"We should like to know who it is that is carrying us about."
"Why, certainly," exclaimed John, all his doubt disappearing in a toothful smile as he swept off his hat. "My name is Hampstead, John Hampstead."
"Miss Dounay, allow me to present Mr. Hampstead," said Miss O'Neil, without the moulting of an eyelash.
Miss Dounay extended her hand cordially for a lofty, English handshake, accompanied by an agreeable smile and a chuckling laugh, understood by John to be in recognition of the oddness of the situation.
After this, things were somewhat different. There was less sense of strain on his part, and he began to realize that there had been some strain upon hers which now was relaxed. Her body was less post-like; and toward the end of rehearsal, when possibly she was a little tired, it lay in his arms quite placidly, relaxing until its curves yielded and conformed to the muscular lines of his own torso.
Yet Miss Dounay never betrayed the slightest self-consciousness at such moments. Whatever the woman as woman might be, she was, as an actress, so absolutely devoted to the creation of the character she was rehearsing, so painstakingly careful to reproduce in every detail of tone and action the true impression of a pure-minded, Christian maiden that Hampstead, with his firm religious backgrounding, unhesitatingly imputed to the woman herself all the virtues of the chaste and incomparable Lygia.
When dress-rehearsal time came at midnight on Sunday, just after the regular performance had been concluded, and John saw Miss Dounay for the first time in the dress of the character, his soul was enraptured. The simple folds of her Grecian robe were furled at the waist and then swept downward in one billowy leap, unrelieved in their impressive whiteness by any touch of color, save that afforded by the jet-bright eyes with their assumed worshipful look and the wide, flowing stream of her dark, luxuriant hair, which, loosely bound at the neck, waved downward to her hips. The devout curve of her alabaster neck, the gleaming shoulders, the full, tapering, ivory arms, her sandaled bare feet--yes, John looked close to make sure, and they were actually bare--rounded out the picture.
Marien Dounay stood forth more like an angel vision than a woman, at once so beautiful and so adorable that big, sincere, open-eyed John Hampstead worshipped her where she stood--worshipped her and loved her--as a man should love an angel. Yet as he looked, he was almost guiltily conscious that he knew a secret about this angelic vision,--that this chiseled flesh with rounded, shapely contours that would be the despair of any sculptor was not as marble-like as it looked, was, indeed, soft to the touch and warm, radiant and magnetic.