Jane Goring slept that night with a smile on her lips.
She woke up in the morning to read that at half an hour’s notice Gloria Cromwell had gone on in her place—and hit Broadway straight between the eyes.
Some months later word came from the West that Bob McNaughton had secured a divorce. There had been no personal reply to her letter. Calmly and quietly he had complied with her request, his lawyer merely notifying hers that Mrs. McNaughton’s wishes would be carried out to the letter. No possible way had she of gauging how he had taken it, no possible manner of knowing how, after all the years, such a request had affected him.
Her relief was like a gale of wind sweeping over the city after a stifling day. For months she had been trembling on the brink of terrifying uncertainty. The day following Gloria Cromwell’s amazing success had found her really ill, so ill that had she remained away from the theater that night there would have been justification. She was stunned, utterly bewildered, sickened to the soul by the trick she told herself Fate had played her.
Over and over she read the papers, as one gazes fascinated over the edge of a dizzying precipice. It was incredible! And worse still, it might easily have been avoided. She might have accepted the girl, made her a protégée, gracefully posed as having discovered a young genius and pushed her to the fore. She saw all that now. And—further irony—it would probably have redounded to her credit, a neat bit of self-advertisement. As things stood she had made herself a laughing-stock. She could not bear the thought of it.
On the verge of hysteria, she dragged herself out of bed and dressed for the street. When her maid dared to protest, she turned on the girl ready to strangle her.
Walking rapidly westward she veered north when she reached the Drive. It was a dull day, no clarity of air to fill the lungs, no shimmer of sunlight through the heavy clouds. Skeleton trees reached gaunt arms to the sky. Thick mud covered the ground which a month before had shown green and living. There was no cheer anywhere. Across the river the Palisades rose misty and unreal, as if they had never been more than mirages. Miles she made, on and on, seeking some way to still the terror voice in her breast.