me ahead of him. Miss Cowl was standing in the door of her dressing room, and in my impulsive way, I said, "Oh, Jane! I can't tell you. I have no words for it." My lachrymal glands were working overtime.

"No one ever has said more," she told me and