Leslie Goldthwaite, peeping through the folds of the curtain, saw a
tall, grand-looking man, in what may be called the youth of middle age,
every inch a soldier, bowing as he was ushered forward to a seat vacated
for him, and followed by one younger, who modestly ignored the notice
intended for his chief. Dakie Thayne was making his way, with eyes
alight and excited, down a side passage to his post.
Then the two actors hurried once more into position; the stage was
cleared by a whispered peremptory order; the bell rung once, the tent
trembling with some one whisking further out of sight behind it,--twice,
and the curtain rose upon "Consolation."
Lovely as the picture is, it was lovelier in the living tableau. There
was something deep and intense in the pale calm of Susan Josselyn's
face, which they had not counted on even when they discovered that hers
was the very face for the "Sister." Something made you thrill at the
thought of what those eyes would show, if the downcast, quiet lids were
raised. The earnest gaze of the dying soldier met more, perhaps, in its
uplifting; for Frank Scherman had a look, in this instant of enacting,
that he had never got before in all his practicings.
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