Chapter CIV: Section 2: Thyrsis received a reply to his note, and went to call upon

Miss Ethelynda Lewis. Miss Lewis dwelt in a luxurious apartment-house on Riverside Drive, where a colored maid showed him into a big parlor, full of spindle-legged gilt furniture upholstered in flowered silk. Also the room contained an ebony grand piano, and a bookcase, in which he had time to notice the works of Maupassant and Marie Corelli.

Then Miss Lewis entered, clad in a morning-gown of crimson “liberty”. She was _petite_ and exquisite, full of alluring dimples--and apparently just out of a perfumed bath. Thyrsis sat on the edge of his chair and gazed at her, feeling quite out of his element.

She placed herself on the flowered silk sofa and talked. “I am immensely interested in that play,” she said. “It is _quite_ unique. And you are so young, too--why, you seem just a boy. Really, you know I think you must be a genius yourself.”

Thyrsis murmured something, feeling uncomfortable.

“The only thing is,” Miss Lewis went on, “it will need a lot of revision to make it practical.”

“In what part?” he asked.

“The love-story, principally,” said the other. “You see, in that respect, you have simply thrown your chances away.”

“I don’t understand,” said he.

“You have made your hero act so queerly. Everyone feels that he is in love with Helena--you meant him to be, didn’t you? And yet he goes away from her and won’t see her! Everyone will be disappointed at that--it’s impossible, from every point of view. You’ll have to have them married in the last act.”

Thyrsis gasped for breath.

“You see,” continued Miss Lewis, “I am to play the part of Helena, and I am to be the star. And obviously, it would never do for me to be rejected, and left all up in the air like that. I must have some sort of a love-scene.”

“But”--protested the poet--“what you want me to change is what my play is _about!_”

“How do you mean?” asked the other.

“Why, it’s a new kind of love,” he stammered--“a different kind.”

“But, people don’t understand that kind of love.”

“But, Miss Lewis, that’s why I wrote my play! I want to _make_ them understand.”

“But you can’t do anything like that on the stage,” said Miss Lewis. “The public won’t come to see your play.” And then she went on to explain to him the conditions of success in the business of the theatre.

Thyrsis listened, with a clutch as of ice about his heart. “I am very sorry, Miss Lewis,” he said, at last--“but I couldn’t possibly do what you ask.”

“Couldn’t do it!” cried the other, amazed.

“It would not fit into my idea at all.”

“But, don’t you want to get your play produced?”

“That’s just it, I want to get my play produced. If I did what you want me to, it wouldn’t be my play. It would be somebody else’s play.”

And there he stood. The actress argued with him and protested. She showed him what a great chance he had here--one that came to a new and unknown writer but once in a lifetime. Here was a manager ready to give him a good contract, and to put his play on at once in a Broadway theatre; and here was a public favorite anxious to have the leading role. It would be everything he could ask--it would be fame and fortune at one stroke. But Thyrsis only shook his head--he could not do it. He was almost sick with disappointment; but it was a situation in which there was no use trying to compromise--he simply could not make a “love-story” out of “The Genius”.

So at last there came a silence between them--there being nothing more for Miss Lewis to say.

“Then I suppose you won’t want the play,” said Thyrsis, faintly.

“I don’t know,” she answered, with vexation. “I’ll have to think about it again, and talk to my manager. I had not counted on such a possibility as this.”

And so they left it, and Thyrsis went away. The next morning he received a letter from “Robertson Jones, Inc.”, asking him to call at once.