“I was going back to New York to-morrow.”
Lil exclaimed:
“What’re you talking about? Aren’t you going along with Mr. Hirsch?”
“Instead of going to New York,” said Mr. Davis, “you come along with me
to Boston. Cut out this living-picture stuff. It’s not worthy of you. I
always said there was the right stuff in you, Marion, and now I’m going
to give you the chance to prove it.”
For a moment an old vision came back to me. I saw myself as “Camille,”
the part I had so loved when little more than a child in Montreal, and I
felt again the sway of old ambitions. I said to Mr. Davis:
“Oh, yes, I think I _will_ go with you!”
But when I got back to my room, I took out Paul’s last letter. How
confident he was of my keeping my promise to return! He wrote of all the
preparations he was making, and he said he had a stroke of luck, and
that I should share it with him. We should have dinner at Mouquin’s, and
then we would see some show, or the opera. Whatever we did, or wherever
we went we would be together.
I got out my little writing pad, and I wrote a letter hurriedly to Mr.
Davis:
“Dear Mr. Davis:
“Will you please excuse me, but I have to go to New York. I’ll let
you know later about acting.”
I sent the note to Mr. Davis by the little maid in the house, and he
sent back a sheet with this laconic message upon it:
“Now or never--Give me till morning.”
Lil talked and talked and talked to me all night about it, and she
seemed to think I was crazy not to grab this chance that had come to me,
and she said any one of the other girls would have gone clean daft about
it. She said I was a little fool, and never knew when opportunity came
in my way. “Just look,” she said, “how you turned down that chance you
had to be a show girl, and all of us other girls weren’t even asked, and
I’ll bet our legs are as pretty as yours. It’s just because you’ve got a
sort of--of--well, I heard a man call it ‘sex-appeal’ about you, but
you’re foolish to throw away your good chances, and by and by they won’t
come to you. You’ll be fat and ugly.”