FROM THE LIFE
ings I left him to his fate. It was evident that he lacked training. Beside the cultivated "readings" of the professionals in the cast he sounded amateur, pale-voiced. His tones had no theatrical make-up on them. They did not carry his points. At the best it would take him three or four years to acquire the experience and authority needed to put him over with an audience. And even then would Flora Furness marry him?
How could she? All the years that we had been laughing at the Furnesses in Centerbrook Mrs. Furness had been instinctively molding her son and her daughter to a career that was now beginning. Like a queen in exile, she had kept her children reminded of their royalty, stanch to their class. She had preserved in them the accents, the manners, the conventions, the ideals of the governing English. Flora could no more escape from them—to marry Gorman—than if she were a crown princess whose whole family depended upon her to succeed to a throne. Her very beauty made escape impossible. I could foresee that much.
I did not foresee Con's complete failure at rehearsals.
For a week everything went fairly well. Apparently he tried to work and forget her. He tried to keep her out of his thoughts and learn his lines. And I judge that what he succeeded in doing was this: by a very common trick of the mind he inhibited not his memory of her, but his memory for
[ 208 ]
