"HE WAS A NOTICEABLY HANDSOME FIGURE AS HE SATALONE IN THE BOX"

[See p. 31

THE

LIGHT OF THE STAR

A Novel

BY

HAMLIN GARLAND

AUTHOR OF "HESPER"

"THE CAPTAIN OF THE GRAY-HORSE TROOP"

ETC. ETC.

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS

PUBLISHERS :: MCMIV

THE LIGHT OF THE STAR

Published May, 1904.

THE LIGHT OF THE STAR

I

FTER the appointment withMiss Merival reached him(through the hand of her manager),young Douglass grewfeverishly impatient of the longdays which lay between. Waiting became aspecies of heroism. Each morning he rereadhis manuscript and each evening found himat the theatre, partly to while away the time,but mainly in order that he might catch someclew to the real woman behind the shiningmask. His brain was filled with the lightof the star—her radiance dazzled him.

By day he walked the streets, seeing hername on every bill-board, catching the glowof her subtle and changeful beauty in everywindow. She gazed out at him from browsweary with splendid barbaric jewels, her eyesbitter and disdainful, and hopelessly sad.She smiled at him in framework of blue andermine and pearls—the bedecked, heartlesscoquette of the pleasure-seeking world. Shestood in the shadow of gray walls, a gratingover her head, with deep, soulful, girlish eyeslifted in piteous appeal; and in each of thesecharacters an unfathomed depth remainedto vex and to allure him.

Magnified by these reflections on the walls,haloed by the teeming praise and censure ofthe press, she seemed to dominate the entirecity as she had come to absorb the best of hisown life. What her private character reallywas no one seemed to know, in spite of thespecial articles and interviews with her managerswhich fed the almost universal adulationof her dark and changeful face, her savageand sovereign beauty. There was insolence inher tread, and mad allurement in the roundedbeauty of her powerful white arm—and at hisweakest the young playwright admitted thatall else concerning her was of no account.

At the same time he insisted that he wasnot involved with the woman—only withthe actress. "I am not a lover—I am a playwright,eager to have my heroine adequatelyportrayed," he contended with himself in thesolitude of his room, high in one of the greatapartment buildings of the middle city. Nevertheless,the tremor in his nerves caused himthought.

Her voice. Yes, that, too, was mysterious.Whence came that undertone like the moanof a weary wastrel tortured with dreams ofidyllic innocence long lost? Why did her utterance,like her glorious face, always suggestsome inner, darker meaning? There weretimes when she seemed old—old as vice andcruelty, hoarse with complaints, with curses,and then again her lips were childishly sweet,and her voice carried only the wistful accentsof adolescence or the melody of girlish awe.

On the night before his appointment sheplayed The Baroness Tel