The rise of a star

The curtain had come down for the ninth and last time. Everyone on the stage was in a hubbub of frenzied congratulation. Frances West, in her make-up of Biddy, the old Irish ora...

Mrs. Lennox stood dully at her parlour window in the Dorset, a set of residential apartments situated in the Fifth Avenue. This was her birthday. She had almost forgotten the fa...

One of the great surprises of Mrs. Lennox’s life was the first sight of her daughter’s baby. She had been by Imogen’s bedside all through that dreadful June night, until at last...

The following year was perhaps the hardest in Mrs. Lennox’s hard-worked life. And yet how much less wearisome it seemed than the previous period of enforced idleness. For she co...

Although little Joan had played at acting nearly all her short life, it was not until she was six and a half that she became conscious of such a thing as the theatre. For this i...

There was no obvious connection between the motor accident and Joan going to school, yet it was the one that finally decided Mr. Vandeleur on the other. He had been shocked at t...

In the course of the following year Mrs. Vandeleur acquired two new “attachés,” as Joan not unhumorously dubbed her mother’s satellites. Artistically these latest recruits were...

Soon after this episode Mr. Vandeleur found himself obliged to go to Europe for some weeks on business. But Imogen was not fit to be left in charge of Joan, he felt uneasily. Th...

Of the two and a half years of Joan’s boarding school life, the first twelvemonth was miserable, chiefly owing to her unsatisfied longing for her grandmother; the remainder of t...

It was still early the next morning when Joan appeared at her grandmother’s. Mrs. Lennox was again startled. Why the child was almost plain! What had become of the wonderful cre...

Joan’s beatific state continued with but a few brief eclipses. She had been instructed to ’phone to Mr. Clark, the ‘Vivi’ stage-manager, directly she arrived at Albany, and an a...

It seemed as though Mr. Montgomery’s prophecy as to Joan’s non-appearance would be fulfilled. In the month or so that followed, Miss Bransom showed an almost inhuman superiority...

It was three hours later when Joan awoke in a daze. Her healthy youth had insisted on this repose after the sleepless night. A curious, heavy depression was upon her. She looked...

The next morning Miss West was distinctly better. Dr. Strachey’s gratification, both professional and human, was evident. It was not unmixed with surprise. “Your mother must hav...

Joan did not appear again in ‘Vivi.’ But during the remaining three weeks of the tour she continued to live and even to save on her salary. The sensation of being entirely self-...

The letter to Mr. Vandeleur was not of course sent that night. Even the fervour of Joan’s renunciation stopped at that. She was too tired to dress again and take it out to the m...

The interview with Mr. Hobson in New York passed off satisfactorily. He did not seem very enthusiastic about the play, Joan thought, but he was quite satisfied both with her rea...

‘The Combine’ was playing at Cincinnati, when one day at the hotel, Mrs. Lennox happened to take up a publication which devoted itself largely to the doings--or the misdoings--o...

As Mrs. Lennox had foretold, the great manager was deeply incensed at Joan’s defection, and ordered ‘The Combine’ tour to be indefinitely postponed. But the grandmother did not...

The week that followed Adam Fletcher’s departure was the hardest of all Joan’s hard-worked season. She had no time to miss her lover; she hardly had time to remember his existen...

The tomb scene of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was nearing the end. The big New York audience was strangely hushed--a hush that meant more than all their previous enthusiastic applause. T...

The four days that followed were among the most worrying that Mrs. Lennox had ever known. The one comfort she found was that Joan’s suffering did not affect ‘Juliet.’ Indeed, Mr...