“Ne brusquez pas l’affaire,” was the younger man’s advice. “You’ll scare her by precipitancy, and so spoil all. Such a conquest as this requires infinite patience.”
His grace suffered himself to be advised, and set a restraint upon his ardour, using the greatest circumspection in the visits which he paid her almost daily after the performance. He confined the expressions of admiration to her histrionic art, and, if he touched upon her personal beauty and grace, it was ever in association with her playing, so that its consideration seemed justified by the part that he told her he was conceiving for her.
Thus subtly did he seek to lull her caution and intoxicate her senses with the sweet poison of flattery, whilst discussing with her the play he was to write--which, in his own phrase, was to immortalize himself and her, thereby eternally uniting them. There was in this more than a suggestion of a spiritual bond, a marriage of their respective arts to give life to his dramatic conception, so aloof from material and personal considerations that she was deceived into swallowing at least half the bait. Nor was it vague. His grace did not neglect to furnish it with a certain form. His theme, he told her, was the immortal story of Laura and her Petrarch set in the warm glitter of an old Italian frame. Nor was that all he told her. He whipped his wits to some purpose, and sketched for her the outline of a first act of tenderness and power.
At the end of a week he announced to her that this first act was already written.
“I have laboured day and night,” he told her; “driven relentlessly by the inspiration you have furnished me. So great is this that I must regard the thing as more yours than mine, or I shall do it when you have set upon it the seal of your approval.” Abruptly he asked her, as if it were a condition predetermined: “When will you hear me read it?”
“Were it not better that your grace should first complete the work?” she asked him.
He was taken aback, almost horror-stricken, to judge by his expression.
“Complete it!” he cried; “without knowing whether it takes the shape that you desire?”
“But it is not what I desire, your grace....”
“What else, then? Is it not something that I am doing specially for you, moved to it by yourself? And shall I complete it tormented the while by doubts as to whether you will consider it worthy of your talents when it is done? Would you let a dressmaker complete your gown without ever a fitting to see how it becomes you? And is a play, then, less important than a garment? Is not a part, indeed, a sort of garment for the soul? Nay, now, if I am to continue I must have your assistance as I say. I must know how this first act appears to you, how far my Laura does justice to your powers; and I must discuss with you the lines which the remainder of the play shall follow. Therefore again I ask you--and in the sacred cause of art I defy you to deny me--when will you hear what I have written?”