"You wouldn't. They don't put up
monuments to pretty actresses, nor write about them in school
histories. She dropped dead in her dressing-room one night
forty-two years ago. I was thinking of her to-day; something
reminded me of her."
"Was she a friend of yours, Mr. Tinker?" Canby asked.
"Friend? No. I was an usher in the old Calumet Theatre, and she
owned New York. She had this quality; every man in the audience fell
in love with her. So did the women, too, for that matter, and the
actors who played with her. When she played a love-scene, people
who'd been married thirty years would sit and watch her and hold
each other's hands--yes, with tears in their eyes. I've seen 'em.
And after the performance, one night, the stage-door keeper, a man
seventy years old, was caught kissing the latch of the door where
she'd touched it; and he was sober, too. There was something about
her looks and something about her voice you couldn't get away from.
You couldn't tell to save you what it was, but after you'd seen her
she'd seem to be with you for days, and you couldn't think much
about anything else, even if you wanted to.
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